La Batalla Del Volcán

Huachindango is the small capital of a small Central American country. In this city, women must enter rooms managed by “The System” at different times in their lives, where there are different types of sexual assault. No woman in Huachindango escapes from entering, at one or more moments in her life, to these rooms. There is one room that is the most feared of all: Cock’s Quickie.

In this powerful hybrid documentary, filmmaker Julio López Fernández carefully combines the testimony of victims of sexual violence during the Salvadoran Civil War with reenactments, performance art and historical information about the color indigo.

These women sell on the subway, one of the few possible jobs given their educational or family disadvantages. It is a way to combine care work and the ability to support their homes. Some have been dedicated to this activity for decades.

When I turned 33 years-old, my mother told me that my father, during the Salvadorian Civil War, had been captured and tortured for 33 days by the National Police. Two years later I had the courage to ask him and other men and women about those days. These people do not ask for revenge, all that they ask is for the truth to be known.

From the communal future, a woman recalls the words of her ancestors, women warriors who gathered to record their words about community service. At the same time she questions her own future: Will we ever stop fighting? Does anyone care what we say?