Wayúu rites and celebrations.
La Guajira It is the extreme north of Colombia, a dry, sandy, desert peninsula that juts out into the Caribbean and borders Venezuela. A land inhabited and protected by the Wayús, the largest indigenous population in Colombia and also the most forgotten for a long time.
Its geographical position and government neglect were the perfect breeding ground for the so-called marimbera bonanza, the origin of drug trafficking in the country between the 70s and 80s. A green and black chapter in the history of the area.
Green for the color of marijuana that left La Guajira for the United States and for the money that entered this very poor region and that the marimberos squandered by lighting their cigarettes with banknotes. Black because when the Colombian and US governments shut down the illegal business, the Wayús clans returned to an even more painful poverty, not only economically but also spiritually. It was hard for them to return to their customs and traditions after going through a lot of death.
The desert of La Guajira, the Wayuu women and their sacred place: the cemeteries.
All that chapter is the one that counts Colombian filmmakers Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra in their film Birds of Summer (premiere February 22). **The history of real Colombian drug trafficking**, from the inside, not Hollywood, and as a sensory experience that transports you to that magical place in the world.
“We are not satisfied with the representation of drug trafficking in Colombian art. We have a historical debt with our own mirror, with our most painful stories”, said Guerra at the last Cannes Festival, where they opened the Directors' Fortnight section.
Ciro Guerra had already made an international name for himself with his previous film, The Embrace of the Serpent. Another immersive experience that took us through the Amazon following in the footsteps of the last indigenous of his community. That was black and white Summer birds is pure color. The browns of the broken or flooded land, the greens of the highest areas of La Guajira, the blues of its sky. And the red ones from the Wayús women's dresses.
Godmother: Ursula.
For Gallego, who was the one who thought up the story years ago, Birds of Summer is "a gangster movie led by a challenging, powerful and intuitive woman." That woman is Úrsula Pushaina, head of a Wayú clan and played by Carmiña Martínez, a guajira actress. She is the godmother of this story of families fighting over the easy money of marijuana, and always trying to put their traditions of magical realism above. “Do you know why I am respected? Because I am capable of anything for my family and my clan,” she tells her daughter's suitor.
The wayú code in which the film is written is the same as that of Gabriel García Márquez he drank so much: magical, spiritual, hypnotic. “The film also drinks from the idea of the Greek tragedy, in which everything is announced; then we link that with the work of One Hundred Years of Solitude and we began to find communicating vessels between Wayú society and this work, but also with the world of dreams, the magical and the intuitive”, says the director.
The immense desert was an open runway for drug traffickers.
The film is divided into five jayeechi songs, the Wayús songs (Wild Grass 1968, Las tumbas 1971, La bonanza 1979, La Guerra 1980 and El limbo), told as a tragic fable of marriage, passions, revenge, blood among which all the Wayús traditions that can still be known in a trip to La Guajira.
Wayúu mourners.
They shot on real locations, they suffered unexpected floods, heat, dust. It is spoken by 80% in wayuunaiki, They worked with peasant actors and with more than two thousand extras from the indigenous community who opened up to the alijunas (all those who are not Wayús) to help them tell their story and that strength they have drawn from the desert to resist.
Racing, one of his entertainments.