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LOCVS AMŒNVS 2, 1996 229-242

Contested Territory: The Politics ofGeography in Luis Buñuel’sLas Hurdes: Tierra sin pan

Jordana MendelsonUniversitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Departament d’Art 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona). Spain

Abstract

Las Hurdes (1933), Luis Buñuel’s third film and only documentary, has been the subject of criticalattention throughout the past decade. Nevertheless, its early reception during the Thirties and itsrelationship to the political events of the Second Republic have been scarcely mentioned. Thisarticle seeks not only to historically contextualize the film, but also to examine the multiplereferences within the film to the conventions of documentary, the emerging disciplines ofgeography and ethnography, and the influence of the film’s cameraman Eli Lotar and dissidentsurrealism. The article demonstrates that the film engages an aesthetic of collage and juxtapositionto provoke a different understanding of documentary, ethnography and the Spanish landscape.

Resumen

La politización de la geografía en el film de Luis BuñuelLas Hurdes: Tierra sin panLas Hurdes (1933), la tercera película y único documental de Luis Buñuel, ha sido objeto de unaamplia crítica a lo largo de los últimos años. Sin embargo, la primera época de su recepción y larelación de la película con los acontecimientos políticos de la Segunda República apenas han sidomencionadas. Este artículo pretende no solamente contextualizar la película históricamente, sinotambién examinar las múltiples referencias a las características típicas de los documentales, a lasdisciplinas emergentes de geografía y etnografía y a la influencia del cámara Eli Lotar y delsurrealismo disidente presentes en la película. El artículo demuestra que la película utiliza unaestética de collage y yuxtaposición para dar una visión distinta de los documentales, de la etnografíay del paisaje español.

230 LOCVS AMŒNVS 2, 1996 Jordana Mendelson

During the Spring of 19331, Luis Buñuelalong with Eli Lotar, Pierre Unik, andRafael Sánchez Ventura filmed Las

Hurdes: Tierra sin pan. Produced during the SecondRepublic and in the midst of debates regarding agrar-ian reform and the social commitment of art, theapproximately thirty minute documentary is avisual archive of Las Hurdes as a site of politicaland aesthetic contest. During the mid-Thirties thefilm was described as an objective documentary andreviewed in journals with Communist sympathies2.For the most part, it was praised as a portrayal of apoverty stricken region of Spain, similar in styleand purpose to that of social realist art. The inclu-sion of references to theories of geography and todocumentary conventions of the period solidifiedsuch an interpretation. Despite the consensus im-plied by these reviews regarding its social and po-litical importance, the film was censored in 1934.Indeed, Las Hurdes, may be read from anotherangle as a documentary that is composed of a po-lyphony of contradictory and disturbing referencesthat has more to do with the techniques of juxta-position and collage practiced by such dissidentsurrealists as Georges Bataille and Buñuel’s cam-eraman Eli Lotar than with social realism3. By read-ing the film through the texts of Bataille and thejournal in which he and Lotar published theirwork, Documents (Paris, 1929-1930), another in-terpretation of ethnography, realism and the sig-nificance of the soil in Las Hurdes becomes apparent.This paper seeks to explore the film’s oscillationbetween social realism and dissident surrealism andthe conflicting visual and textual references presentin the film which explain its relation to both ofthese tendencies.

*A version of this paper was pre-sented as «Las Hurdes: Tierra sinPan by Luis Buñuel: The Stitchesand Seams of the Political» in1994 during the III Seminario deHistoria de Arte, «El Surrealismoen España», sponsored by theFundación Duques de Soria. TheSeminar was co-directed byJonathan Brown, Estrella de Diego,and Robert Lubar. For their sup-port of the project and valuablecomments, the author thanks thedirectors and participants of theseminar, especially Félix Fanès,Juan José Lahuerta, Juan ÁngelLópez Manzanares, and SoledadPérez Valverde. The author alsothanks Miriam Basilio and RomyGolan.

1. Although for many years thefilm was considered to be shotduring the Spring of 1932, duelargely to Buñuel’s own testi-mony and to the date given in theintroduction of the film, it hasnow been dated to 1933. See:«L’Âge d’or. CorrespondanceLuis Buñuel-Charles de Noailles.Lettres et documents (1929-1976)», Les Cahiers du MuséeNational d’Art Moderne (Hors-Série/ Archives), 1993, letter 138.Cited in: SÁNCHEZ VIDAL, A., ElMundo de Luis Buñuel, Caja deAhorros de la Inmaculada,Zaragoza, 1993; and DAVID, Y.,¿Buñuel! Auge des Jahrhunderts,Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle derBundes republik Deutschland,1994.

2. This paper only deals with thereception of the film in the Thir-ties. For a more complete treat-ment of the film’s historiographyfrom its time of production to thepresent, see: IBARZ IBARZ, M.,«Estratègies del documental. Elcas de Las Hurdes, Tierra sin pan,L’obra i els seus crítics (1935-1995)». Treball de recerca dins deldoctorat Gèneres i estratègies dela comunicaciò àudio-visual,1993-1993. Directed by Dr. JosepM. Baget Herms. Estudis de

Ni la paraula document ni el que ella expressasón coses noves, és clar; però mai com ara non’haureu sentit parlar tant, en tots els ordres.

«Documentals», Mirador, 9 April 1931

Even before any critical reception of the filmappeared in the press, images of Las Hurdes werepublished in some of Spain’s most politically vocaljournals. Octubre: Escritores y artistas revolucio-narios (Madrid, 1933-1934) was the first journal toreproduce still photographs of the film. Publishedby Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León, who hadaccompanied Buñuel and the crew on an earlierpreparatory trip to Las Hurdes4, the journal washeavily influenced by both writers’ belief in thegoals of Communism and social realism. In fact,Alberti and León began the journal directly fol-lowing their return from a trip to the Soviet Unionand Germany and it was clearly marked by theirexperiences in both of these countries5. The arti-cles ranged from reports on daily life in the SovietUnion and Madrid to reviews of art exhibitions,popular manifestations, and literature. The maga-zine attempted to reach a largely working classaudience through its choice of subjects and the useof constructivist photomontages and abundant il-lustrations6. The affinity between the editors’ andBuñuel’s project was manifested by the decisionto publish photographs from the film on the frontand back cover of the journal’s first number ofJune-July 19337 (figure 1). In order to have beenincluded in this number, Alberti must have ob-tained the photographs immediately after the filmwas shot.

The photographs of Las Hurdes are presentedas anonymous documents: there is no label indi-cating author or title. Instead, these images are in-corporated into the journal’s collection of visual

231LOCVS AMŒNVS 2, 1996Contested Territory: The Politics of Geography in Luis Buñuel’s Las Hurdes: Tierra sin pan

facts. Photographs, drawings, caricatures, and pressclippings are removed from their original contextand presented to the viewer as ready-made politi-cal indictments. The titles to some of the articlesreinforce the evidential quality that the images wereto carry: «Documentos: Los desastres de la guerra»,«Documentos, secretos del espionaje internacional»and «Viejos documentos de la Revolución deOctubre»8. The commentary alongside the photo-graphs of Las Hurdes situates them within thissame aesthetic of social protest. The text accom-panying the photograph of a woman and child onthe front cover subsumes the specifics of LasHurdes within contemporary debates on agrarianlabor reform and land ownership. On the backcover, the caption alongside the photograph of theHurdano school children is even more combative,this time anchoring the image to the particular con-ditions of the region: «Los niños de Extremaduravan descalzos. ¡Quién les robó los zapatos! Leshiere el calor y el frío. ¡Quién les quitó losvestidos!». Functioning as punctuated statements,released from the context of their production andthe politics of individual authorship, the photo-graphs, like the anonymous texts, are meant to in-cite the reader to action.

While in Octubre the photographs from LasHurdes were set apart on the front and back cover,working as mastheads for the journal’s political andaesthetic objectives, in 1935 Nueva Cultura (Va-lencia, 1935-1937) integrated photographs of thefilm with other documentary material in one ofJosep Renau’s photomontage series, «Testigos negrosde nuestros tiempos»9. Renau, who was also the jour-nal’s director, included a shot from Las Hurdesamidst two rows of photographs, all seemingly takenfrom the press. In his satirical caption to accom-pany the photograph, Renau located Las Hurdes

Comunicació Àudio-Visual.Departament de Periodisme iComunicació Àudio Visual.Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Bar-celona, novembre de 1995.

3. Many more images which di-rectly recall Lotar’s photographicwork may have been lost duringthe editing process. As Buñuelreports in an interview: «Montéla película sin moviola, sobre unamesa de cocina, con una lupa, ycomo yo aún entendía muy pocode cine, eliminé muy buenasimágenes de Lotar porque losfotogramas se hacían flou. Yo nosabía que el movimiento podía encierto modo reconstruir la ima-gen. Así, por no tener moviola,desperdicié buenas tomas». PÉREZ

TURRENT, T. and COLINA, J. DE LA,Buñuel por Buñuel, PLOTEdiciones, Madrid, 1993, p. 36.

4. «[...] Yo [Rafael Alberti] fui conLuis, Pierre Unik, y Eli Lotar enun viaje que hicieron a LasHurdes, cuando Luis estabaplaneando la película no en elmomento de la filmación. Meacuerdo que fui con GustavoDuran». AUB, M., Conversa-ciones con Buñuel, Aguilar, Ma-

drid, 1985, p. 289. Another sourceincludes Georges Sadoul amongthose who visited Las Hurdeswith the crew. See: «L’Âge d’or.Correspondance Luis Buñuel-Charles de Noailles. Lettres etdocuments (1929-1976)», LesCahiers du Musée National d’ArtModerne (Hors-Série/Archives),1993, p. 160.

5. For more on Alberti and León,see: SANTOJA, G., «Alberti y laspublicaciones periódicas "com-prometidas" durante los añostreinta»,Cuadernos Hispano-americanos, 514-515, April-May1993, p. 352-360; and AZNAR SO-

LER, M., «María Teresa León y elteatro español durante la guerracivil», Anthropos, 148, September1993, p. 25-33.

6. DIEGO, E. DE and BRIHUEGA,J., «Art and Politics in Spain,1928-1936», Art Journal, 52, no.1, Spring 1993, p. 57.

7. For more on Alberti’s relation-ship with Buñuel and Aragon,see: ALBERTI, R., La Arboledaperdida (segunda parte): Memo-rias, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1987,p. 19.

Figure 1.Octubre, number 1, June-July1933, front cover.

8. «Documentos: Los desastres dela guerra», Octubre, number 2,July-August 1933, p. 10; «Docu-mentos. Secretos del espionajeinternacional», Octubre, number2, July-August 1933, p. 13; and«Viejos documentos de laRevolución de Octubre», Octubre,numbers 4 & 5, October-Novem-ber 1933, p. 8.

9. RENAU, J., «Testigos negros denuestros tiempos (paréntesis a laviolencia)», Nueva Cultura,numbers 7-8, October-Novem-ber 1935, p. 14-15.


as the end result of the «gloriosa tradición de lacultura católica en España». As with the use of theword «documents» in Octubre, «testimony» inNueva Cultura framed the images as facts. Onceagain, no indication is given as to the source of theimage nor to its author and the text is as punctua-ted and accusatory as Octubre’s. Published in closeassociation with the Unión de Escritores y ArtistasRevolucionarios, the journal was politically com-bative with strong Communist sympathies andknown for its polemical stance concerning the stateof art and politics in republican Spain10.

Like the use of images from the film in Octubreand Nueva Cultura, the reviews reinforced its sta-tus as an objective documentary in the service ofsocial realism. In contrast to removing still imagesfrom the film’s context and publishing them as dis-turbing and anonymous documents, however, thefilm’s critics refused to acknowledge Buñuel’s in-clusion of heterogeneous and oftentimes conflic-ting materials as an intentional aesthetic and po-litical strategy. In other words, when the film isattributed to Buñuel and positioned within thecontext of political activism, the writers refuse toacknowledge the film’s discordant structure. Forthe film to be read as realist it must maintain acertain structural cohesiveness, avoid ideologicalambiguities, and suppress the disruptive potentialof the document.

In February 1935, Juan Piqueras’s politicizedfilm journal Nuestro Cinema (Paris, 1932-1935)published a review of the film and an interview withBuñuel11 (figure 2). Published during the maga-zine’s last year, both texts asserted the relevance ofthe film to the political and artistic aims of themagazine and to Piqueras’s original demand of 1932for «un cinema que enfoque ampliamente en eltema social, el tema documental sin falsearlo»12.Like Octubre and Nueva Cultura, the editor andwriters of Nuestro Cinema were heavily influencedby Soviet film and believed in the social utility ofdocumentary films as a means to educate the massesand bring about political change. Throughout 1932the magazine featured a series of surveys which so-licited opinions on the role of cinema in society. Inthe colophon to the series, Piqueras reconfirmedthe political potential of documentary, declaring:«Inmediatamente, yo haría un cinema documentalcon la seguridad de que sería, al mismo tiempo, uncine revolucionario»13. In reviewing the film, CésarArconada promoted Las Hurdes as a brutal reporton the misery and injustice of the region, so dis-tinct from Buñuel’s two earlier and clearly surrea-list works –Un Chien andalou (1928) and L’Âged’Or (1930)– as to instigate a new Spanish cinema.The attraction of documentary, and Las Hurdes inparticular, was its apparent ability to reveal themost disturbing aspects of society with the utmostclarity and without manipulation to show «aquello

que jamás iríamos a ver por mil causas: porque esfeo, porque es triste, porque es vulgar, porque esamargamente pobre»14. Arconada squarely posi-tioned the film in the camp of socialist realism,enthusiastically exclaiming toward the end of hisreview: «No todos los sumergidos en aquel subsuelocenagoso del surrealismo [...] se han salvado. Buñuel,sí. Aragón, sí»15.

A year later, Manuel Villegas-López reviewedthe film in the Barcelona weekly Mirador16. LikeArconada, Villegas-López emphasized the pre-dominance of the camera and the efficiency of theimages to communicate the hunger and desolationof the region. The review was written on the occa-sion of the film’s exhibition in Madrid during thethird session of the Cinestudio Imagen, despite itsofficial censorship. Deriding the government’s banof the film –«oficialment, Tierra sin pan és "unapel·lícula vergonyosa". Vergonyós què, la pel·lículao las Hurdes?»– Villegas-López affirmed, «No s’hade trencar el mirall, ni prohibir el microscopi. Calprotegir oficialment aquesta pel·lícula»17. Thoughhe continued to praise the film for its objective re-alism and maintained Arconada’s comparison bet-ween Buñuel and Aragon, Villegas-López recog-nized the retention of some surrealist, Freudianinspired, motifs. In addition, he applauded the po-litical potential of Buñuel’s use of close-up and jux-taposition, a step toward recognizing the film’s struc-tural discordance as part of its ideological position.

That Las Hurdes should be promoted by wri-ters with strong leftist sympathies is not surpris-ing given the political affiliations of the film crewand of the writers and artists who supported itsplanning and production. Though Buñuel never ac-cepted the tenets of socialist realism nor became amember of the Communist Party, and the moneyto produce the film came from Ramón Acín,Buñuel’s long-time friend and anarchist, many ofthose involved with the documentary were, if notmembers, active supporters of the CommunistParty. Pierre Unik joined the Communist partyalong with André Breton, Louis Aragon, BenjaminPéret, and Paul Eluard in 1927. During the Thir-ties his involvement with Communism and surrea-lism expanded as he wrote several important tracts,including the anti-colonial treatise, «La France descinq parties du monde»18. Buñuel recounts that af-ter 1932, Unik, along with Aragon and a few oth-ers, left Breton’s circle as a result of the 1930Kharkov Congress for Intellectuals for the Revo-lution, at which time Aragon had acknowledgedthe primacy of socialist realism over surrealism.Buñuel also modified his affiliations after 1932,sympathizing with Aragon’s position and scalingback his relationship with the surrea-lists. Lotar,who worked with Joris Ivens, founder of the so-cialist film collective Amsterdam Filmliga, also hadstrong leftist sympathies19.

10. The Unión de Escritores yArtistas Revolucionarios wasfounded in Valencia in 1934 andwas afiliated with the AEAR inParis. For more on Nueva Cultura,see: MOLINA, C.A., Medio siglode Prensa literaria española (1900-1950), Ediciones Endymion, Ma-drid, 1990, p. 227-232.

11. For more on Piqueras, see:LLOPIS, J.M., Juan Piqueras: El«Delluc» Español, FilmotecaValenciana, Valencia, 1988.

12. PIQUERAS, J., «Itinerario deNuestro Cinema», Nuestro Ci-nema, 1, number 1, June 1932, p.2. My emphasis.

13. PIQUERAS, J., «Colofón a laprimera encuesta de Nuestro Ci-nema», Nuestro Cinema, 1, num-ber 7, December 1932, p. 203.

14. Ibidem.

15. Ibidem.

16. Villegas-López was an activepromoter of the social responsi-bility of cinema, publishingEspectador de Sombras in 1935and Arte de Masas in 1936. In thesecond book, he proclaimed LasHurdes «uno de los mejoresdocumentales del mundo», des-pite its official censorship.VILLEGAS-LÓPEZ, M., Arte deMasas: Ruta de los temas fílmicos,Biblioteca del Grupo de Escri-tores Cinematográficos Indepen-dientes, Madrid, 1936, p. 110. In1937, as head of the ServiciosCinematográficos de la Sub-secretaria de Propaganda, hemade the film Madrid, one of se-veral documentaries shown in the1937 Spanish Pavilion in Paris.GUBERN, R., «Exhibiciones Cin-ematográficas en el PabellónEspañol», Pabellón Español.Exposición Internacional de París1937, Ministerio de Cultura,Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Ma-drid, 1987, p. 180.

17. VILLEGAS-LÓPEZ, M., «ElCamí de les Hurdes», Mirador,number 380, 28 May 1936, p. 4.

18. In addition to writing «LaFrance des cinq parties dumonde», Le surréalisme au ser-vice de la révolution, 3, Decem-ber 1931, p. 28 and «Un Panierde crabes», Le surréalisme auservice de la révolution, 4, De-cember 1931, p. 29-30, Unik alsosigned several important tractssuch as Au Grand jour (1927) andAutour d’un poème (1932). Formore on Unik, see: UNIK, P., Leshéros du vide: Roman inachevé,Les Editeurs Français Réunis,Paris, 1972.

19. Jaime Brihuega lists Ivens ashaving accompanied the film


By using such conventions of documentary filmand geography as maps and labels, Buñuel locatedpolitical contest within the very structure of thefilm. In trying to analyze the significance of theseconventions, it becomes clear that Las Hurdes wasan historically and politically charged region whichcame to represent the larger problems of the Se-cond Republic. Buñuel’s stated inspiration for thefilm, Maurice Legendre’s 1927 Las Jurdes: Étudede géographie humaine, is an exhaustive studywhich documents the customs, living conditionsand beliefs of the Hurdanos20. Legendre’s study waswritten according to the principles of human ge-ography, a term which he included in the subtitleof his book and which Buñuel repeated in the in-troduction to the film. In addition to citingLegendre’s title, many of the shots in Las Hurdesmirror the photographs published at the end ofLegendre’s book, especially in the viewpoint andframing of the region’s landscape, the churches inLas Batuecas, the streets of La Alberca, and thecostume of the inhabitants (figure 3).

One of the most important texts to define hu-man geography was Jean Brunhes’s book of thesame name, La géographie humaine, which wasread widely during this period and provides theclearest description of the term. Defining humangeography, Brunhes stressed the importance of«activity and relationship» as the «two principleswhich today must dominate geography»21. He usedsite specific examples to plot the relationship be-tween landscape and economics, psychology andpolitics, or in Brunhes’s own words, the relation-ship between «the phenomena of physical geogra-phy and the facts of material human geography»22.The principal means by which Brunhes docu-mented these phenomena was through mappingand labeling. As he wrote in a section of the bookentitled «The geographic spirit»:

Geographers must always endeavor to esta-blish the exact locality where the phenomenonstudied is produced. The question of place isall-important, and should find expression inmaps or diagrams upon which would be repre-sented two classes of facts: the points or zoneswhere the facts appear under maximum or op-timum conditions, and, on the other hand, thelimit that marks the extreme range of the phe-nomenon23.

Brunhes’s maps establish the limits of a phe-nomenon. They contain these phenomena in or-der to study and classify them. Following the me-thodology of human geography, Legendre’s textmakes clear that even before Buñuel began hisproject and despite the particular conflicts enactedin Las Hurdes during the Second Republic, theregion was already seen as a place in which the

Figure 2.Nuestro Cinema, number 2, second era, February 1935, p. 8 & 9. Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.

Figure 3.Maurice Legendre, Las Jurdes: Êtude de géographie humaine, Feret & Fils Êditeurs, Bourdeaux, 1927, fig. 1.

crew to Las Hurdes, but offers nodocumentation. BRIHUEGA, J., Lavanguardia y la República ,Ediciones Cátedra, Madrid, 1982,p. 21. For more on Lotar, his pho-tographic and cinematographicwork, and his time in Spain, see:LIONEL-MARIE, A., «Essay bio-graphique: "Le cœr meurtri parde mortes chimères"», Eli Lotar,Musée National d’Art Moderne,Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris, 1993, p. 9-34.

20. LEGENDRE, M., Las Jurdes:Étude de géographie humaine,Feret & Fils, Editeurs, Bordeauxand Paris, 1927. Legendre wasdirector of the French Institute inMadrid for many years and pu-blished many books on Spain in-

cluding, Portrait de l’Espagne,Êditions de la Revue des jeunes,Paris, 1923, and a book of pho-tographs which contained apopularized version of his ideason Spain, En España: Cientocincuenta y ocho fotografías,Gustavo Gili, Barcelona and Bue-nos Aires, 1936.

21. BRUNHES, J., Human Geo-graphy: An attempt at a positiveclassification, principles and ex-amples, trans. T.C. Le Compte,Rand McNally & Company,Chicago and New York, 1920, p.27.

22. Ibidem, p. 608.

23. Ibidem, p. 570. My emphasis.


problems and characteristics of all of Spain werecrystallized. As Legendre wrote in the introduc-tion to his study:

Il nous est apparu bientôt, au cours de notreétude, que les singularités du pays de las Jurdesétaient le plus souvent des singularités trèsespagnoles. Ce n’est pas que ce pays soit unraccourci fidèle de l’Espagne, mais il en est unraccourci qu’on peut appeler caricatural [...]Etudier cet étrange pays c’est donc étudierl’Espagne elle-même24.

Following Brunhes’ formula in which a gene-ral phenomena is studied by showing a specificmanifestation of that fact within a clearly definedarea, Las Hurdes begins with a sequence of dis-solving maps25. The first map provides the viewerwith a series of equivalencies: Las Hurdes is notsingular in its existence, but is representative of agroup of communities throughout Europe wherepoverty and isolation determine its inhabitant’s life-styles and physiognomy. The second map showsthe principal cities of Spain, from Barcelona to Sala-manca, while the third map focuses only on LasHurdes and the surrounding cities of Salamanca,Alberca, and Caceres (figure 4). Its status as a limi-nal, but politically charged, space is emphasizedby its position between the last frontier of Repu-blican Spain –Salamanca– and Portugal, which wasalready under the dictatorship of Salazar26.

One of the most vitriolic political statementsregarding the region was made by Doctor JoséMaría Albiñana Sanz, the leader of the small andshort-lived radical Partido Nacionalista Español27.Published the same year that Buñuel was shootingLas Hurdes, Albiñana’s Confinado en las Hurdes:Una Víctima de la Inquisición republicana descri-bes his forced exile to the region in 1932 by theSecond Republic for his political activities28. Histext is a convoluted diatribe against the govern-ment and its failed attempts at reforms in agricul-ture, education and transportation. Included inAlbiñana’s book are a series of photographs show-ing the nationalist leader with inhabitants of LasHurdes in different settings. In one of these,Albiñana poses with the Mayor of Martilandrán,one of the villages also highlighted in Las Hurdes,not, however, for its role in Albiñana’s exile butbecause it had the highest rate of sickness andgoiter. Albiñana also included caricatures of him-self with the Hurdanos which had been publishedin the nationalist press. One of these cartoons sati-rizes the Hurdano’s physiognomy and labels theclearly debased figures as «socialist-radicals» (figu-re 5). While Albiñana sets up Las Hurdes as a mini-theater for the contest between socialists and na-tionalists, Buñuel’s treatment of the problems andpolitical stakes of the region seems to be located

24. LEGENDRE, M., Las Jurdes:Étude de géographie humaine,Feret & Fils, Editeurs, Bordeauxand Paris, 1927, p. x.

25. The inclusion of maps in LasHurdes is not surprising giventhat Lotar worked with JorisIvens, who used maps extensivelyin his films Zuiderzee (1932) andSpanish Earth (1937). Maps werea prominent feature in documen-taries and newsreels during theperiod, especially during the Spa-nish Civil War and World War II.

26. For a description of the rela-tionship of the Spanish Falangeto Salazar and Portugal, see PAYNE,S.G., Falange: A History of Span-ish Fascism, Stanford UniversityPress, Stanford, 1961, p. 14.

Figure 4.Luis Buñuel, Las Hurdes: Tierra sin pan, 1933. Filmoteca Española, Madrid.

Figure 5.«Albiñana en Las Hurdes», José María Albiñana Sanz, Confinado en las Hurdes: Una Víctima de laInquisición republicana, «El Financiero», Madrid, 1933, s.p. Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.

27. Ibidem, p. 10-12.

28. ALBIÑANA SANZ, J.M., Confi-nado en las Hurdes: Una Víctimade la Inquisición republicana, «ElFinanciero», Madrid, 1933.Albiñana Sanz wrote a number ofother similar books which, in ad-dition to their impressionisticdiatribes, also included photo-graphs, such as: Bajo el cielomejicano (Sensaciones y comen-tos), Compañía Ibero-Americanade Publicaciones, Madrid, 1930;and España bajo la dictadurarepublicana (Crónica de un periódoputrefacto), Imp. El Financiero,Madrid, 1933.

29. HARRISON, J., The SpanishEconomy in the Twentieth Cen-tury, Croom Helm, London &Sidney, 1985, p. 87.

30. For more on agricultural re-form during the Second Repu-blic and, in particular, for a dis-cussion of the heightened debateson the subject from 1932 to 1933,see: RODRÍGUEZ LABANDEIRA, J.,El Trabajo rural en España (1876-1936), Anthropos, Barcelona,1991, p. 325-371.

31. For more documentation onthis trip, see: Viaje a Las Hurdes:El manuscrito inédito de GregorioMarañon y las fotografías de lavisita de Alfonso XIII, EdicionesEl País and Aguilar, Madrid,1993.


within the general sphere of protest rather than tiedto the political tenets of one group.

Only oblique references are made to some ofthe laws passed by the Second Republic relating toagriculture and labor, such as the ley de terminosmunicipales and the ley de laboreo forzoso29. Thefirst of these laws sought to delineate the nearly9,000 municipalities in Spain with borders to deter-mine the limits within which a farmer could acquirelaborers. Instead of ameliorating the desperatesituation of rural Spain, these laws harmed seasonallabor and made survival in communities like LasHurdes even more difficult than it had been be-fore30. In the film there are a few explicit referencesto the terminos municipales and other laws. Thefirst reference is in relation to the «Pilu» trade. Inexchange for raising Pilu children, a Hurdano fam-ily received a sum of fifty pesetas, enough, the nar-rator tells us, to feed a whole family. However, withthe Second Republic this trade was banned and thecommunity was left with one less economic re-source which only aggravated the only horrendousconditions. The second reference to the laws oc-curs when the camera pans the movement of agroup of Hurdano men as they leave the valley tolook for work in Castile and Extremadura. A fewmoments later, the film shows the group returningto the community without work or food, the re-sult of the scarcity of employment and the restric-tions against migrant labor. These commentarieson the economic conditions of the region compli-cate the partisanship of Las Hurdes as they aremostly implied judgments of the government’spolicies and not direct criticisms, while on the otherhand the film makes no mention of Albiñana’s na-tionalist presence.

Perhaps because of the film’s ambiguity withregard to the Second Republic’s policies, it wasswiftly censored and perceived to be in conflictwith the programs of the Republic, and more spe-cifically with those of the Ministerio de InstrucciónPública. After the film was censored, Buñuel re-counts visiting Dr. Gregorio Marañon, who hadaccompanied Alfonso XIII to Las Hurdes in 1922and was now the President of the Patronato de LasHurdes31, to try to have the film released:

Fui a ver al doctor Marañon, que era presidentedel Patronato de Las Hurdes, y le pedí que vierala película para que se permitiera su exhibición[...] Al terminar, Marañon me dejó helado. Medijo: «Ha ido usted a La Alberca y todo lo quese le ocurre hacer es recoger una fiesta horribley cruel en la que arrancan cabezas a gallos vi-vos. La Alberca tiene los bailes más hermososdel mundo y sus charros se visten con trajesmagníficos del siglo XVII32.

Marañon’s insistence on showing the lighterside of rural existence, its typical dances and fol-klore, was a viewpoint in part shared by theMinisterio de Instrucción Pública since 1931, whenit officially created the Patronato de MisionesPedagógicas. The Mission’s stated purpose was tobring culture –literature, theater, and cinema– tothe rural populations of Spain, in a way that wouldbe educational, but more importantly, entertaining,and in no way lead the populations of these areasto devalue their present conditions33. Manuel B.Cossío, President of the Patronato, described inthe Decree how he would explain the Mission’spurpose to the communities: «Porque el Gobiernode la República que nos envia nos ha dicho quevengamos ante todo a las aldeas, a las más pobres,a las más escondidas, a las más abandonadas, y quevengamos a enseñaros algo [...] pero que vengamostambién, y lo primero, a divertiros casi tanto comoos alegran y divierten los cómicos y los titiriteros»34.Among the mediums most favored by thePatronato was cinema, which was used to enter-tain and teach the communities as well as to docu-ment the Mission’s activities. If the Mission’s pur-pose was to bring advanced culture of the cities tothe country, in 1934 the Museo del Pueblo Españolwas created to record, collect, and officially pro-tect the artifacts of rural Spain with the same pro-gressive techniques –photography, cinema, andscience– used by the Missions35. At the time ofGregorio Marañon’s meeting with Buñuel, inwhich he praised the traditional songs and cos-tumes of Las Hurdes and vigorously censored thefilm’s depiction of the region, he had recently beenappointed President of the Executive Committeeand of the Patronato of the Museum36.

What kind of images might have satisfiedMarañon’s definition of popular culture, while atthe same time promoting the activities of the Mis-sions and serving as documentary material for thearchives of both the Missions and the Museum?The principal cinematographer and photographerof the Misiones Pedagógicas and the Museo delPueblo Español was José Val del Omar. From 1933-1934, the period when Buñuel was shooting andediting Las Hurdes, Val del Omar produced ap-proximately 50 documentaries for both institu-tions37. His photographs were published in theInformes of the Patronato de Misiones Pedagógicasand Residencia: Revista de la Residencia deEstudiantes (Madrid, 1928-1934), which featuredan article on the Missions in February 1933 andsubsequently included photographs from the Mis-sion’s archive in the magazine’s section «Por Tierrasde España»38. Val del Omar’s photographs employa high modernist aesthetic to capture the emotionalreaction of the rural spectator, totally entrancedby the modern wonders of cinema, the theatrics ofthe Missionaries, and the treasures of the mobile

32. PÉREZ TURRENT, T. and COLINA,J. DE LA, Buñuel por Buñuel, PLOT,Madrid, 1993, p. 35.

33. MUÑIZ GUTIÉRREZ, M. del C.,Cultura y educación en la Prensadiaria de Madrid en el PrimerBienio de la Segunda República,Ed. de la U. Comp. de Madrid,Madrid, 1993, p. 298-311. Alsosee the publications of the Patro-nato de Misiones Pedagógicas, infacsimile, Misiones Pedagógicas.Septiembre de 1931-Diciembre de1933. Informes I, Ediciones ElMuseo Universal, Madrid, 1992;and Memoria de la MisiónPedagógico-social en Sanabria(Zamora). Resumen de Trabajosrealizados en el año 1934, Madrid,1935.

34. Cited in «El cinematógrafoeducativo en las Misiones Peda-gógicas de España», Popular Film,número extraordinario, 28 Octo-ber de 1933, s.p.

35. «El Museo recibirá con espe-cialísimo interés las fotografías,grabados, dibujos, láminas,acuarelas y cuantos modos grá-ficos de reproducción represententipos, vistas de lugares y edificiostípicos, de fiestas, usos y costum-bres regionales y locales». «Labordel Museo: Circular general ycuestionario para la recogida deobjetos», Anales del Museo delPueblo Español, 1, Cuadernos 1-2, 1935, p. 35.

36. Originally Manuel B. Cossíowas to be President of the Execu-tive Committee but he declineddue to his poor health andMarañon was chosen as his re-placement. «Reglamento para laaplicación del Decreto de 26 deJulio de 1934 creando el Museodel Pueblo Español», Anales delMuseo del Pueblo Español, 1,Cuadernos 1-2, 1935, p. 19.

37. According to Juan ManuelBonet, one of the other cinema-tographers for the MisionesPedagógicas was Gonzalo Mené-ndez Pidal. See: BONET, J.M.,Diccionario de las vanguar-dias enEspaña 1907-1936, Alianza Edito-rial, Madrid, 1995, p. 422 & 608.

38. OTERO URTAZA, E., «Sentidoy alcance de las Misiones Peda-gógicas», in Manuel B. Cossio y larenovación pedagógica institu-tionista. Ponencias present-adas enla Semana de Homenaje Nacionala Manuel B. Cossio (Madrid, 30Septiembre/4 Octubre 1985), Edi-ted by RUIZ BERRIO, J., TIANA

FERRER, A. and NEGRÍN FAJARDO,O., Universidad Nacional deEducación a Distancia, Madrid,1987, p. 241. For a biography ofVal del Omar and a chronologyof his activities related to theMissiones Pedagógicas, see:SÁENZ DE BURUAGA, G. and VAL

DEL OMAR, M. J., Val del OmarSin Fin, Diputación Provincial deGranada, Junta de Andalucía,Filmoteca de Andalucía, Gra-nada, 1992. I thank HoracioFernández for bringing the pho-tographs of the Misiones Peda-gógicas to my attention.


museum. Many of the photographs were takenfrom a worm’s eye view offering a heroic andmonumentalizing view of Spain’s rural inhabitants(figure 6). The economic and social relations of therural communities are pushed out of the frame. Inthese photographs the close-up is not used, as inLas Hurdes, to shock or disrupt, but to assure thegovernment and the public of the success of theMissions and the easy interaction between mo-dern technology and rural life39.

It is not that an interaction between the film-maker and the Hurdanos, or between the city andthe country, did not take place during the processof filming Las Hurdes, as Marcel Oms has pointedout, but that the optimism so desired by the SecondRepublic government was consciously edited outof the film40. During the opening sequences, theviewer witnesses a series of darkened and narrowstreets. Even when a few people straggle throughthe camera’s range there remains a feeling of deso-lation and absence, the opposite of Val del Omar’spronounced horror vacui. The starkness of thestreet scenes in Las Hurdes recalls WalterBenjamin’s descriptions of Eugène Atget’s photo-graphs, in which the expectant «crime» disclosedby an uncanny lens could provoke a revolutionarystir. A connection was formed in Atget’s photo-

39. Although Cossío’s originalidea for the Missions did not in-clude social and economic assis-tance to the rural communities,many of the missionaries ex-pressed disatisfaction with limit-ing their interaction to perfor-mances and entertainment. The1934 «Misión Pedagógico-Socialen Sanabria (Zamora)» sought tocombine cultural enlightenmentwith projects aimed at improvingthe town’s agricultural methods,health conditions and education.Despite the success of this Mis-sion and the publication of a re-port on the Mission in 1935, thefunding for the Misiones Peda-gógicas was drastically cut underthe second Bienio, just as the Mis-sion’s goals were being modifiedto address the material needs ofSpain’s rural communities. See:PATRONATO DE MISIONES PEDA-

GÓGICAS, Memoria de la MisiónPedagógico-social en Sanabria(Zamora). Resumen de trabajosrealizados en el año 1934, Madrid,1935; and «Los jóvenes de Misio-nes Pedagógicas contestan anuestras preguntas», El Sol, Ma-drid, num. 4988, 8 August 1933,p. 10.

40. OMS, M., «Terre sans Pain deLuis Buñuel. Des images iné-dites», Archives, num. 43, Octo-ber 1991, p. 4.

41. BENJAMIN, W., «The Work ofArt in the Age of MechanicalReproduction», Illuminations:Essays and Reflections, trans.Harry Zohn, Schocken Books,New York, 1968, p. 226.

42. BUÑUEL, L., Mi ÚltimoSuspiro, p. 165-166.

43. «Las Hurdes (Terre sansPain)», L’Avant-Scène, num. 36,1964, p. 59.

44. RODRÍGUEZ DE LA FLOR, F., DeLas Batuecas a Las Hurdes:Fragmentos para una historiamítica de Extremadura, EditoraRegional de Extremadura, Mérida,1989, p. 17.

45. Ibidem, p. 106.

46. MADRID, F., Sangre en Atara-zanas, Las Ediciones de la Flecha,Barcelona, 1926, p. 10.

47. Le surréalisme au service dela révolution, num. 4, December1931, p. 39.

48. SANTOS, M., «La Cruzada dela Cultura. Misiones Pedagógicas»,Popular Film, VII, num. 287, 11February 1932, p. 1.

graphs between the evocation of crime throughabsence and the political content implicit in the useof photographs as evidence. Benjamin writes: «Thescene of a crime, too, is deserted; it is photographedfor the purpose of establishing evidence. WithAtget, photographs become standard evidence forhistorical occurrences, and acquire a hidden po-litical significance»41. In Las Hurdes Lotar uses asimilar aesthetic to expose the sickness and futilityof life in the region. Rather than pulling the figuresout of their context and creating isolated monumentsto the traditions and folklore of the nation, theshots in Las Hurdes enforce the relationship bet-ween the physical condition of the figure and hisenvironment. In a later sequence, when the camerafixes on the body of a sick woman laying like abundle of fabric on the side of the road, the crimemight be neglect, insufficient medicine to treat herillness, or more generally the waste and decaywhich reappear persistently throughout the film(figure 7). This politics of pessimism relies on themaintenance of the evidential quality of the pho-tograph, its status as empirical testimony and as anindexical sign system. As such, it still depends onthe conventions of documentary objectivity intransmitting the horror of the event and its exis-tence as fact.

Figure 6.José Val del Omar, «Cine en Trevélez, Granada», Patronato de Misiones Pedagógicas. Septiembre de 1931-Diciembre de 1933, Informes. I,Madrid, 1934, s.p. Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona.


Esa afición por el turismo, tan difundida a mialrededor, me es desconocida.

Luis Buñuel, Mi Último Suspiro, 1982

Before making Las Hurdes, Buñuel was ap-proached by the Vicomte de Noailles to documentthe 1931 ethnographic mission from Dakar toDjbouti. As Buñuel recounts, «Rehusé. No meatraía África [...] Sería en España donde realizaríami tercera película»42. Although he did not physi-cally accompany the mission to Africa and despitehis stated disinterest for tourism, there are repeatedmoments in Las Hurdes where ethnographic prac-tices and the image of Africa appear as palimpsestsover the geography and inhabitants of the region.For example, during the beginning scenes of thefilm, while the crew is still in La Alberca, the cam-era fixes on the figure of a tiny Albercan baby co-vered with silver charms (figure 8). The mother’shand lifts the charms and exhibits them to theviewer while the narrator explains, «[...] nousapercevons cet enfant, richement orné de médaillesd’argent. Bien que ce soient des médailleschrétiennes, nous ne pouvons nous empêcher depenser aux amulettes des peuples sauvagesd’Afrique et d’Océanie»43.

Seeing Africa in Las Hurdes, was not unique toBuñuel. Indeed the relationship of the region toSpain’s colonial exploits is part of its literary andmythic history. As Fernando Rodríguez de la Florhas described in his study De Las Batuecas a LasHurdes: Fragmentos para una historia mítica deExtremadura, the literary myth of Las Hurdesgained prominence in the Madrid Court during theSiglo de Oro, the same period in which Spain wasaggressively expanding her colonial interests44. Bythe sixteenth century, Las Hurdes (and LasBatuecas) came to symbolize a sacred, mythic placewhich was alienated and different from the rest ofSpain45. This myth of difference, continued in thenineteenth century and was converted into an earlyethnographic profile of its inhabitants as deformed,primitive, and physiognomically blemished. LasHurdes was the primitive counterpoint locatedwithin the country’s borders, or as one writer ex-claimed, «Lo bueno y lo malo; la civilización y el"hurdismo", que es toda una política nacional»46.The sequence of the Albercan baby makes visiblethis convergence of national and imperial historyon the body of the region’s inhabitants. The film’snarration is probably meant to call attention to theimplications underlying the stereotypical compari-son between Spain’s rural communities and Africa47.For example, even the literature surrounding theMisiones Pedagógicas described Spain’s rural out-posts as «pueblecitos [...] tan alejados de la civiliza-ción como las más remotas tribus de África, de Asia,de Oceanía»48.




The degree of geographic displacement in thefilm, also signals a difference in the choice of ethno-graphic models between the Republic’s MisionesPedagógicas, the report on the Dakar-Djbouti Mis-sion published in Minotaure, and that of GeorgesBataille’s Documents. Although the propaganda sur-rounding the Misiones Pedagógicas would use Af-rica to emphasize the remoteness of rural Spain fromthe minds of the urban public, Marañon and the pro-moters of the Museo del Pueblo Español wouldprobably not venture such a comparison, as for them,the typical costumes of rural Spain represented thefabric of the nation and its traditions, not to beconfused with any other culture49. A comparisonbetween Las Hurdes and the presentation of thematerials and data collected by the Dakar-DjboutiMission and published in 1933 as a monographicnumber of Minotaure illustrates the difference be-tween what Buñuel described as an «objeto burguésy mundano por excelencia» and his own project50.While the maps and photographs in Minotaure aresimilar to other geographic and ethnographicprojects, as in Legendre’s book, where maps playa didactic role and photographs fulfill the reader’sdesire for exotic imagery, the model for Las Hurdesboth corresponds to and departs from this ethno-graphic model. The stability of the tools tradition-ally associated with science, and especially geogra-phy, are manipulated, making the ideologicalcontent behind the methodology visible within thedocument itself. While the photographs of theDakar-Djbouti Mission seek to order, control, andcategorize the ethnographic material, in the pages ofDocuments and in the writings of Bataille, there is ajuxtaposition of conflicting materials in the attemptto break down the limits between what is permis-sible and that which is transgressive. Hence, the dis-tinction between the dirt and disease of places likeLas Hurdes and the social advances of the city is notupheld. A different understanding of the soil, of folk-lore and of the disruptive potential of the photo-graphic document is presented, one which also re-verberates in Buñuel’s film.

The writings of Bataille, and especially thoserelated to politics, often refer to elements of thesoil as metaphors for political activity. In his essay«The "Old Mole" and the Prefix Sur in the WordsSurhomme [Superman] and Surrealist», from 1929-30, Bataille writes:

[...] brought back to the subterranean action ofeconomic facts, the «old-mole» revolution hol-lows out chambers in a decomposed soil repug-nant to the delicate nose of the utopians. «OldMole», Marx’s resounding expression for thecomplete satisfaction of the revolutionary out-burst of the masses, must be understood in re-lation to the notion of a geological uprising asexpressed in the Communist Manifesto51.

49. During the same period thatMarañon was President of thePatronato del Museo del PuebloEspañol, he was also President ofthe Patronato de la ExpediciónIglesias al Amazonas, an ethno-graphic expedition to the Ama-zon which was sponsored in partby the Second Republic govern-ment. See for example: MARAÑÓN,G., «Sobre la Expedición al Ama-zonas», Crónica de la ExpediciónIglesias al Amazonas, II, num. 13,July 1933, p. 4-7; and IGLESIAS, C.,«En defensa de nuestraExpedición», Crónica de la Expe-dición Iglesias al Amazonas, II,num. 14, August 1934, p. 3-10.

50. BUÑUEL, L., Mi ÚltimoSuspiro, p. 165.

51. BATAILLE, G., Visions of Ex-cess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939,trans. Allan Stoekl, University ofMinnesota Press, Minne-apolis,1985, p. 35. Stoekl dates the arti-cle from 1929-30 when it was in-tended to be published in theshort-lived magazine, Bifur. Itwas first published in Tel Quel,num. 34, Summer 1968.

52. Cited in CASAUS, V., «LasHurdes: Land without Bread», inMELLEN, J., (ed.), The World ofLuís Buñuel: Essays in Criticism,Oxford University Press, NewYork, 1980, p. 180.

53. Both Denis Hollier and JamesClifford characterize this aspectof Documents as a «license toshock». See: CLIFFORD, J., ThePredicament of Culture: Twen-tieth Century Ethnography, Li-terature, and Art, Harvard Uni-versity Press, Cambridge, 1988, p.133; and HOLLIER, D., «La Valeurd’usage de L’Impossible», Docu-ments, volume 1, reprint ÉditionsJean-Michel Place, Paris, 1991, p.XVII. Although I am looking spe-cifically at these shots in relationto Lotar, they also reintegratespecific techniques already usedby Buñuel in Un Chien andalou–the close-up of a razor passingthrough an eye– and in L’Aged’Or –the inclusion of abstractedshots of earth and human waste.

Bataille grounds revolutionary politics in thesoil, in the base and in the abject. In that sense, thedecision to make a film that was «merely to showthe most abject region of Spain», where the idea of«decomposed soil» is nowhere more prevalent thanin Unik’s narration on the waste, disease and deathof Las Hurdes, might also be seen as another as-pect of the film’s political content52. This aspect ofLas Hurdes’ politics, unlike those qualities empha-sized by Arconada, does not require the film’smoments of disjuncture to be overlooked. It isthrough Bataille’s discussion of transgression thatthe deformity and poverty of the inhabitants of LasHurdes finds its structural parallel. The delinea-tion of boundaries which the mapping sequencerepresents in Las Hurdes is followed by scenes ofvarying degrees of transgression: the result of in-cestuous relationships in the form of dwarfs andmidgets, of poor living conditions which producedysentery and goiter, and of unsanitary habitswhich transform insect bites into deadly infections.Likewise, following those scenes in which Buñuelreplicates images from Legendre, from pedagogi-cal text books, or from the conventions of docu-mentary, the camera’s vertiginous movementsbreak away from the restrictions of a legible model.Poverty and contagion are the principal means bywhich the limits of realism and the security of map-ping are broken.

From 1929 to 1932, Lotar and fellow photo-grapher Jacques-André Boiffard set up StudiosUnis on the rue Froidevaux in Paris. Both fre-quently published photographs to accompanyBataille’s articles and dictionary entries for Docu-ments. The recurrence of this imagery in LasHurdes is apparent throughout the film. In themagazine’s sixth number, three of Lotar’s photo-graphs were published to illustrate Bataille’s dic-tionary entry for the Abattoirs. Lotar’s still imagesshowing the mechanisms of slaughter and the com-pulsive organization of limbs, find reverberationsin his camerawork for Las Hurdes: the sequenceshowing the ritual beheading of the cock as a riteof passage for Albercan men; the putrefied don-key on which the camera freezes for an inordinatelylong amount of time creating an abstracted sceneof horror and provocation; and finally the scopicdrive to capture the goat’s fall into the ravine53.

The integration of imagery from Bataille’s dic-tionary appears with particular significance dur-ing the sequence of a young girl found laying bythe side of a road with an infection. The cameraquickly moves to an extended shot of the girl’smouth (figure 9). The extreme close-up from thatsequence recalls Boiffard’s photograph accompa-nying Bataille’s entry «Mouth» (figure 10). ForBataille, the «closed mouth» is «as beautiful as asafe»: secure, sutured and seamless, while the openmouth is a sign of disruption, infection and bestia-


Figure 9.Luis Buñuel, Las Hurdes: Tierrasin pan, 1933. FilmotecaEspañola, Madrid.

Figure 10.Jacques-André Boiffard,«Untitled» Published inDocuments, volume 2, number5, 1930, p. 298. Bibliotecade la Fundació Antoni Tàpies,Barcelona.


54. BATAILLE, G., «Mouth»,Documents, second year, 5, 1930,p. 299. Reprinted in Visions ofExcess, 60.

55. WILLIAMS, L., Figures of De-sire: A Theory and Analysis ofSurrealist Film, University ofCalifornia Press, Berkeley, 1992,p. 72.

56. CLIFFORD, J., «On Ethno-graphic Surrealism» ,The Pre-dicament of Culture, HarvardUniversity Press, Cambridge,1988, p. 146.

57. BOIFFARD, J.A., «Sole, Barefoot», ca. 1930 (Colección LucienTreillard, Paris). Illustrated inEstrella de Diego, Los Cuerposperdidos. Fotografía y surrealistas,Fundación «la Caixa», Barcelona,1995, p. 143.

58. BOIFFARD, J.A., «Gros Orteil,sujet masculin, 30 Ans», Docu-ments, number 6, November1929, p. 299.

59. Ibidem, p. 23.

60. The camera used by Lotar wasborrowed from Yves Allégret,who before being imprisoned andlater deported from Spain as adangerous Communist, was goingto shoot a short documentaryabout Las Hurdes. LIONEL-MARIE, A., «Le cœur meurtri parde mortes chimères», Eli Lotar,Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris, 1993, p. 22-23. Buñuel alsorecalls that the equipment used toshoot Las Hurdes was borrowedfrom Allégret. BUÑUEL, L., MiÚltimo Suspiro, p. 167.

61. BUÑUEL, L., Mi Último Sus-piro, p. 167.

62. M., G., Echo de Paris, 10 De-cember 1930. Cited in MELLEN,J. (ed.), The World of Luis Buñuel,Oxford University Press, NewYork, 1980, p. 163.

63. SÁNCHEZ VIDAL, A., ElMundo de Luis Buñuel, Caja deAhorros de la Inmaculada,Zaragoza, 1993, p. 282; andDAVID, Y., ¿Buñuel! Auge des Jahr-hunderts, Kunst-und Ausstellungs-halle der Bundes republik Deutsch-land, 1994, p. 454.

64. On the films shown in theSpanish Pavilion, see: GUBERN,R., «Exhibiciones Cinematográ-ficas en el Pabellón español»,Pabellón Español. ExposiciónInternacional de París 1937,Ministerio de Cultura, Centro deArte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1987,p. 174-180.

lity54. The gaping gesture of the mouth in LasHurdes, like the photographs by Boiffard and Lotarin Documents, stands for a syntactic rupture. Whilein Un Chien andalou, the opening sequence ofBuñuel wielding a razor and the slicing of the eyehas been interpreted by Linda Williams as a «gen-eral symbol of the entire act of filmic creation»55.In Las Hurdes there is no tool or sign of the editingprocess. It is only through the intervention ofBataille’s definition of the open mouth as a woundor fracturing of the visual field that the process ofsplicing and juxtaposition is invoked. Each refer-ence to a particular source, each sequence, becomesa discrete document which breaks up the film’sstructural cohesion and lays bear its fabrication.As James Clifford has explained with respect tothe method behind Documents, «The cuts and su-tures of the research process are left visible; thereis no smoothing over or blending of the work’sraw data into a homogeneous representation»56.

Another series of close-up photographs byBoiffard, some of which accompanied Bataille’sentry «The Big Toe» reinforces the relation bet-ween Documents and Lotar’s camerawork in LasHurdes One of Boiffard’s unpublished photo-graphs juxtaposes the worn and dirt encrusted soleof a right shoe with the wrinkled skin and callusedtoes of the left foot57. Just as Boiffard makes thecomparison between external conditions and thephyscial transformation of the body, Lotar esta-blishes equivalencies between the environment andthe body, between the harsh terrain in the moun-tains and its affects on the peasant’s physical con-dition. Lotar’s camera focuses on the peasant’s feetas they pass through the field searching for the wildstrawberry bush, as the narrator explains that thebrutal landscape of the region is particularly hardon the Hurdanos, especially those without shoes.

In an earlier sequence the camera takes a visualinventory of the feet of the Hurdano school chil-dren. After the narrator describes the tatteredHurdano clothing, while showing the blank ex-pressions of the children as they stare into the ca-mera, Lotar pans a row of feet for a significantamount of time (figure 11). Among the children’sfeet, one pair stands out as an echo of Boiffard’sillustrations for «The Big Toe», only in this casethe foot’s deformity is apparent and does not needto be revealed by the alienating effects of the ca-mera58. The image of the children’s feet is thus po-sitioned within a context of cognition and accul-turation. It comes just before a scene in which aboy writes the «golden rule» on the blackboard,«Respectad los bienes ajenos [...]» The camera cutsto the faces of two boys who are momentarilystruck by the inscription, but later bend down tocopy it. The juxtaposition of these two scenesforms a commentary on the film’s own syntacticstructure, whereby the feet represent a break in the

logic of grammar and cognition as they are taughtin the school.

Georges Bataille’s description of «The Big Toe»is crucial to understanding the inclusion of feet asit relates to the transgressive and political poten-tial of geography and the soil. Bataille describes aseries of values associated with the big toe, focus-ing on the particular taboos associated in differentcultures with the exposure of feet In explaining theSpanish lore, Bataille cites M. Salomon Reinach’sinsistence that in Spain «women’s feet have beenthe object of the most dreaded anxiety and thuswere the cause of crimes». Bataille’s further obser-vations that traditional peasant expressions equated«the most nauseating filthiness» with the foot, ormore specifically the peasant foot, makes the ex-posure of the Spanish peasant’s foot in Las Hurdesone of the most disturbing acts of moral and po-litical transgression. Bataille concludes by equat-ing the perception of feet with a widening of cons-ciousness, an ability to see what has previously beendenied: «A return to reality does not imply anynew acceptances, but means that one is seduced ina base manner, without transpositions and to thepoint of screaming, opening his eyes wide: openingthem wide, then, before a big toe»59. In openingone’s eyes wide enough to see the big toe, one isalso finally able to see without the veil of bour-geois taboos and to accept the revolutionary po-tential of the ground, the base, the foot. Percep-tion is political. Within the context of Las Hurdes,the image of bare feet becomes an image that re-presents deformity, the agrarian, the physical andthe criminal, but also a kind of politics that de-pends on a breadth of vision for effectiveness.

The inclusion of references to photographstaken almost four years before Lotar filmed LasHurdes also represents a transposition of the aes-thetic strategies used to uncover the abject of thecity –Paris in 1929– onto the country –Las Hurdesin 1933. As with the inclusion of references tomaterials ranging from human geography to Atget,here Lotar references his own past work. A levelingof sources takes place in which the heterogeneousis allowed to enter and interact with the institu-tional, the academic. The porous boundaries bet-ween various kinds of documents, between pro-duction and reception, between social realism anddissident surrealism allow for multiple misidenti-fications. Both geographic and temporal overlaytakes place.

Despite the demands of the film’s early criticsand the criticisms of Marañon, the secure relationsbetween ideological content and form seem to dis-appear. The film’s various moments of disjunction,in large part caused by the excess of documents, isfurther accentuated by the identification betweenthe film’s structural porousness, the poverty of thefilm’s subject matter, and the film’s material quali-


ties. Noticeable in watching the film are theglitches, dust, and scratches which constantly as-sault the image plane. The borrowed equipmentused to film Las Hurdes might in itself explain itspoor quality60. Or, perhaps, the fact that the filmwas edited without a moviola, in a short period oftime, and on Buñuel’s kitchen table61. It seems moreplausible, however, that the use of low quality filmwas another means of provocation, as it had beenwith L’Âge d’Or. As one reviewer complained in1930, «The technical execution is so poor that itwould elicit catcalls in the poorest film houses ofour most provincial towns»62. Because Las Hurdeswas considered at the time the poorest of the mostprovincial of Spanish towns, the film’s technicalexecution serves to mimic the physical conditionsof the region and its inhabitants. Hence instead ofcausing disruption within a rural context, the aes-thetic strategies previously used to reveal the baseand informe of the city, are now employed in therepresentation of the Spanish landscape and returnthose elements which are most disturbing in thecountry back to the city. In Las Hurdes, the docu-ment is the form of currency exchanged betweenthese two environments and between the variousartistic strategies practiced in Spain during the

Thirties. Circulating, without necessarily chang-ing its guises or the information it contained, theideological content of the document was by forceambiguous.

Acknowledging the film’s ambiguity, however,carries with it the risk of being unable to clearlydefine its ideological position within the growingpolemics of the Second Republic. The completionof the film in 1936 and its official exhibition in Parisin 1937 make clear that neither Buñuel nor the re-publican government would take such a risk63. Aswith the film’s reception in the combative journalsof the mid-Thirties, which anchored the film tothe specific goals of socialist realism, Las Hurdeswas once again contained within a clearly propa-gandistic frame. Luis Araquistain, Ambassador toSpain in Paris paid for two sound versions of thefilm to be completed, one in French and one inEnglish. Nevertheless, the film was not shown inthe Spanish Pavilion during the International Ex-hibition; instead it was exhibited at the OmniaPathé theater64.

Given that I have described the photographsof Val del Omar and the images of Las Hurdes asopposing models for representing Spain’s ruralpopulation, one of the reasons for the film’s exclu-

Figure 11.Luis Buñuel, Las Hurdes: Tierra sin pan, 1933. Filmoteca Española, Barcelona.


sion from the Pavilion’s program might be that thePavilion was already filled with photo-panels in-cluding images from the photographic archive ofthe Misiones Pedagógicas. Smiling faces of childrencovered the photo-panels dedicated to cinema, andphotographs and regional costumes were broughtfrom the Museo del Pueblo Español. Another, per-haps, more enticing reason might be that Buñuel,recognizing the transformation that Las Hurdesunderwent during its various moments of recep-tion, chose instead to edit a documentary aboutthe Civil War for the Pavilion, which made noclaims for authorship. Perhaps recalling the abi-lity of photographs from Las Hurdes to operate asrevolutionary documents when released from thefilm’s structure and the filmmaker’s name, Buñueland Jean-Paul Dreyfuss «Le Chanois», only tookcredit as editors, compilers of documents, and notas authors, in the production of Espagne 36. Asthis paper has sought to show, however, Buñuelwas already compiling and juxtaposing documentsin Las Hurdes. So that Las Hurdes, even when ex-hibited outside the context of the Pavilion, wouldbe anchored to the political goals of the Republic,an epilogue was added to the end of some copies

of the film65. As a plea to the foreign public andtheir governments to assist the republican cause inthe fight against fascism, the film ends with thefollowing: «Avec l’aide des antifascistes du mondeentier, le calme, le travail, le bonheur feront place ala guerre civile et feront disparaître a jamais les fo-yers de misère que vous a montrés ce film»66. Thesuccess of reframing Las Hurdes to once again re-strict the film’s moments of disjuncture and ambi-guity to accidental or incongruous additions to thefilm’s original intentions is evidenced by the writerand filmmaker Basil Wright’s well-known reviewof 1937. In claiming that the narration and musicalscore added to the film are additions made by some-one, «presumably not Buñuel», Wright reinstills, atleast on the level of reception, the film’s structuraland ideological cohesion67. In order to garner fi-nancial and political support against fascism, therepublican government had to demonstrate that itcould maintain order and protect private property,both of which stood in opposition to a politics ofgeography derived from the revolutionary anddisruptive potential of the document and the basemisery and ideological contest represented by theSpanish soil.

65. GUBERN, R., 1936-1939: Laguerra de España en la pantalla.De la propaganda a la Historia,Filmoteca Española, Madrid,1986, p. 24-25.

66. «Las Hurdes (Terre sansPain)», L’Avant-Scène, number36, 1964, p. 62.

67. WRIGHT, B., «Land withoutBread and Spanish Earth», WorldFilm News, London, December1937. Reprinted in JACOBS, L.,The Documentary Tradition:From Nanook to Woodstock,Hopkinson and Blake, Publi-shers, New York, 1971, p. 146.