El camino del inca

Directed by Sylvie Blum

The 23,000km long route of the Incas laces its way through the Cordillera range of the Andes. This road network served as the major means of transport, of communication and of government administration in the history of pre-colonialist America. The film covers three periods that deeply marked this region and its Indian tribes. Three phases, three eras for a road, and a history of violence and injustice that constantly repeats itself. Crystallizing the spirit of the conquests that took place in the Atacama Desert, a Peruvian prince once said in regard to the Indians: “We must spare our enemies or we will hurt ourselves, because they will soon be ours with all that is theirs”. In visualizing this statement, it is easy for us to imagine what hell the men of these lands endured during centuries of invasion and submission.