Perro que ladra no muerde

Perro que ladra no muerde (Barking dogs, don’t bite) takes as case study the lynching of the manager of Imbabura’s textile factory by the employees, that took place in Atutanqui, Ecuador, on the July 1st, 1965. He was my grandfather.

"Perro que ladra no muerde" (Barking dogs, don’t bite) takes as case study the lynching of the manager of Imbabura’s textile factory by the employees, that has taken place in Atutanqui, Ecuador, on the July 1st, 1965. The factory’s manager, 

Josep Vilageliu, was my grandfather. Through an autopsy of the occurred events, the social and historical conditions that surrounded this event will arise, trying to build a multi-sited archive between personal, local and global around colonial violence.

"Perro que ladra no muerde” is a creative and research project on the invisibility of the structural and cultural violence of Latin America’s colonialism. After the nations claimed their independencies, foreign capital perpetuated the oppression and exploit ways of colonialism by other means. The invisibility and silencing of the native population has been the historical framework in which colonial violence has been perpetrated for decades and centuries.

One of the great violence investigators, the sociologist Johan Galtung, explains that every direct violent act (visible) is the continuation or response to structural violence (invisible) and cultural violence (also invisible). As the postcolonial theoretical Franz Fanon indicates, the case of the popular lynching is part of a collective catharsis to get rid of the oppressive structure and of the self empowerment against the colonialism cultural denigration. The violent act translates into reality the invisibility of colonial violence. Continuing with Gavatri Spivak premise, and according to it, political and cultural decolonization won’t take place until subordinates speak up, this project wishes to open a collective memory space from where to highlight the problematics derived from binaries settler/colonized, master/worker- employee. With that purpose we will use the Galtung ‘s triangular diagram as our investigation and creative guidelines.

The notion of “autopsy” was born in Ancient Greece and was used by travelers coming back to their homelands, in order to start a narration of what they have seen during their journeys. It literally means “see by yourself”. This concept was used again in the XVIII s century to designate the practice of opening a body to establish the cause of death. In this medical appropriation of the Greek concept lies the correlation of seeing with the truth. A truth that is not born by an exclusive speech, on the contrary, it evolves with the disparity and multiple points of views that conform collective memory. In this case, the examination penetrates the familiar and historical body, denied by taboo and time, and presents the outcome as an artistic truth.

This project will be based on mock-ups, animations, direct photographs, 3d recreations and a cartography of the facts. As a background to the comprehension of power structures through the legal, criminal and human evidences.