Latest LAP issue! The Nicaraguan Crisis and the Challenge to the International Left

edited by William I. Robison

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lapa/48/6

Debate is heating up among scholars over the ongoing crisis in Nicaragua. For some, the Ortega-Murillo government is a continuation of the 1980s Sandinista revolution while for others it is a corrupt and nepotistic regime that has promoted capitalist expansion while carrying out harsh repression against its opponents. This symposium brings together 10 scholars who debate the crisis at a time when it is generating deep fissures among the left and progressives in and out of the academy.

This issue also includes two commentaries on the July 11, 2021 protests in Cuba as well as nine additional articles on a variety of topics including indigenous movements, agriculture, precarious work, religion, and film as well as a number of book reviews.

Table of Contents

Abstract, Argentine Documentary Film and the Politics of Presence: Jorge Prelorán’s Valle Fértil

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Argentine Documentary Film and the Politics of Presence: Jorge Prelorán’s Valle Fértil
by Christopher Moore

Jorge Prelorán’s experiences directing and distributing his 1972 film Valle Fértil force us to reconsider what we regard as the significance of documentary. Far too often the historiography of Argentine and Latin American cinema rests either on director biographies, wherein auteurs’ party allegiances define their work, or on textual analysis of the final cut, wherein we isolate finished products from the history of their making. The case of Valle Fértil suggests that the localized, personal interactions inherent to production and distribution are an equally relevant legacy of the filmmaking experience. Given that other documentaries at this time were similarly predicated on sustained contact with select populations, the work of filmmakers ranging from Fernando Birri to Fernando Solanas might then likewise be analyzed through such a lens. For this reason, Jorge Prelorán, so often seen as unique or as a counterexample in the history of Argentine film, becomes instead exemplary.