Los rastreadores is a two channel video installation set in Bolivia and very loosely inspired by John Ford's Western classic film The Searchers. It does not attempt to recreate the film but adapts its major themes where the similarities lie in the use of landscape and depictions of themes like race and alienation. The main character in Los Rastreadores, Ernesto Suarez, is modeled after Roberto Suarez Gomez, a Bolivian drug trafficker nicknamed "king of cocaine" and the most powerful drug lord in Bolivian history. Los Rastreadores merges and distills issues of race, belonging, class systems, and alienation into a minimal narrative that condenses the massacre of Ernesto's family, the kidnapping of his daughter, and his departure to search for her. Using silences and voice-overs rather than traditional dialogue it centers on the power of myth where literal events operate as a displacement for the political discourse in the country.  


Two channel digital HD video; (4 minute excerpt) 23 minutes total running time; color; sound