After several months of screening in various festivals around the world, and in our Water Day webinar, we now have available the documentary “La Sangre de la Tierra” online.
The film is a production by Alba Films and the Luciérnaga Foundation, for Entrepobles and Peace Brigades International, with funding from the Catalan Cooperation Agency, which shows the resistance of three territories of the Mesoamerican region (in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala ) before the construction of hydroelectric plants.
Each territory is in a phase of the struggle process: from when the existence of the project is known, until the opposition to the construction of the dam itself, which many times leads to the criminalization of leaders.
The goal of the documentary is to refute the image that hydroelectric plants are only producers of clean energy, focusing on the negative effects that their construction causes on the communities (mostly indigenous) and the affected territories. The documentary wants to show and draw attention to the social, economic, and environmental repercussions that these projects have, to the lack of prior, free and informed consultation required by ILO Convention 169, and to the absence of supposed “benefits” for the communities, since the energy produced is destined for export.
“In Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala every year between 50 and 60 environmental defenders are killed for fighting against the looting of the ancestral lands of their communities. With the construction of hydroelectric plants, rivers and water have also become objects of dispossession and have triggered violence and criminalization. In this undeclared war, there are many examples of resistance that show how this misnamed clean energy can also be stained with blood “
“In the worldview of many indigenous peoples, rivers are the lifeblood of the earth. For defending those rivers and preventing them from being hijacked by hydroelectric megaprojects, hundreds of people are criminalized or killed every year. Proof of how the so-called clean energy can be stained with blood “
DIRECTOR: Félix Zurita de Higes
DURATION: 48 minutes, 7 seconds
We hope you enjoy it!