Diego Sarmiento Pagán

Clara is a teenager growing up in a small indigenous community high in the Andes. Her adoptive mother, a midwife who took her in as a baby, has taught her the ancient songs used to guide women through childbirth, melodies passed down for generations, believed to bring new life safely into the world. But while her voice carries on this tradition, her dreams lie elsewhere: she longs to leave the mountains behind and become a folkloric music star in the big city.

Feliciano, an 8-year-old alpaca herder, feels euphoric: Peru has a chance to qualify for the World Cup. Meanwhile the pressure of a mining company puts Feliciano’s village at risk and threatens his world and his dreams.

Cargo boats form a non-lieu, a space of transition for the traveler staking journeys that can last days, as well as for the indigenous communities living on the edges of the Amazon River, fighting for the survival of their cultural traditions and struggling to adapt to modernity.

Mothers of the Land accompanies five women from the Andean highlands in their daily struggle to maintain a traditional and organic way of working the land.

The city of Cerro de Pasco, with approximately 80,000 inhabitants, is being steadily encroached upon by mining, which has generated a series of socio-environmental impacts. The Volcan mining company seeks to expand its operations, which will require displacing an old part of the city, at the cost of destroying historical monuments and thus damaging local identity.

Rancas is a rural community near Cerro de Pasco, in the Pasco region. Through four festivities (Carnival or Andean branding, All Saints' Day, the vicuña roundup, and the feast of the patron saint, Saint Anthony of Rancas) held at different times of the year, we will learn about the community and how its inhabitants celebrate these festivals.