Author: Bruno Villalobos
A woman walks into the depths of the Andean highlands, her husband dead and her son never to return. Phaxsi heads towards an unknown fate. But she is not merely a woman—she is a symbol of an entire culture fading away. In Wiñaypacha (2017), Óscar Catacora offers not only a moving tale of love and loss, but a testament to a vanishing world: the Andean cosmovision, language, and lifestyle. This startling movie is a vehicle for a larger political and cultural commentary—one that resonates far beyond the Peruvian ‘altiplano’.
Óscar Catacora (1987–2021) was a pioneering Aymara filmmaker from Puno, Perú, whose work aimed to give a voice to indigenous people in cinema. Born and raised in a rural Aymara-speaking town, he was highly attuned to the situation of indigenous people and the erosion of their traditions in the face of Peru’s modernization. In this context, Catacora developed his own visual aesthetic based on the Andean cosmovision. His goal was to depict from the inside the indigenous way of life in a truthful way, purified from exoticism and stereotypes. This mission was finally crystallized in his 2017 movie “Wiñaypacha”, a benchmark achievement being Peru’s first Aymara language full-length film.
The film powerfully grapples with two central issues: the abandonment of elders in rural society and the fight to save culture against modernization. The reason behind exploring these themes is found in Catocora’s own life experiences: from an early age, he witnessed how Aymara culture increasingly was lost on successive generations when the youth moved to the cities and were discriminated against for speaking their native tongue or holding onto indigenous traditions. Peruvian society for long has stigmatized indigenous identities as well as the use of languages like Aymara and Quechua, which are taken as symbols of backwardness. We can see this happening, for instance, in schools where children are discouraged or penalized for using their mother language; or in employment interviews where an Andean accent constitutes a barrier; or in media where indigenous persons are stereotypically represented or absent. Thus, through this film, Catacora sought to flip those prejudices on their head and create a space where Andean narratives could be expressed on their own terms.
Wiñaypacha: A Story of Isolation and Resilience
Set in the mighty beauty of the southern Peruvian Andes, Wiñaypacha follows the life of an elderly couple, Willka and Phaxsi, who live alone in the remote highlands, waiting for their absent son who never returns. The film is a narrative of abandonment, cultural erosion and the passage of time. It is a reflection on the Andean life and the relation of its people with nature, unfolding at a slow, contemplative pace that mirrors the rhythms of traditional indigenous lifestyle.
Catacora not only directed the film but was also its cinematographer, carefully setting up each scene to represent the vastness and isolation of the Andean landscape. Working with non-professional local actors, he created a film with intensely authentic performances and an emotional depth that makes justice to its underlying message. The film’s success, winning prizes at international film festivals, attests to the power and necessity of Aymara storytelling on screen.
Andean Temporality and Visual Storytelling
What sets Catacora’s film apart from traditional cinema? One of the most striking aspects about Wiñaypacha is that it breaks away from key Western film conventions. Catacora uses long, uncut scenes that require patience in order to sense ‘time’ as the Andean communities do—as cyclical, slow, and profoundly interconnected with the flows of nature. Silence is utilized freely; minimal dialogue exists, and one watches the characters communicate mostly for practical reasons while taking care of daily chores in the house and their crops.
On a sunny day, the camera lingers on Willka and Phaxsi as they go about their routine. Phaxsi sits on the ground, spinning wool, her fingers moving in precision as she works with the fibers. Next to her, Willka tends to their animals, loosening a rope cinched around a llama’s neck while speaking softly to the animal. The time spent in these activities is not a mere background detail but an essential part of their existence, one that binds the characters to their land and traditions
However, one of the most important scenes illustrating Andean life and praxis happens when the elderly couple enact a ceremony for the new year, during which they offer gifts to the mountain spirits and interpret the will of the gods. Willka reads the signs and foresees a fatality: “this year a disgrace will occur… death is among us”. This moment encapsulates the Andean belief in fate and human life as intimately interconnected with nature powers. In so doing, the raw but breathtaking highlands mold the lives of the couple, showing how nature has a higher agency of its own—Pachamama (Mother Earth) and the Apus (mountain gods) are not metaphors but real forces determining human destiny.
Abandonment, Modernization, and Cultural Survival
At the core of Wiñaypacha lies the abandonment of older indigenous citizens by their younger counterparts who migrate to the cities. This is a real phenomenon in the Peruvian highlands, where economic poverty and modernization cause the breakdown of traditional society. Urban migration is most often associated with cultural assimilation, whereby indigenous youth forsake their language and customs in the hope of avoiding discrimination. Most Aymara speakers, for example, are forced to use Spanish outside the household, reinforcing the notion that indigenous identity must be hidden if one is to have access to economic and social rights.
We can get a glimpse of this in a desolating moment of the film, when Phaxsi asks Willka if he believes their son will ever return. Her question is met with silence, which announces that they will never see him again. The final scene of the film intensifies this feeling of loss: after Willka’s death, Phaxsi is utterly alone, she cries next to her husband’s body while asking desperately not to be abandoned given that, in her own words, ‘he had promised her to never do so’. As she embarks on a final trek into the mountains, her isolation symbolizes both her own personal abandonment and the slow fading away of Aymara traditions into nothingness.
In this way, Catacora narrates with deep and affective honesty the real challenges that indigenous people face, interpellating us as viewers with urgent questions: Can indigenous identities continue to exist outside of their traditional context? What occurs when cultural transmission across generations is disrupted and lost? The narrative of the film implies that the erosion of traditions is not only an individual occurrence but a social one, since entire modes of understanding and being are at risk of disappearance.
By showing these struggles from an indigenous perspective, Catacora resists the impulse of mainstream Peruvian films to folklorize or marginalize indigenous experiences. Generally, Indigenous characters in Peruvian media are relegated to comic relief or tragic victims, stripped of agency and depth. Wiñaypacha, however, focuses on Indigenous subjectivity without distorting it for an outsider gaze. Nature, manual labor and rituals, all take priority in the narration of the story; thus making the Andean viewpoint be encountered on its own terms. In such a decolonial gesture, Catacora’s film can be appropriated by those who have been long silenced in popular media and social life. Wiñaypacha is at once a tale of abandonment and a proclamation of the endurance of Andean practices in the face of cultural erasure.
Legacy and the Future of Indigenous Filmmaking
In 2021, while working on a new movie in southern Puno, Catacora experienced a sudden health imbalance that led to his untimely death at 34. His passing left a deep feeling of loss among the artistic scene. Yet his legacy lives on. The central themes of Wiñaypacha—the cosmovision of the Andean indigenous life and the relation of abandonment and cultural erasure—remain deeply relevant today. His path breaking endeavors have inspired a new wave of indigenous Peruvian and overseas filmmakers, who are now demonstrating that Andean storytelling belongs not only to local publics but to a global audience. Thanks to Catacora, Indigenous filmmaking is growing stronger even in the face of adversity such as the lack of funds and limited governmental support.
Catacora’s project, now taken up by new leading artists, is a fierce expression of how unyielding Andean heritage remains and why underprivileged narratives must be given increased attention. His films are an important part of a broader movement that is reclaiming the cinematic scene, turning it into a tool of resistance and self-expression. Today, as rapid modernization and globalization continues to endanger Indigenous lifeways, we are confronted with a crucial question: ‘which stories are we going to tell? ‘It’s our responsibility that the answer to this question leads not only to a more inclusive cinema, but to a more just society where the voices of those who have been silenced can be heard in their truth and with equal standing.