PROLOGUE: "Below heaven the king alone is lord, not cruel and barbaric men. If God is with us in our zeal, what cause have we to fear?---Lope de Vega, Fuenteovejuna, Acto III"
Félix Lope de Vega (1562-1635), the great playwright of the Spanish Golden Age, wrote a baroque play in three acts called "Fuenteovejuna" (The Sheep Well) after a village in the Córdoba region. It dramatises a historical incident about the revolt of peasants against their tyrannical lord, putting him to death in an act of collective justice. A drama about popular and institutional power, and its uses and abuses, this play has been staged regularly since it was written to express political upheaval and what can happen when a town takes the law into its own hands.
Canoa: A Shameful Memory (1976) is shot in a documentary style and examines the pervasive atmosphere of repression in the country following wide-spread protests over the government's spending on the 1968 Summer Olympics, eventually leading to a massacre of hundreds of protesters in Mexico City.