This western from Chile confronts the erased genocide of Indigenous people

Fact and fiction seamlessly converge in Chilean director Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s imposing first feature, “The Settlers”, a revisionist western that questions the tropes of this quintessentially American genre and in turn shines a light on a hidden genocide. Set in 1901 in the inhospitable terrain of South America’s Tierra del Fuego, the gruesome saga, which represented Chile at the Oscars this awards season in the best international feature film category, follows a trio of men from distinct backgrounds tasked with murdering as many Selk’nam Indigenous people as they find to clear the land for cattle. “I didn’t try to make a film to speak for Indigenous people, but rather to take a critical stance about the colonization processes from the point of view of the white world or the world of mixed-race people, to talk about how history is written, how it can be rewritten and what role cinema occupies,” Gálvez Haberle said in Spanish during a recent interview. What interested me was a photo of men posing with the bodies of the Selk’nam Indigenous people they have hunted, which I saw online in an independent Chilean publication. Tell me about Segundo and the particular role he plays in the film as someone of mixed-race involved in the extermination of the Selk’nam Indigenous people.