Victor Arroyo

A regular day for Bans and Uzu, little did they know a series of events would bring them face to face with an alternate reality and their chance to confront Dixon, a disturbed psychopath with blood on his hands and demons in his mind.

For over 400 years, the tortuous Indigenous land conflict in the state of Michoacan in Mexico, remained largely ignored until this conflict intersected with cartel lords and illegal drug trade. The state of Michoacan is the birthplace of the drug war in Mexico, initiating an unprecedented regime of violence meanwhile affecting the Indigenous landscapes of the region.

Act One is an ethnography of violence reflecting on a history of conflict in Central Mexico. The video posits a decolonial approach to the visual representation of violence, transporting us beyond the realm of suffering into a space for quiet contemplation as the violent terrain of occupation enters the frame. Following the pictorial European Romantic landscape tradition with its depiction of the uncontrollable power of nature, this piece is an investigation on enforced disappearance in rural Mexico, reclaiming undermined histories of everyday violence and economic struggle.