History, as common wisdom would have it, is written by the victors. Unsatisfied with the determinism of this adage, however, scholars and storytellers alike have increasingly sought to redress the biases and omissions of the colonial archival record through the creation of speculative histories and imaginative documentary work – a practice that cultural historian Saidiya Hartman has dubbed “critical fabulation.” The Memory of Butterflies (La Memoria de las Mariposas) serves as a powerful exemplar of the genre, with Peruvian director Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski (The Imprint) seamlessly melding archival footage with newly manipulated footage to create a dreamlike reconstruction of the essence of historical truth.
Sadowski’s inspiration for this piece was sparked when she happened upon a century old photograph of two Indigenous boys in London, transported far from their homes to illustrate the crimes of the infamous Casa Arana, the infamously brutal company at the centre of the rubber boom in the Amazonian Putumayo. Their names were Omarino and Anderomi, and their unknown fate would plague the filmmaker for years to come as she combed through archives across the globe searching for any clue as to what became of them.
Outlining the atrocities committed in the Putumayo by the Casa Arana, Sadowski lays out – in no uncertain terms – the nightmarish reality of the Peruvian rubber boom for the Indigenous population. Horrific in nature, the company’s crimes ranged from robbery and rape to torture, mutilation, and homicide. However, despite the existence of an official investigative record of their crimes, the only visual evidence of the company’s existence that remains is the propagandistic footage they themselves commissioned. As Sadowski puts it, “images of the unimaginable – those were never permitted to exist.” Taking on the task of dismantling the persistent power of the colonial images and archives created by the Casa Arana (and others) the filmmaker reappropriates and manipulates the company’s own propagandistic footage to great effect.
In her quest to ascertain the fates of the boys in the mysterious photograph, Sadowski (out of necessity) relies heavily on the letters and journals of Roger Casement, the British consul who came to the Putumayo to investigate the Casa Arana and took it upon himself to squire Omarino and Anderomi to London as living evidence of their crimes. Foregrounding the inherent bias of his singular point of view, she projects his words onto the screen in his own handwriting, describing them as offering an opaque doorway not only to what he decided to let us know, but also to what he decided to forget. Ironically, after they had served his purpose in London, Casement sends Omarino and Anderomi first to be “educated” in Ireland, and then returns them not to their home in the Putumayo, but to Iquitos, where they are to work as servants for a wealthy liberal family. As we learn from his correspondence, the boys yearn for their home, and eventually flee, presumably headed to the Putumayo.
With scant records to work with, Sadowski searches for the truth of Omarino and Anderomi’s experience in the subtext of peripheral histories, and in her attempt to ascertain their ultimate fate, connects with the communities they would have encountered on their final journey from Iquitos to the Putumayo. In truly collaborative fashion, she invites the members of these communities to create speculative fabulations based in their lived experience and knowledge of the land and its histories, reclaiming Omarino and Amerindo’s stories from the colonial annals of history in the process. Concluding in a peaceful and hopeful imagining of their successful return to their homeland, the film starts and ends with the unsullied sounds of the jungle.
It is telling that in the closing credits of the film, Sadowski names first the community members she worked with, before citing her official archival sources. In prioritizing their lived experience, she has meticulously and transparently built a counter archival work of tremendous power. By seeking to illuminate an alternative, speculative history informed by a multiplicity of perspectives, she crafts a commanding response to the legacy of colonialism in Peru, and confronts the fiction that documentary works are inherently objective.
The Memory of Butterflies premiered in the Forum programme of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
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