The piece confronts the ideas of utopia and dystopia in the recent history of Latin America through the “suspicious” deaths of 5 Latin American presidents that are still under investigation:

– João Goulart, president of Brazil, overthrown in Coup d’Etat in 1964 and killed by Operation Condor in 1976.

– Salvador Allende of Chile, president overthrown in a coup d’état in 1973, killed in the same coup, whose death is still under investigation.

– Juan José Torres, president of Bolivia overthrown in 1971, killed in Buenos Aires by Operation Condor in 1976.

– Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, killed in a plane crash, investigated today under suspicion of assassination attempt.

– Omar Torrijos, president of Panama killed in a plane crash. The documents of the investigation of his death were stolen and disappeared in 1989.

Each of them represented political and economic options that confronted
U.S. interests in the region: socialism, autonomy, copper, oil and the Panama Canal are some of the issues of conflict with respect to the administration and ideological discourses of these interests.

The work is composed of a sculptural object and a series of images. The first is a bronze box in which 3 elements are confronted: sounds of the political speeches of these presidents, engraved images of their official portraits and images of their tragic deaths with dates and charges, plus a dossier of declassified files on U.S. policy towards these countries, some of them heavily censored. The 3 elements of the box that confront each other, the utopia of the speeches, the dystopia of the archives and the unclarified deaths, are pieces of our history that do not quite fit together.

The series of images is composed of 5 paintings arranged perpendicularly to the wall and show the moment of transfer of the remains or the mass funerals with which the citizens of these countries respond to the shock produced by these deaths, which is reflected to this day in the investigations that are carried out to clarify them. The shock and commotion of these events have an impact on our societies. Since these are deaths that have not yet been solved, the paintings have a double image: the right side is a murky image, barely in focus that does not allow us to distinguish them; the reverse side presents the shocking image of the funerals or deaths as an image that persists in our histories until today, like forgetting and remembering, part of the exercises of memory.