I MET LEONARDO TELLO AT A FESTIVAL of censored films in Lima, Peru’s smog-ridden capital city. It was a laid-back event in a bohemian neighborhood. Audience members lounged on blankets on the grass and directors sat on a broken-down sofa drinking beer. I showed a film about an Andean farming community that stands up to an American gold mine that had, unsurprisingly, been censored by Peru’s government-owned broadcaster. Another filmmaker had brought Leonardo to the festival and introduced us. Leo said his Indigenous radio station in the northern Amazon region wanted to start making films and asked if I would give them some training.
“When do we start?” I asked, giving him my contact info. He never wrote to me; perhaps he didn’t believe I would really come.
A year later, the laws of probability were broken when our paths crossed again in the same megacity of 11 million people. My husband Miki—Miguel Araoz Cartagena—and I were in Lima for a joint exhibition of his paintings with a Shipibo artist who is also from the northern Amazon. They named their show “Tinkuy, Nukoananty,” which means “the meeting between the Andes and the Jungle” in Quechua and Shipibo, the Indigenous languages of the two regions.
A friend had loaned Miki and me her apartment while she was out of town. She asked us to give a set of keys
