Embodied Knowledge of the Bolivian Disappeared in Wara CajÍas and Adriana Montenegro’sDesaparecidos(2008)

Abstract

Until December 2016, the Bolivian government refused to declassify its military archives, which are believed to hold records of activities led during the consecutive dictatorships that lasted from 1964 to 1982. As these archives remained inaccessible, various Bolivian human rights organizations developed alternative tactics to give more visibility to this part of Bolivian history, and to induce Morales's government into action. The film director Adriana Montenegro, the choreographer Wara Cajías, and the Asociación de Familiares Detenidos, Desaparecidos y Mártires por la Liberación Nacional de Bolivia (ASOFAMD) joined forces to develop one such alternative, and created the screendance Desaparecidos (2008). To evoke the embodied experience of the Bolivians that were tortured, assassinated and/or disappeared during the Hugo Banzer and Luis García Meza dictatorships, which took place between 1971 and 1982, Desaparecidos presents the body as the point of departure for the production of knowledge regarding the fates of the victims of the dictatorships. As a screendance though, it also experiments with the aesthetic principles of cinematographic language in order to enhance the premise of embodied experience as a system of knowledge production, and as a call to action for its viewers.