Vena Acuática

In Vena Acuática or Water Vein (in English) water is a conduit, a connective tissue, a collective voice and a carrier of histories, memories and visceral emotions. In El Salvador, dominion over the natural world is championed by those in power, however women have become the veins that carry life throughout the Salvadoran territory, protecting human rights and tending to their environments with love and devotion. Like a river, we flow in and out of the waterways in a bustling tropical region, guided by women who look to their most intimate relationships to nurture their day-to-day and make sense of the world. Vena Acuática uses emotional journeys to draw a visual map of the relationships women keep and hold dearest: a sister, a grandmother, a long-distance love, a river, the soil, a mountain, a lake. The journeys of a water economist living in exile, a fisherwoman raising her family on the shores of an ancestral lake and a Queer Indigenous migrant are interlocked in their fight against the capitalist monsters of current-day El Salvador, their challenges remind us how protecting our ties to home is its own form of resistance. Vena Acuática explores how the protection of the planet and vulnerable communities are deeply interconnected. Rooted in ecofeminist principles, the film highlights how women, Indigenous communities and Queer people in El Salvador lead the vigilance of natural resources, embodying the parallels between society’s treatment of marginalized bodies and the environment. As bearers of environmental memory, the women of Vena Acuática carry a record of how the land has transformed over time and nurture systems of community care to brace for the next hardship. They care to understand the earth, they see it as an equal, a living organism to love and build a relationship with, and not a source for profit or something to exploit.