Event

REBELLION IN PATAGONIA

(aka PATAGONIA REBELDE)
Dir. Hector Olivera, 1974
ARGENTINA, 110 minutes
In Spanish with English subtitles

Oswaldo Bayer's historical novel Patagonia Rebelde, about an anarcho-syndicalist labor union's insurrectionary uprising against the Argentinian elite in the 1920s, was banned and publicly burned in the 70's before becoming a bestseller and feature film. The story begins with a hotel workers' strike so successful one forgets why the working class would ever lose given its objective strength. But as the victorious anarchists sing their anthem, a group of Chilean laborers, immigrants among immigrants, sit quietly in the back of the labor hall. Although they have been elevated to equals by the principal of international solidarity, their silence foreshadows the bloodshed to come.

For decades, Argentinian politics swung between the Nationalist populism of Juan Peron and a series of military coups, eventually centrally coordinated under Operation Condor, aimed at suppressing the socialist elements that made him so widely popular.

In 1970 Bayer's book was banned and publicly burned, but with Peron's return in 1973, the leftist Jorge Cepernic was elected governor of the Patagonian state of Santa Cruz. He worked with Bayer and director Hector Olivera to create an epic film version of PATAGONIA REBELDE, featuring large scale protest and battle sequences. In 1976 the military seized power once again, ushering in a brutal 7 year dictatorship in which the film was banned, Bayer, Olivera, and several of the film's actors were blacklisted, and Cepernic was imprisoned. In jail, he asked his warden if he deserved such cruel treatment simply for being a member of a left-of-center party. "No, you're not a prisoner because of your affiliation," the warden reportedly said. "You're a prisoner because you allowed Rebellion in Patagonia to be filmed."