La Cueva Negra explores the Paso del Indio, an indigenous burial ground in Puerto Rico that was discovered during the construction of a highway, and eventually paved over. Drawing on interviews with local residents and with archaeologists involved in the excavation, Santiago Muñoz’s video offers a reflection on the origins and meanings of the site, which becomes in the process an allegory for the island’s convoluted history. The project starts from the site’s material history, the recollections of the workers and archaeologists involved, what we know, and what we think we know about a landscape and how these layers of material and belief interact to create a new contemporary cosmogony, one built on the trash, the graffiti, the expressway, the river, the village, the karst bedrock and the traces of previous inhabitants’ worldview. The camera tracks two teenage boys wandering through the area, their freedom of movement and sense of curiosity symbolising the romantic but ultimately misguided desire to find and preserve paradise.
Spanish spoken, English subtitles
