La Sirga ( The Towrope ) (Vega 2012) has become a highly representative film for contemporary Colombian cinema. In this article, I address two topics that have not yet been fully explored in the critical analyses of the movie: its use of secrets as aesthetic devices and its portrayal of the Colombian people. With the help of different theoretical tools, including Gonzalo Aguilar’s views on the relationship between Latin American cinema and the concept of the people, Clare Birchall’s approach to the aesthetic potential of secrets, Ernesto Laclau’s definition of the people as a political category and an assessment of the right-wing populist project led by President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, I show that, through a suggestive use of secrets throughout the film, Vega produces a critique of Uribe Vélez’s political discourse and, especially, of his definitions of the Colombian people at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Norman Valencia (Sat,) studied this question.