Nuestra Tierra

In 2009, a man and two accomplices try to evict members of the Indigenous community of Chuschagasta in northern Argentina. Claiming ownership of the land and armed with guns, they kill the community’s leader, Javier Chocobar. The murder is caught on video. After nine years of protest, a court case is finally opened.

Argentina’s Tucumán Province is a fertile agricultural region, historically inhabited by the Indigenous Chuschagasta people. For centuries it has been a site of land disputes between those original custodians and settlers of European origin. Whenlocal landowner Dario Luis Amín and two accomplices serve 300 Chuschagasta residents an eviction order in 2009, a confrontation with 68-year-old community leader Javier Chocobar ensues. The three men kill Chocobar, and the murder is captured on video.  

It takes nine years of protests before court proceedings are finally opened in 2018. During all this time, the killers remain free. The film combines the voices and photographs of the community with courtroom footage to explore the long history of colonialism and land dispossession that led to this crime. According to Variety magazine, Nuestra Tierra is ‘a slow-burning, increasingly incensed unravelling of a horrific murder case underpinned by colonialist privilege and prejudice’.