Bojayá, Masacre y Olvido
As a foreigner, I had no idea what happened at Bojayá, so for me this play was about learning, not remembering. Here’s a quick version: in late April, 2002, paramilitaries from the AUC group had occupied the riverfront town of Bojayá, in Choco, the poorest departmento of Colombia. The FARC guerrillas also wanted the town, to control Atrato river for both military and drug-trafficking reasons. FARC invaded the town, the local residents, mostly Afro-Colombians, took refuge in the church; and on May 2, 2002, FARC launched a homemade mortar into the church, killing around 80-120 civilians.
Like many of the other plays in Festa 2018, Bojayá, Masacre y Olvido uses theatre as a form of communal memory, as way of dealing with horrors of the past, and avoiding the temptation to forget. This group, from Quibdó, the capital of Choco, was far less sophisticated in the lexicon of black-box experimental theatre than many of the other productions in Festa, but they were natural actors, story-tellers, and dancers–and incredibly articulate witnesses.
