Mabel Lozano

A woman, victim of human trafficking, shot to death. She looks at us. She speaks to us. She is our responsibility.

Six men burn like a medieval torch in the plaza of Ivirgarzama, the coca leaf producing capital and center of drug trafficking in Bolivia. Hundreds of neighbors beat them with sticks before pouring gasoline on them and setting them on fire, accusing them of having stolen a truck from the last century. Bolivia holds the macabre ranking of lynchings at the hands of civilians. It is a state where justice and citizen security are assumed on their own and by force of the herd.

Ángeles Blanco is the lawyer of an association that helps people with cerebral palsy. One day she receives a message on her phone, saying: SOS. Nothing else. Ángeles immediately replies. She asks for more information, insistently, but to no avail. After several days without news she receives another message: yet another SOS, this time followed by a crying emoji. Ángeles knows that somebody on the other side of that telephone needs her, but if they want her to help they’ll have to find a way to communicate with her.