The Tiniest Place: Memory, Transcorporeality and Ecological Reclaiming in Tatiana Huezo\u27s El Lugar Más Pequeño

Abstract

Tatiana Huezo\u27s debut film El Lugar Mas Pequeno (The Tiniest Place, 2011) is a documentary about the filmmaker\u27s journey to her grandmother\u27s village, Cinquera, in El Salvador. During the country\u27s civil war (1980-1992), the right-wing national government destroyed Cinquera, a stronghold of the leftist resistance, erasing the village from the country\u27s official maps. As an evocative contemplation of a tiny community once destroyed but now thriving into the twenty-first century, The Tiniest Place explores to what extent - and in which ways - cinema can register the painful legacies of political violence. Lacayo argues that The Tiniest Place enacts an ecological reclaiming of Cinquera\u27s history and place. This reclaiming of a new Cinquera allows the citizens to carry on with their lives, persevering as a community of survivors not despite their shared trauma but because of it, united in the deep pain of losing their loved ones in the war