The Stride of Lichen

In 1982, the eruption of the Chichonal volcano, in southern Mexico, buried the Zoque indigenous town of Guayabal. After 38 years, the owners of Nuevo Guayabal rebuild their lives while the volcano and the old village lurk under the brushwood. Trinidad, a poet born on the day of the eruption, has dreams which spark a collective effort in his community to unearth their old home.

The catastrophic eruption of the Chichonal volcano in 1982 triggered a process of territorial displacement, loss of language and the dispersion of knowledge of the Zoque cosmogony. The film links the process of reconstruction and fighting of the Esquipulas Guayabal community--located 5 kilometers from the crater of the volcano--with the complex cosmogony of volcanic regions. This collaboration between two visual artists and a Zoque poet from Guayabal community, seeks to trigger a process of sensory ethnography and audiovisual experimentation, that manifest the strong relationship between the historical process of the community life and the volcano activity that has increased recently. The historical link between humans and volcanoes acquires a visual-cinematographic form of territorial redefinition and renewal of volcanic imaginaries, leaving aside the melancholy of what has been lost. The film embodies the genesis of a new way of living and conceiving the volcano.