Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Igualada using politician Francia Marquez’s untimed birth chart. Emerging themes include charismatic politicians able to speak directly to the people, the efforts of such a leader attempting to overturn entrenched systems of power, and the enduring appeal of those willing to lay their life on the line for their beliefs. Astrologically this corresponds to the planet Jupiter, Jupiter in the sign of Scorpio, Saturn Pluto transits, and the 11th house.
Distribution: More info
Director: Juan Mejía Botero
Run Time: 78 minutes
Astrological Data: Francia Márquez, 1 December 1981, Rodden Rating: X, Source: Wikipedia
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.459] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And this is Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of stories. This season, we're looking at 36 documentaries from Sundance 2024. So in today's episode, we're going to be breaking down a film called Igualada, which was a part of the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance this year. directed by Juan Mejia Botero. And this is the 6th of seven of the episodes in our section that we're calling The Power of the Collective, Movements, and Friendships. So, Wonder, maybe you could read the synopsis.
[00:00:48.061] Wonder Bright: Igualada. In one of Latin America's most unequal countries, Francia Marquez, a black Colombian rural activist, challenges the status quo with a presidential campaign that reappropriates the derogatory term Igualada. somebody who acts as if they deserve rights that supposedly don't correspond to them, and inspires a nation to dream. Director Juan Mejia Botero's exclusive access to Francia Marquez's presidential campaign reveals an unwavering commitment to fight inequality. Marquez's presidential aspirations grew from the roots of dedicated social and environmental advocacy in her rural community of La Toma. Botero integrates into Marquez's trusted circle, closely observing her and the campaign team's tireless grassroots efforts to push her candidacy forward, while archival footage of a younger Marquez in La Toma reminds us of her longstanding activism. Marquez's resonant slogan, I am because we are, rings through gatherings, galvanizing the rural and Afro-Colombian communities Marquez is fighting for, and echoing through the growing number of younger Colombians inspired by her message. They look to Marquez, faces filled with hope for a future where they might finally be represented. Botero captures the thrill and magnitude of this historic campaign from an inspiringly intimate vantage point. guided by Marquez's mission and the collective strength and aspiration of the people. And that synopsis comes to us by way of Sundance programmer Stephanie Owens.
[00:02:25.293] Kent Bye: Yeah, so there's a number of films this year that were tracking political campaigns, people that are on the campaign trail trying to build up enough support to get into political office. So Francia Marquez is the main protagonist in this piece, and she has a lot of archival footage of her back from 2009. And she's talking about these paramilitary groups and the amount of violence that community members are facing in her community. And Giselle, there weren't a lot of political representation, and they go through the turning points when she decides to actually run for office. And then she starts her campaign off next to the river and has this saying, which is, “soy porque somos”, which is, “I am because we are”. She actually started the political party that was named this and really inspired a lot of people who were quite disenfranchised. So you end up seeing a lot of black, indigenous, queer women and other disenfranchised folks throughout the course of this film as she's going around campaigning, really starting a whole movement. And so as we're talking about this section on the power of the collective movements and friendships, this is really this populist movement of people who were really supporting a candidate that was not only interested in speaking about some of these perspectives of people from these disenfranchised communities, but actually representing all these other interests and ideas and philosophies that at that point had not really been a part of the larger political conversation. So she was really an inspiring character and the filmmaker had a lot of exclusive access to follow her up to a certain point. in this film, the point where she doesn't win the primary. The person who won the primary ended up choosing her as his running mate and they end up actually winning. So she becomes the vice president, but the film kind of stops once she becomes a part of his campaign. It's only really going up to her own campaign and then it kind of like cuts to the end to after they've actually won. So it's a little bit of an anticlimactic ending because you're not following them each step along the way, but it is amazing to be able to see her go from the very beginnings of the idea of running and now she's like the vice president of Columbia.
[00:04:31.224] Wonder Bright: Right. Yes. And it's also a slightly disjointed ending, not only because we don't watch the process whereby she becomes the vice president, but then the footage that we do have of her as the vice president, we don't see her speaking. We just see her, you know, acknowledging the roar of the crowd and then dutifully going and sitting down. which is in direct contrast to our main experience of her throughout the film, which is as a very powerful orator and someone who's capable of crowd wrangling and inspiring in a way that is what you kind of want in a politician as a general rule. And especially since she's really giving voice to disenfranchised people in her country and seems to be speaking truth to power in a way that is entirely galvanizing. So then to go from that to being cut out of her story for what we can only assume was a fairly intense several months as they ran for the final election and she's now the running mate. for her country. And then we see her and she's on the stage, but she's no longer speaking. It didn't feel in the film, like just from a filmic point of view, it didn't feel like the ending that I had been rooting for all along, but it felt as if it was supposed to be the ending I was rooting for. And because we've now seen And So It Begins, which tracks fairly similar tale in some ways, following a female politician in the Philippines who also becomes the vice president of a very popular president, but is prevented from doing anything within his cabinet. It's sort of, like, now that I've seen And So It Begins, it’s just impossible to know - there's absolutely no way to know - what's actually happening, but the film falls flat in the end because we don't truly know what's happened. And then, when I step back a little bit more the film also doesn't provide like a grounding wire throughout the piece to really contextualize what she's fighting for and what her followers are fighting for. We hear all about it through Marquez herself and she is extremely charismatic and compelling. She's such a powerful orator. She's 100% the kind of orator that you just want to believe in. After the film was over, I was like Googling her campaign posters because they were so fantastic, you know, really cut from that propaganda cloth that Obama used with, gosh, what was the name of that artist?
[00:07:36.639] Kent Bye: Oh, Shepard Fairey?
[00:07:37.579] Wonder Bright: Yeah, the Shepard Fairey posters that Fairey made in support of Obama in the first Obama campaign. So they have that quality to them, but with all the vibrancy of South American colors and Latin slogans. So it's just a beautiful campaign, and she's really a compelling figure. And at the same time, because we mostly hear everything contextualized through Marquez's speeches or footage of her early in her career, in her early 30s, talking to civilians, you know, by the bank of a river, it almost comes off feeling like a commercial for her rather than an actual film about what's at stake and who this person is and what she's fighting for in the country and why it's so necessary. Having said that, it gave me an impression of Colombia and the Colombian people that I did not have before. I'm embarrassed to say that I was completely unaware of what a large Black population lived in Colombia, and that was just really vibrant and wonderful to see. So I'm certainly glad I watched the film, and I'll have more investment in any news that I hear coming out of Colombia as a result of it.
[00:09:02.188] Kent Bye: Yeah, there are a lot of parallels between the story of Igualada and And So It Begins because the main protagonists end up becoming the vice presidents of their country. In And So It Begins, it follows Leni Robredo, which in that film, which we'll be talking about next, she becomes a vice president because in the Philippines, the president and vice president are actually two separate elections. So it's possible for different parties to be elected together. So she's actually from a different party than the president. and ends up being a bit exiled within her own administration, not really given much power or listened to much. And so she's in this weird liminal space where she was vice president and now she is running for president in the next election after having served as vice president. Whereas in this case, it's somebody who has been serving in more local political context, but not any political position when it comes to Francia Marquez. And so there's like a lot of her trying to build up enough support and she has to gather like a million signatures. She's not able to gather those signatures, but yet at the 11th hour, she's endorsed by one of the political parties, which apparently there's some sort of coalition of the left leaning political parties. So there's a primary that she's running in. And she doesn't end up winning the primary, but she does well enough to be chosen as the vice president for the main election, which then she ends up winning. But like I said, we don't see any of the election process of the main election. So we're just watching her up to the point of getting second place in this consolation prize of becoming the vice president or candidate. And then we see her winning and getting sworn in and everything, but not really much information after that. So yeah, like I said, there's a bit of an anticlimactic nature of this film where she actually wins, but you don't get to cathart with her as you go through each step of the way and follow her through that next phase. Imagine, if I were to take a guess, we didn't have a chance to listen to the Q&A of this film, but that either the filmmakers were not able to secure the same type of exclusive access once she was the main candidate, Because she was really a dark horse as a candidate. She really was gaining a lot of popular support, but really wasn't coming from a lot of established institutions. In fact, not even able to have a major party endorse her early on. And so when she becomes a big part of the establishment, then we get our access cut off and we're not able to kind of track it each step of the way. But I think up to the point of seeing her at the very beginnings of her candidacy, it does feel like that she's starting this whole movement, gathering people around her, trying to figure out how can she create a government system that works for more people. I think a lot of her campaigning was trying to to inspire people around those messages. It reminds me of someone sort of like Bernie Sanders in the United States, someone who was really advocating a lot of policies for the worker, more progressive policies, but yet within the context of the United States, someone like Bernie Sanders has never really been accepted by the establishment. So you kind of see this person who is representing a very progressive politics that's very inclusive and ends up being a major part of the political system there in Columbia. Her campaign slogan of “I am because we are” reminds me of the phrase ubuntu, which is a very similar meaning. Reading from Wikipedia, it says that ubuntu describes a set of closely related African origin value systems that emphasize the interconnectedness of individuals and their surrounding societal and physical worlds. Ubuntu is sometimes translated as “I am because we are”, also “I am because you are”. So there's very much a parallel there between “soy porque somos”, the “I am because we are", and the meaning of “Ubuntu”.
[00:12:40.836] Wonder Bright: I wish there was something like that in American English. Yeah, that was a really powerful feature of this film was just explicating that expression. That when it was coming from Francia Marquez it was very clear she was not only aligning herself with common people in Colombia, including black Colombians, because she herself is a black Colombian, but that she could align herself with people who didn't come from a lot of money. Certainly, as far as the film is presenting it, we experience Francia Marquez as being “one of the people”, despite the fact that one of her children is at an Ivy League college in the United States. We do have this experience of her from very early on, like on the land with people, bringing her children out to these places, eating with everybody out of bowls, sitting beside the river. So there's just this experience early on of her being able to identify that there is an underserved population in Columbia that would have a voice if anybody would be willing to give it to them. And she is able to do that. She's able to identify it. She's able to speak to them. And she's able to enlist their collaboration in creating a movement. which overrides the election cycle the way that it has always gone traditionally. And it's really exciting and dynamic to watch that happening.
[00:14:30.720] Kent Bye: Yeah. And when I think about some of the primary significations of this film, I think there's certainly a lot of 11th house themes of the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the joy of Jupiter that represents that good spirit, those dreams for a better future, but also the collective social movements and collective identity and how politics often creates these natural group identity associations. But for her, she's really fighting for a vision of a better tomorrow. When I look at her chart, because she is born on December 1st, 1981, we don't have a specific time, so we don't have the specific ways in which these planets are falling into her different houses. But I do see that that's around the time period when you start to have the last Saturn-Pluto conjunction before the last one that we had in January of 2020. So back in 1981 to 84, there was a Saturn-Pluto conjunction that I think in a lot of ways represents the ways in which the structures of society are connected to the power structures of society and in some ways with her Jupiter being very closely configured there to that. She's got both the Jupiter conjunct that Pluto and a Venus that's squaring that Pluto. So there's a way in which she's speaking out against the dominant power structures. She also has her Mercury that's conjunct Uranus and so she has this Promethean aspect of speaking of the people for the people, trying to give this sense of liberation and in the way that she's speaking with this fiery spirit of this revolutionary tone in some ways of really representing a big significant change. So when I look at her chart, I see some of those different signatures that are popping out, but I'm not sure if there's anything that you're noticing when you think about some of the primary significations of Igualada.
[00:16:17.194] Wonder Bright: I definitely co-sign the Jupiter expression, less so because Jupiter has its joy in the 11th, which is the theme of this section that we're covering, and more so because Jupiter is the planet that the Gauquelins identified as being the planet that represents politicians. So they found a higher percentage of people as either politicians or actors if they were born with Jupiter conjunct an angle. And this film is very Jupiterian in the sense that Francia Marquez seems to be a born politician. And by that, I mean, she's able to orate and articulate the issues that are of concern to the people that are listening to her. And that is a trait that all politicians have. Now, whether we should be concerned that that's also a trait that actors have, I'll leave up to your discretion. Because what's interesting to me about that is that both actors and politicians are able to tell us the stories that matter to us. And that's what we see Francia Marquez do over and over and over again in this film. We actually don't need her chart to have an experience of a very powerful Jupiterian presence. She is a born politician. She is born to tell the stories of the people to the people and to speak to them. It seems to just kind of run through her like a lifeblood. Like Kent and I are often talking about, oh my gosh, your editing job after this is going to be so big because we'll get to the end of talking through a podcast and it's like hours and hours long and we've both trailed off and started over again. Kent's a brilliant editor. Thank heavens. But as I'm watching this footage of Francia Marquez, you don't need to edit her. She's a seamless orator. There seems to be very little gap between what she wants to say and what she says. It just comes out of her, rolling right out of her. It's pretty remarkable. If you wanted to look at her astrology, again, we don't have a timed birth chart for her, but knowing that she's born on December 1st, 1981, we do see, of course, she has a Sagittarius Sun, she also has a Sagittarius Mercury, and both of those planets are ruled by Jupiter in Sagittarius. And Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, which means that her Sun and her Mercury are ruled by that Jupiter. And her Jupiter is at zero degrees Scorpio. So Demetra George says that Jupiter is about the search for truth and ethical meaning. So you can see in that way why actors and politicians would be able to tell the stories of the people to the people. Because they're telling us the truth that we want to hear. So they're telling us the stories. That doesn't mean true as in factually true. You know, we could say that Biden is telling the truth of the stories to the people who want to hear that truth. And Donald Trump is telling the truth of the stories to people who want to hear that truth. The point is that it resonates for people as truth to them. And so when Jupiter is in Scorpio, as it is in Marquez's chart, Demetra says that Scorpio is about the need for deep involvements and intense transformations. So you don't have Jupiter in Scorpio without wanting to fight for something because Scorpio is ruled by Mars. So Scorpio is necessarily an investigative sign. Jupiter in Scorpio is someone who is going to fight for the truth, someone who's going to ferret out the truth and wants to see what lies beneath the enigma. And so there's just this interesting quality in terms of Francia Marquez's Jupiterian personality and the way that she orates things where she is doing all those things. She's fighting for this truth that an underserved population in her country knows is true, and they're just not seeing it out there. And it might take somebody with Jupiter and Scorpio to tell the truth of their particular stories. So this to me is a completely Jupiterian tale. And I love that you did bring up that Jupiter has its joy in the 11th and that, of course, that is sort of like part of the power of the 11th house as being a quote, “good house” as being a house that's supportive to one's efforts or to the efforts of the nation, however you're centering that chart.
[00:20:53.201] Kent Bye: Or the hopes and dreams or aspirations.
[00:20:56.121] Wonder Bright: Right. So she obviously excels at doing exactly that. And whatever has happened since she became vice president, and regardless of whether or not we got to see her orate within the film once she had achieved that position, the fact is she got there through her Jupiterian speech and she rallied an 11th house collective movement in her country to put her there.
[00:21:24.881] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so you were talking about a lot of those astrological significations, and so if you think about the film Igualada as a remedial measure, then who would you prescribe it to?
[00:21:36.368] Wonder Bright: I don't know that I could prescribe this specifically as a remedial measure per se, but I would definitely suggest this film for anyone who wanted to have an experience of a Jupiter presence as a politician, like, to have an experience of what kind of figure inhabits that space and inhabits it in a way that speaks to the dreams and hopes of a people.
[00:22:03.803] Kent Bye: Yeah, and when I think about this film and what I want to bear witness to, obviously the main character is Francia Marquez, but there's also a lot of other people that are surrounding her in her campaign that are having all these social media posts on TikTok go viral. She was really able to start a movement. So she was a catalyst for something that was a collective movement. And because we are focusing in on the power of the collective and movements and friendships and this overall 11th house theme, I just want to bear witness to how much the ideas and the concepts and this whole philosophy of "I am because we are”, “soy porque somos”, that was able to really galvanize an entire movement there within Colombia. And I think that was just really inspiring to see. I just want to bear witness to the power of people being at the right place at the right time and talking about some real desires and needs of all these disenfranchised people that because she was in this more Afro-Colombian background that she was able to give voice to a lot of these experiences that had up to that point not really been voiced. she was really bringing this diversity and feminist and racial justice perspectives to a political context that really hadn't had a lot of those discussions before.
[00:23:21.707] Wonder Bright: I think I would like to bear witness to Francia Marquez. Although this film really was just, like, a teaser or a taster of what this woman is capable of, it was a really potent taste. And I am really curious about her now. And I'm curious about her country because of her passion for the people there. Just a brief glance at her Wikipedia page will illustrate something that shows up in the film, but carried on after the film stopped filming, which is that she has been the subject of multiple assassination attempts. And she just keeps going, which Scorpio is, of all the signs, the one that I associate with survivors the most. It's that space where It's a fixed sign. It's a water sign. Mars rules it. It's like the warrior who doesn't need to be recognized in order to keep going. And she has escaped assassination multiple times. And you know when people are trying to kill you it's usually because you're doing something they don't like. And when people are trying to assassinate you, when they have enough power to provoke militia type assassination attempts, that costs money and it costs time. And these are not disorganized attempts. This is coming from people who are in power, who want her gone. And that to me says a lot about who she's stirring up and who it bothers. Also in the time that she's been in office, she's begun this dialogue with different African countries trying to establish links between the black population in Colombia and Africa where many of them must have ancestry. And that is a link that is just so incredibly compelling and evocative to me. The idea that you might want to establish a contemporary relationship with these countries and those identities. So she's fierce and she's determined and although I only know her through her speeches, they make me want to know more. And they make me want to know more about the people of her country and her country itself.
[00:25:53.792] Kent Bye: Yeah. Throughout the course of the film, she talks about these paramilitary groups and, you know, you get a sense that there is a sense of danger from these groups. And as we're reading through her Wikipedia page afterwards, then that could have very well been another reason why filming stopped is just not only the threats to the filmmakers, but also to Francia herself of having additional security that was required once she was this vice presidential candidate for one of the major parties that she's even more of a target.
[00:26:22.273] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I totally agree. And it's a missing for me that they don't include that information in the film. Whatever it is that had them not be able to continue, it feels like a part of the story. And the film illuminates a leader at the center of a movement trying to create a revolution in their country. And it doesn't contextualize it in a way that satisfies me fully, but it definitely left me wanting to know more.
[00:26:55.703] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. And this is one of the films that we watched as a screener. So we didn't have access to the Q and A to set up the context and to see afterwards, which I think after watching all the other films that sometimes we get other key bits of information that would help to contextualize aspects of the film that may have not been contained within the film. But if we're just looking at the film within its own right, then there's some missing pieces that I would have loved to hear a little bit more explanation as to, was it due to access? Was it due to money? Was it due to other things that were happening? It just was never really explained why. It just kind of seems like it prematurely stops following the story once it gets really super interesting.
[00:27:35.023] Wonder Bright: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which may be part of what has me be so curious. But I don't feel that that was entirely the intent of the filmmakers. So yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you. This is one of those ones where I really wish that we had a Q&A. And, at the same time, when the Q&As provide bits of information that I wish I'd had in a film, they inevitably becomes a critique that I have for the film. That I shouldn't have found that out in the Q&A.
[00:28:06.085] Kent Bye: It should have been Something that was a part of the film because it ends up being a really essential thing that frames my experience and opinion of it Yeah Yeah, well, that's all that we have for today I just wanted to thank you for listening to the story all the way down podcast and if you enjoyed the podcast and please do, spread the word tell your friends and consider signing up to the newsletter at storyallthewaydown.com. Thanks listening! Wonder Bright: Thank you.
