Historia y política en el documental uruguayo: La rosca (Grupo América Nueva, 1971)

Abstract

During the 1960s, strongly politicized cinematographic expressions emerged in several countries, configuring a continental movement known as Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano. In Uruguay, in an environment stressed by a deep social and political crisis, this cinematographic radicalization was reflected in the late 1960s in a profuse activity of “militant” film groups, of which the best known is the Cinemateca del Tercer Mundo. In this article I propose to analyze a film that emerged from that context: La rosca , a documentary that is little known today but had an intense circulation after its premiere in 1971. Made by the América Nueva group, the short film seeks to explain the origins and functioning of the “rosca”, a term with which the left alluded to the plot of economic and political power that dominated the country. Through the analysis of the film itself and the use of various sources, I propose a two-dimensional approach. On the one hand, to identify the discursive contents, which make up not only a denunciation of the conjunctural situation, but also an exercise in historicization with didactic pretensions. On the other hand, analyze the audiovisual strategies implemented by the América Nueva to communicate their political message to those who were their “ideal” recipients: not the enlightened militants, but the poor, workers and other actors with a “low level of consciousness”, as expressed the filmmakers in interviews of the time.