Memory from the Colombian Diaspora. Analysis of Simon Hernandez's Documentary Film Pizarro

This article discusses the Colombian documentary Pizarro by Simon Hernandez (2016), an excellent example of the contemporary visual culture developing in Latin America. Its protagonist is Carlos Pizarro, the M-19 Movement (M-19) commander assassinated on April 26, 1990, after signing a peace agreement between his guerrilla group and the Colombian government. Pizarro is portrayed by those who knew him, including his daughter, Maria Jose Pizarro, today a senator for the party Pacto Historico and a role model of the Colombian diaspora memory activism. From a distance created by the exile of Carlos' daughter, the director examines her father's life and what his disappearance meant for everyone, opening a new path for memory and its recovery. Framed in Cultural Studies, the research follows a qualitative methodology in which formal and narrative processes, historical and contextual analyses are applied to the particularities of documentary films. This article arises from the interest in understanding how an audiovisual work can transform power structures. With this premise, Colombia's armed conflict is manifested in the armed struggle and its representations, allowing us to explain what it has meant for Colombians. Documentary productions have been consolidated in Colombia as a framework for representing memory stories. We consider the processes of memory creation in which self-referential modes and the reflective gaze are used as tools for retrieving personal and collective memories. Pizarro adds to a plural story in a crucial collective memory exercise and becomes a symbol of fear in a radicalized country that discovers a chapter of history silenced by violence and intimidation, skillfully combining political, testimonial, biographical, and autobiographical features.