Los Colonos: A Gripping Historical Drama Revealing Overlooked Genocide in Chilean Patagonia

"Los colonos" is the debut film by Chilean director Felipe Gálvez, which surprised audiences at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed in the "Un Certain Regard" category.

The feature film, co-written with Antonia Girardi, addresses the genocide of Selk'nam indigenous people in the Chilean Patagonia in the early 20th century, a historical event overlooked by history.

This historical drama is set in 1901 in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, where a vast and fertile territory is pursued by white aristocrats for conquest and "civilization," under the strategy of opening a route to the Atlantic. A wealthy landowner hires three horsemen to dispossess the indigenous inhabitants of their land. Following orders, an American mercenary and a British soldier will discover the price they must pay to fulfill this objective.

The genocide depicted in the film took place on November 25, 1886 and is considered the first documented massacre of this indigenous people. In previous years, the Selk'nam had already been victims of attacks, harassment, and persecution by various expeditions, including several groups led by the British, as well as disputes between Argentinians and Chileans over the territory. The November 25th massacre was perpetrated by Ramón Lista and resulted in the killing of 28 Selk'nam indigenous people. Afterward, Tierra del Fuego was ceded to various landowners and companies exploiting its resources.

"The story of the film is not part of Chile's official history and is also absent from the school curriculum. I knew nothing about the genocide. Selk'nam Indians, called Onas by the white population, in our country. I discovered it by reading an article fifteen years ago that mentioned this hidden reality,"comments director Gálvez about the motivations that led him to make this film, also reflecting on the consequences of not knowing a country's complete history. "The Dawson Island in Tierra del Fuego became a concentration camp in the 1970s, later an extermination site under the Pinochet dictatorship, but everyone has forgotten that it had previously been the site of another massacre against indigenous people. Hence, the importance, to understand our recent history, of going back further, to the era of the colonization of indigenous lands. Today, in Chile, they want us to forget about the Pinochet dictatorship as we had done before; they wanted us to forget about the massacre of indigenous peoples."

Actor Alfredo Castro plays José Menéndez, one of the real-life characters in this fictional story, who divided up the land in Patagonia without being held accountable in a trial filled with irregularities that acquitted them years later. The document recording the legal process that took place was found by anthropologists and was taken into account for this film, which seeks not only to become a historical document but has also drawn from novels and popular stories. It aims to stimulate reflection on how "fiction, and especially cinema, has the power to modify and distort history, to rewrite it."

In this context, Gálvez speaks about the settlers of his own country and seeks to criticize the representation of colonization in audiovisual media. "Cinema has always promoted the image of the colonizer through adventure films, creating an entire culture fascinated by the image of foreigners, of colonizers disembarking in Latin America. Whether they were geniuses or scientists or even madmen. The West turned the colonization processes into entertainment, where indigenous people represented danger and barbarism, functioning almost as propaganda for the new nation-states and their ideals of civilization and progress." Departing from this idea, what is different in "Los colonos" is that it shows the true reality. "What interested me was to show that these settlers were ordinary people. In fact, they were quite poor, ignorant, rude, and without heroes. There are no heroes in the film. There are as many characters as there are perspectives, and it is the viewer who faces the choice of which position to take and which character to identify with or distance themselves from."

"Los colonos," which blends professional actors with non-professionals, also features Argentine director and screenwriter Mariano Llinás (La cordillera, El estudiante, Historias Extraordinarias) in its cast. The feature film received the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes (the first time this recognition has been awarded to Chilean cinema at the festival) and was acquired by MUBI for worldwide distribution.

Image credit: Cannes/Quijote Films.

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