workers

Araya Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Neruda was asked to write an introduction poem for Araya, but he chose not to, saying ‘you cannot write a poem about a poem.’ He’s not wrong, this Venezuelan epic is a poetic ode to the global working class, from creation to post-industrialized exploitation. Watch Araya to see one of the best films from Venezuela and the anti-capitalist canon.

From: Venezuela, South America
Watch: IMDb, JustWatch
Next: Lucia, Eldorado XXI, Faya Dayi

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Araya – The Breakdown

Araya opens with an epic creation sequence. We’re shown the sea, sky, and earth in sequence, just as God created the world in the book of Genesis. Then we’re introduced to sea life and birds, as a brass orchestra and xylophone start playing in the background. The carefully edited introduction crescendos with a vertical camera pan over the top of a pyramid of salt, revealing a community of salteros (salt workers) mining the salt marshes. Every shot draws us in, setting the scene for an epic tale of humanity, represented by these hidden people in Venezuela.

These forgotten people are all workers. They all make their living from the sea, working constantly to sustain themselves from the salt and fish it provides. The director, Margot Benacerraf, emphasizes the struggle to survive by focusing on their movements. The routine actions of each person living off of the sea appear like a well oiled machine, in tune with nature, and each other. The salteros follow each other up the salt mountain to weigh, sell, and deposit their salt; the fishermen bring back their fish for their families to salt. No time is wasted and each movement reinforces their struggle and their community.

Whilst we see the community working tirelessly together, we never fully identify with them. The director deliberately maintains a distance between the audience and the subjects of the film to keep their lives symbolic and poetic, in a similar way to the Soviet films of the USSR (Man with a Movie Camera) and Cuba (Lucia, Soy Cuba). She does this by using a narrator to emphasize their hardships as opposed to interviewing the workers directly. By telling their story through images instead of through their voices, they become representatives of the global working class, and not just exploited Salteros in Venezuela.

This sets up a final scene in which industrialization arrives, overtaking the manual labor carried out by the workers with a greed for profits. As machines take over, the salteros vanish – turning from hidden workers to hidden unemployed. At the same time, nature is replaced with exploited land. It’s a threatening message for workers and all citizens of the world.

Conclusion

Araya is a poetic epic. Through images, it tells the story of mankind from creation to post-industrial exploitation. It’s a art-house warning for workers and citizens of the world and an incredibly important film to add to your anti-capitalist viewing list alongside Soy Cuba and Salt of the Earth.