quotidian minutiae as (sub)alter-narrative: negotiations on history in raya martin’s independencia

Independencia (2009) is a film where, to put it bluntly, nothing much happens.It opens with socialites and ilustrados chatting and flirting at an al fresco gatheringat the Cabecera’s downtown. A few moments later, a distant explosion is heard,disrupting this elite congregation. The explosion, the brief albeit consistentlymalevolent appearances of a handful of American soldiers finding their waythrough the forest, and the mock newsreel footage of an American soldiershooting a local boy for stealing fruit at the downtown market, are the onlyhints of an imminent war that becomes a hovering and crucial absent presencethroughout the story.