Synopsis
Rosalba Velásquez, alias "Mona Velásquez" or “Sergeant Matacho”, arises from the past as a symbol of a phenomenon intimately tied to the life of the Colombians: the violence as accompanist, mother, friend and teacher of children and adults, of men and women nourished by the sap of the pain, of the suspicion and of the resentment. The violence as daily language, like predominant form of the relations and social, political and cultural expressions. As favorite route for the exercise of the power and necessary answer of those who endure it. The violence as imaginary psychic, source of sense and identity of the individual and the community.
The war in Colombia is not an extraordinary phenomenon. It is the "natural" way in which the last four generations of compatriots have grown. Matter of the State. Military men matter. Matter of politics, of economy, of religion and of family. Matter of civil. Matter of men and of women, of adults and of children.
The war - the life and the death in violent forms - is a matter of all. This way it is testified by Matacho, whom the Violence in the fifties was depriving of husband, of parents, of children and friends. Rosalba Velásquez, the wife, the teacher, the mother and lover. Matacho, the bandolier of the south of the Tolima, the embodiment of a tragedy. Our tragedy.
As woman gains access to a space in which traditionally the leading role is assigned to the men and does it like combatant, with an aggressive, courageous, challenging behavior of the pain, of the suffering and of the fear. That's why it astonishes, dazzles, amazes or disconcerts his partners of band and his enemies. Because it breaks with social stereotypes, with the imaginary masculine archetypal one who awards the woman the sweetness, the passivity, the solidarity and the obedience as predominant characteristics of his genre.
Matacho defies gender and social stereotypes. Before the devastation of his emotional, affective and physical world, Rosalba Velásquez reconstructs his identity melting in a major entity, of absolute character: the Death, the Violence. It assumes neither the victim's role nor that of refugee or defenseless, roles assigned traditionally to women, elders and children. She is not paralyzed, does not resign herself. Her inhibitory mechanisms are dismantled and without resigning from feminine characteristics she rebels, transgresses the arranging, the custom, the awaited thing. Her behavior does not obey ideological formulations. It arises from the most intimate of his extract and continues the only route that knows and is allowed him politically, socially and culturally.
For all this Matacho amazes, disconcerts. Matacho the woman, the mother, the lover, the teacher and the warrior, points and questions us.