Human Rights Culture and the (Im)possibilities of Decoloniality: El abrazo de la serpiente (2015)

Abstract

In this chapter, I focus on the notions of decoloniality and of human rights culture. I propose another holistic reading to suggest that Ciro Guerra’s El abrazo de la serpiente is part of a larger project about humanity which attests to both the film’s potential for as well as the impossibility of decoloniality. In order to elucidate this, I begin with an analysis of Guerra’s first feature-length film La sombra del caminante; I then analyse El abrazo de la serpiente’s engagement with human rights culture through its rights-promoting anticolonial message and its decolonizing gestures in relation to the notion of ‘being human’ and epistemic superiority. Finally, I interrogate critically some of the aspects mentioned, and further features of the film and its paratextual narrative which obstruct its decolonizing potential, in order to ultimately argue that El abrazo de la serpiente allows a discussion of the limits of human rights discourse as well as of the difficulties inherent to cinematic decolonization.