March of the Sugar Cane Workers

Overview

Marcha de los Cañeros, by Marcos Banchero, made in 1968 as part of the Cinemateca del Tercer Mundo. During the second half of the 1960s, the Unión de Trabajadores Azucareros de Artigas (UTAA) carried out a series of marches from the north of the country to Montevideo, demanding better living conditions for its workers. These mobilizations took place in a context of economic crisis in the country and growing political and social conflict. Filmmakers Mario Handler, Alberto Miller and Marcos Banchero recorded some of these mobilizations at the time, contributing to the visibility of this sector of society, whose conditions of exploitation had been unknown to the capital's gaze until then.