Hoja Bandera
Ana Núñez Rodríguez
Self-Published
Spanish
Hardcover (signed)
Edition 33/200
145 pages
220 x 170 mm
2023
ISBN 9786280113777
Hoja Bandera is articulated from the tragic “matazón” that Galeano tells us with the subtle firmness of his writing. On that night of death, also represented by García Márquez, the Colombian army blinded the lives of thousands of workers who echoed the sentiments of the first unionist agencies in the country. This story, the tragic story of the banana republics, was financed and executed under pressure from the United Fruit Company (UFC), later transformed into the multinational “Chiquita” which in turn would subsidize the paramilitary offensive in different parts of the country. The banana massacre, as historiography labeled the event, was consolidated over time as a symbol of union struggle and resistance for the Colombian working class.
A year before the massacre, the conservative government of Abadía Méndez fostered the scenario of impunity through decrees and laws that sought to prohibit meetings, freedom of the press, socialist ideas and the mobilisation of strikers dissatisfied with the working conditions of the time. After more than ninety decades of fighting for salary improvements, benefits, compliance with agreements and consultations and, in general, for decent socio-political conditions, today the violent acts against these social movements and in general are still repeated like an ominous loop. particularly against their leaders.
The title Leaf Flag metaphorically evokes the social practice that means the work of the union leader with the last leaf that emerges from the stem of a plant and that is located in a strategic space from which it attracts water and light to the different parts of the plant. plant. A leader is a flag that emerges to allow the oxygenation of the social system and the good life of workers of different identity formations. Hoja Bandera proposes an alternative social memory to address this historical episode by exploring the photographic archive of the United Fruit Company, located in the Baker library, to put it in dialogue with the testimonies collected by Carlos Arango, with telegrams, documents of the time , strikers’ slogans, among others.
About the Artist
Ana Núñez Rodríguez is a photographer based between Europe and Colombia. Her work delves into the politics of identity, connecting her own experience of navigating between both cultural realities with other voices. Through the use of images, she establish new forms of collaboration and knowledge production that interrogate the impacts of collective memory and cultural heritage on identity.
ananunezrodriguez.com
(source: https://ananunezrodriguez.com/About-1)
