Migrant drift and true saying in the film “Perro Bomba” (2019)

Abstract

Recently, migration from Haiti has taken over the Chilean national imagination, mobilizing various types of reactions and representations. In cinema, some films have tackled this phenomenon in a contemporary way, among them the fiction film of the year 2019 entitled “Perro Bomba”. In this text, I propose to analyze some scenes from this film seeking to analytically trace certain keys about the migrant situation from a reading that emphasizes the racialized nature of the power relations in which migration is represented and the relationship with discourses that exercise forms of resistance, either what we will call hidden discourse, following Scott, or what we will highlight as parrhesia, following Foucault. Based on the elements around the problem of the Haitian migration experience in Chile and the question of hidden discourse and parrhesia, four moments are reviewed below, based on shots and sequences of the film, which are considered relevant to understand the way this film stresses the Haitian migrant experience in Chile.

Perro Bomba

Migration

Haití

Cine