Film Screening with WGELA: Cerro Rico, Tierra Rica

WGELA is hosting a screening of “Cerro Rico, Tierra Rica”, on Thursday, March 21st in Love Auditorium at Duke University.  Refreshments will be served starting at 5:30pm and the screening with start at 6:00pm. Joining us will be Juan Vallejo, director of the piece, who has agreed to participate in a discussion and Q&A after the screening. This event is free and open to the public.

Film synopsis:

Cerro Rico, Tierra Rica is a detailed observational mosaic about two distinct mining communities in southwestern Bolivia – an elegy to the landscape of the altiplano (the high plateaus of the Andes mountains) and a valuable ethnographic record of manual labor in the region.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Cerro Rico (Rich Hill), an enormous conical mountain that towers over the city of Potosi, provided half of the world’s silver and sustained the economy of the Spanish Empire during colonial times. Most of the mineral wealth of Cerro Rico has been depleted, but today more than ten thousand miners still work on the slopes and tunnels of the mountain looking for zinc, tin, lead, or a good vein of silver. Bolivia has recently discovered it contains half of the world’s lithium reserves in the Arctic-looking plains of the Salar de Uyuni, also in the Potosi region. These reserves are, for the moment, completely untapped. The parallel histories of these two sites help create a compelling portrait of mining life in Latin America – and makes us wonder if Bolivia will finally be able to harness these mineral resources for itself and for its own development.

Parking: