Synopsis

The avocado route is a journey from a restaurant full of tourists at the Rambles of Barcelona, to deserted places due to the extensive cultivation of Chilean avocado.  From the water privatisation by Pinochet, to the effects of climate change in the Siurana’s reservoir; from Victor Jara’s songs to Ovidi Montllor; from Violeta Parra to Maria del Mar Bonet; from Joan Brossa to Nicanor Parra; from the murder of Salvador Allende to Salvador Puig Antich; from Plaça Urquinaona to Plaza Italia; from asking how shared our history is, to celebrate it.

Work lines

In the spring of 2018 Projecte Ingenu travels to Chile to meet a group of local actors and dancers. For a month they dedicate themselves to the sharing of processes and methodologies through training, research and creation activities halfway between theater and dance. The pretext of the investigation is the exploration of social and cultural differences and similarities of two twins societies that had undergone two almost parallel military dictatorships and that at the moment are still facing the need to manage their historical memory correctly. 

We shared trainings, warm-ups, scripts, songs, choreographies, dances, experiences, intimacy. The contact with reality made us redirect the research thesis. The historic juncture became clear to us: the strike of avocado consumption. 

We realized that the tiny detail of a strike of avocado consumption was much more revealing than our initial assumptions: 

• because talking about avocado speculation means talking about capitalism, contemporary colonialism and modern forms of exploitation
• it talks about sustainability and climate change 
• it talks about history, how Pinochet privatized Chilean water in the 1980s and that is why landowners are or damaging the soil to grow avocado, bypassing water supply for the population in some areas of the territory
• it talks about the relationship that ancient cities have with decolonized territories. 

How is possible that in modern Europe we claim avocado consumption for its great nutritional properties, but we reject that immigration in search of a more promising future which comes from the same lands of the avocado that we want? Isn’t it a victory for fascism? Free movement of capital and products, but control over the movement of people. Isn’t this about contemporary fascism?