Hamaca paraguaya (2006): The Campesino and Circular Time

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the Paraguayan filmmaking trends it set: a rural setting, campesino protagonism, Guaraní dialogue, and a focus on loss as the historical referent. Hamaca tells the story of an elderly campesino couple who wait for their son to return from war and for rain to relieve their dry crops. Hamaca represents two temporalities simultaneously: one that is congruent with familiar, lineal time and another that is circular. The main characters themselves are temporalized, linking this to a problematic racialization and gendering congruent with deterministic development discourse condemning Paraguay’s future to more of the same underdevelopment.

Periodization is inevitable but never innocent.

Teemu Ruskola, “Raping Like a State”