Despite the title, which reflects the wider audience that the filmmaker hopes to affect and educate, Dulce convivencia is in Mixe, the language of director-cinematographer Filoteo Gómez Martínez’s indigenous rural village, San Miguel Quetzaltepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, to which he has returned with camera in hand to document the process by which panela is made (it is used in beverages and desserts), beginning with the planting of sugar cane. Gómez has dedicated his film to those whom we see: parents, relatives, neighbors, all of whom he lists and—the word should take on deeper meaning here—credits. Although most of the film unobtrusively observes, someone along the way notes, “In our village we learn by helping.” They share the work and respect one another.
Young Gómez—at the beginning of his film he faces us—makes documentaries that show indigenous peoples in their normal lives. Here, he gives two aims for his film: to show not only the panela that is being made, but also the villagers’ reactions to the camera. The kid is being sly and wry; there is no reaction, only total acceptance and appreciation—a reciprocation of his attitude and spirit.
The villagers are traditional. A few persons say what is on their minds. People today generally don’t think about what they eat; they fill their bellies often not knowing the ingredients in their meals. These people raise their own food and prepare their own meals. The word self-sufficiency crops up.
But it is images of labor that are most memorable: the cutting of the cane; the grinding it in a trapiche, a home-built sugar press. And the aura that is there in the village: the sense that the best thing for one person to do is to help everyone else.
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