{"id":505,"date":"2018-08-02T18:01:31","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T18:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/?page_id=505"},"modified":"2018-08-02T18:23:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T18:23:15","slug":"news-reviews","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/?page_id=505","title":{"rendered":"News \/ Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Here\u2019s what they are saying about My Bolivia:<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><em><br>\n<\/em>\u201cMy Bolivia\u201d speaks to all who are interested in Latin America, its present, its past, or both. Like Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Rick Tejada-Flores relates a family story (in this case, his own) that opens out onto the history of Latin America itself. With consummate artistry, this prize-winning documentary film maker leads us from his childhood impressions about the ancestral country he did not know to his archivally-researched revelations about his family\u2019s role in major events of twentieth-century Bolivian and Latin American history. Because, as William Faulkner more than once observed, the past is never really past, \u201cMy Bolivia\u201d is an ideal primer for the uninitiated, an informative and revealing essay for the specialist, and a powerful and provocative meditation for all. Students especially will be quick to appreciate the telling of this epic tale through the eyes of someone who, like all of us at some point, want to know more about \u201cwho we are and we came from.\u201d<br>\n<strong>Rolena Adorno<br>\n<\/strong>Sterling Professor of Spanish, Yale University<br>\nWinner Modern Language Association Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>My Bolivia<\/em>, American-born Rick Tejada-Flores, \u00a0has made a powerful and uniquely personal and historical documentary about his Bolivian ancestors \u2013\u00a0from his grandfather, the country\u2019s former president in the 1930s, before and after \u2013 a rich multi-generational, bi-cultural journey about the land-locked, mineral rich country most know precious little about. A rewarding addition to the history and culture of our hemisphere.<br>\n<strong>Ann Louise Bardach<\/strong><br>\nPEN Award winning journalist, author of <em>Without Fidel<\/em> and <em>Cuba Confidential<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My Bolivia is a moving, beautifully filmed and well-researched story of personal redemption. It is a film that conveys a deep respect for the magic of the place and its people while exploring the complex issues of how we can take responsibility for the negative actions of our forebearers without having them define our futures.<br>\n<strong>Linda Farthing<\/strong><br>\nauthor of <em>Evo\u2019s Bolivia: Continuity and Change<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My Bolivia\u2019s take on the story of one family is fascinating as it reveals the complex layers of political history, migration, and the ongoing forces that shape the region. I found the segment that touches on Afro-Bolivian descendants highly relevant to the ongoing exploration of racial identities in Latin America, and appropriate as a teaching tool as it ties together the complicated issues of memory, history, activism and politics.<br>\n<strong>Cristina Venegas<\/strong><br>\nAssociate Professor of Film and Media Studies<br>\nUC Santa Barbara<\/p>\n<p>A filmmaker and historian, Rick Tejada-Flores has made a nice career out of telling other people\u2019s stories: Cesar Chavez (<em>The Fight in the Fields<\/em>), Diego Rivera (<em>Rivera in America<\/em>) and Jos\u00e9 Clemente Orozco (<em>Orozco: Man of Fire<\/em>), among others. Like the vast majority of documentary filmmakers, the veteran East Bay producer-director and all-around mensch was deeply allergic to stepping in front of the camera and making himself the subject. Ultimately, he realized he had no choice in order to recount his family\u2019s saga in Bolivia.<\/p>\n<p>The patiently probing and highly rewarding <em>My Bolivia, Remembering What I Never Knew<\/em> traces the strands of the Tejada clan from La Paz to Los Angeles (where the filmmaker was born) back to La Paz and on to the isolated rural countryside. Tejada-Flores\u2019 personal journey expands into a mini-history of Bolivia in the 20th century, an edifying and gratifying development for viewers (like this correspondent) whose entire knowledge of the landlocked South American country was gleaned from <em>Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Tejada-Flores informs us at the beginning of <em>My Bolivia<\/em> of his ancestors\u2019 prominence: He knew as a small boy that his grandfather had been president (Jos\u00e9 Luis Tejada Sorzano, from 1934 to 1936). But he was intentionally kept in the dark for decades about the ways in which the Tejadas gained\u2014and lost\u2014their wealth and influence. It\u2019s a shocking legacy, and how Tejada-Flores decides to handle it gives the one-hour doc its transcendently bittersweet ending.<br>\n<strong>Michael Fox<br>\n<\/strong>KQED Arts<\/p>\n<p>California-born filmmaker Rick Tejada-Flores unravels the myths and realities of his family history in Bolivia, the country where his father was born and his grandfather was President during the bloodiest war in Latin American history. This fascinating journey, rich in archival footage, family photos and his journalist mother\u2019s letters, sets the stage for mysteries to be solved after the shocking discovery of many skeletons in the family closet.\u00a0As landowners, his family was among the political elite, but during Marxist revolutionary times a land reform was enacted by a previously unknown relative that stripped the family of its estates. An award-winning producer and director, Tejada-Flores has made a career of preserving the stories of Latino icons including labor organizer Cesar Chavez (<em>The Fight in the Fields<\/em>, 1997) and artist Jose Clemente Orozco (<em>Orozco: Man of Fire<\/em>, MVFF 2006). With <em>My Bolivia<\/em>, he now turns his camera on himself.<br>\n<strong>Cinelandiausa.com<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Following are a few of the comments from the United Methodist Bolivia Missionary Reunion on July 21, 2017 in Little Rock, AK.\u00a0\u00a0 Full disclosure \u2014 one of my brothers was born in a Methodist Hospital in Bolivia.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>A multi-generational systemic burden was lifted by the combination of truth and reconciliation through an act of restitution. We are more free when others are also free.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>We don\u2019t always see the perpetrators at the top; we came in and worked with the people on the bottom. It was very interesting to see how the patrones felt.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>I didn\u2019t know anything about Afro-Bolivians and their history. I didn\u2019t realize there was such a caste system.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>I particularly appreciate that your position of non-violence comes through clearly, and that you do not sugarcoat war, but portray it realistically for what it is.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Interview on <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/larazachronicles\/10-3-2017-my-bolivia-beyond-la-bamba-y-mas\">Chronicles of La Raza<\/a>,<\/strong> starts at 19:50<\/p>\n<p><strong>For those who speak Spanish<\/strong>, Spanish interview with Samuel Orozco on Radio Bilingue\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/radiobilingue.org\/en\/noticias\/arte-y-cultura\/mi-bolivia-ademas-acerca-de-tolerancia-y-diversidad\/\">Linea Abierta<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s what they are saying about My Bolivia: \u201cMy Bolivia\u201d speaks to all who are interested in Latin America, its present, its past, or both. Like Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Rick Tejada-Flores relates a family &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/?page_id=505\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-505","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":553,"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/505\/revisions\/553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mybolivia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}