In one scene from Landmarks, the new documentary by the Argentinian film-maker Lucrecia Martel, a tour guide shows children a painting on the ceiling of a Catholic church depicting how “Indigenous attempted to break into the city”. “See how these angels fought to keep the Indigenous out, and they sent these beams to scare them away,” says the guide.
The following scene shows Indigenous people from the region – including a child baptised in that very church – watching footage of the tour on a mobile phone. One of them said: “Listening to him [the guide], you realise how convinced he is that even God wants to erase us for good.”
Landmarks is Martel’s first documentary and dives into one case – the killing of an Indigenous leader in a land dispute in 2009 – to address a broader and historical problem.
“The Argentine population is very alienated when it comes to Indigenous issues,” says Martel, 59. “Every effort has been made in this country not to recognise the rights of Indigenous communities.”
Acclaimed for fiction films such as Zama (2017) and The Headless Woman (2008), Martel has spent about 15 years working on Landmarks, which won best film at last year’s BFI London film festival. The film’s central focus is Javier Chocobar, an activist and leader of the Diaguita people from the Chuschagasta community in the province of Tucumán, who was 68 when he was shot dead inside his territory on 12 October 2009.
The moment of the killing was filmed by one of the accused, the mining businessman Darío Luis Amín, who claimed ownership of the land and arrived at the community accompanied by two former police officers, Luis Humberto Gómez and Eduardo José del Milagro Valdivieso Sassi. The footage shows the beginning of an argument between them and members of the Indigenous community, and the moment Gómez opens fire on one of them. Afterwards, Amín stops focusing on the confrontation, and another eight gunshots can be heard. The three accused men were armed, while none of the Indigenous people were. Chocobar died, and other members of the community were shot but survived.
It was while researching for Zama – a period film about an 18th-century Spanish colony perched on the coast of Paraguay – that Martel came across the video on YouTube. She began investigating the longstanding land dispute involving the Chuschagasta community and non-Indigenous families claiming ownership of the land, and the idea of making a documentary about it emerged naturally, she says. “I first wanted to help the community by building an archive, and later I started thinking about making a film.”
The trial took almost nine years to begin, and when it did, Martel and her team were there. “It was one of the most extraordinary spectacles I’ve ever witnessed,” says the film-maker of the 14 days of hearings she attended. She says that “racism against Indigenous peoples” became evident during the trial, “above all through paternalism, infantilisation and the idea that the assets of Indigenous communities are something the state should decide how to administer”.
The documentary shows moments in which not only the centuries-long presence of the Chuschagasta community was questioned, but even the very existence of Indigenous Argentinians – an experience Martel says is not confined to the Diaguita. “At school, we receive no information on Indigenous communities or their rights,” says the film-maker, who was born in Salta, neighbouring Tucumán in the north.
Martel believes Argentine racism against Indigenous peoples – who make up about 3% of the population according to the 2022 census – is tied to how the country sees and projects itself: a “white” nation shaped by European immigration, while ignoring other ethnic groups. “We are always behaving as if we don’t belong to Latin America … Argentina needs to put an end to this fantasy of being a nonexistent European country,” she says.
Martel is white and sees no problem in making a film centred on Indigenous issues. She acknowledges that “cinema’s first 120 years” were largely restricted to a small number of white men from “upper middle-class backgrounds”, and celebrates the fact that people from other “cultural backgrounds” are now making the industry more “diverse and therefore richer”, but says that the “discourse around cultural appropriation also created another problem”, especially among young aspiring film-makers.
“You see men terrified of making films about women, women uncertain about what subjects they are allowed to address, everyone trying to work out what it’s legitimate for them to speak about. I understand that concern [about cultural appropriation], and we should have it, but we cannot stop talking about the issues of our time simply because the protagonists have not lived the same lives we have,” she says.
Now that the film’s promotional cycle is coming to an end, Martel will hand over the rights to the Chuschagasta community, who were also the first to see the completed documentary. At the end of the trial, the three accused men were convicted. They appealed and were allowed to remain free pending the appeal. In 2021, Amín died of Covid. At the end of last year, the supreme court again ordered the imprisonment of the two former police officers.
Meanwhile the Chuschagasta community is still fighting for official state recognition of its land. Although the case is central to the narrative, Martel says Landmarks is not a film about one specific community, but about “a historical conflict and the usurpation of Indigenous lands in Argentina”.
“I made this film because I wanted to contribute to the history of our country, and to the health of Argentine society, which has carried this problem for far too long: through indifference, denial and constant doubt regarding the existence or legitimacy of Indigenous claims.”