this stolen country of mine (d. mark wiese)

This Stolen Country of Mine is a film about the effects of globalisation on Ecuador. The film is split into two strands. In one, a campaigning lawyer, Fernando Villavicencio who fought against Correa’s corruption is the focus. The lawyer investigated the contracts made with principally Chinese multinationals (although one imagines other unnamed countries must have been involved) for mining and petrol concessions. The contracts are found to be corrupt, the lawyer campaigns at the risk of his life, and finally, a decade later, Rafael Correa is impeached. The second strand revolves a younger man, Paúl Jarrin, who would appear to be a middle class campaigner who has joined a campaign in a remote Andean region to physically drive the Chinese multinationals out. The clash between local people and the globalisation giants around eco-issues, the retention of their rights to their land, their water, their nature, will be the defining conflict of the 21st century, supplanting the left-right divide, no matter how much this might map onto it. It’s here that Wiese’s film comes into its own, as the filmmaker follows the campesinos as they take up arms and physically attack a mining camp, setting fire to it. Confrontations with police, repression and assassination attempts are part and parcel of the villagers daily lives. At the film’s conclusion, Paul is fleeing into the mountains to lie low, like a modern day Butch Cassidy. There is clearly an element of personal courage on the part of the filmmakers which lends the footage a dramatic heft. The only curious element here is the way in which the Chinese seem to have replaced the North Americans as the regional antagonist. Even this seems to speak of the shifting geo-political sands.