Sra. Juana Ávalo
Pierina
Tío Rodolfo
Roly Rivera
Dirigentas comité organizador comunidad Nuevo Negritos
Nortes
Nortes is a project that intends to unearth the social, political and personal structures that underlie the oil extraction industry in the region of La Brea y Pariñas in northern Peru layering archive material, digital and analogue explorations of the desert, portraits and family albums.
This is a story very close to me. My family lived the heyday and fall of the oil extraction boom in the early 20th C in Peru: the camp where my grandmother was born and grew up in no longer exists. A century later, the rifts and pacts between oil companies and successive governments still show their effects but what remains in the wake of the dissolution of the promise of progress is a strong community.
I believe the importance of this story lies in how it highlights a world problematic while paying close attention to the local and personal. It represents that of many other towns in South America and the rest of the world where extractivism and failed politics cast a long shadow over our personal and family stories.
I believe the importance of this story lies in how it highlights a world problematic while paying close attention to the local and personal. It represents that of many other towns in South America and the rest of the world where extractivism and failed politics cast a long shadow over our personal and family stories.
As author Joseph Zarate writes “The real social and environmental conflicts don’t happen out there, on blocked highways and in crowded marches. They happen in our innermost selves, in what some call our souls and others call our conscience.”