The documentary follows three women whose stories highlight the courage and resilience of ordinary individuals in the face of systemic challenges. The female protagonists' stories are a beacon of hope for anyone standing up for environmental protection in the fight against modern corporate conquistadores.
Máxima Acuña is an indigenous farmer from Peru who lives near one of the largest gold mines in Latin America. She has faced relentless attempts to evict her from her land.
Berta Cáceres from Honduras fought against the construction of a highly controversial dam and paid for her fight with her life. Her daughter Bertha has decided to continue her mother's legacy.
Brazilian journalist Carolina de Mura Campos has investigated the background to the 2019 disaster in Brumadinho. The failure of the dam containing the tailings pond of an ore mine, resulting in a mudslide of toxic waste, led to the devastation of an entire area and the loss of 272 lives in 2019.
Everyone is cordially invited to stay on for the discussion (in Studio 5), where we will be serving some drinks and quiche!
ON THE PANEL:
Carla Jaimes Betancourt, BCDSS:
As professor of cultural heritage, Carla explores the complex relationship between heritage and dependency from an indigenous perspective, focusing on the Llanos de Moxos region in Bolivia. By fostering strong alliances among these communities and promoting decolonial archaeology through collaborative and participatory methods, it seeks to strengthen the adaptive resilience of indigenous communities – preserving cultural identity, traditional knowledge, and sustainable practices amidst the challenges of globalization.
Christian Mader, BCDSS
Christian is an anthropological and economic archaeologist, who has a keen interest in comparative perspectives. With his specialization in the Pre-Columbian Andean region, he brings a longitudinal perspective to the discussion. His research is driven by the question of how to identify forms of asymmetrical dependency in the archaeological record. Integral to this question is the concept of resource dependencies embodied in a wide range of material culture. Resource dependencies imply two significant sorts of strong structural dependency within a larger ecological and sociopolitical context: the first concerns the dependency of people on resources of every kind, which is a crucial basis for the second, which is dependencies between humans.
Aline Pereira, Global Heritage Lab
Aline is a legal scholar with transdisciplinary training in legal sociology and development studies. Her research examines the challenges of environmental law enforcement in mining-related conflicts in Minas Gerais, Brazil. This is an extractivist context where significant inequality exists between the parties involved in environmental conflicts and where affected people who attempt to participate in environmental governance processes are often sidelined. Her research interests include the colonial patterns behind the appropriation of nature, environmental and biodiversity protection, extractivism, and legal proceduralization.