Virunga: Netflix documentary
While researching Irish artist Richard Mosse's film installation, The Enclave (on view at the Portland Art Museum until April 12), I read numerous materials about the Democratic Republic of Congo (the subject of Mosse's work). Though a protracted conflict has devastated the eastern regions of this vast country for (at least) the past twenty years, the humanitarian crisis in the Congo has remained peripheral in the global imaginary. The mercurial nature of the conflict, the absence of an archvillan, and the complexity of issues in the Congo have resulted in a cyclical lack of press coverage about the conflict and a general lack of interest in the country's status.
Though the Netflix documentary Virunga is primarily focused on Virunga National Park and Soco's foiled oil exploration in the protected area, the film also sheds a bit of light onto some of the larger issues that have affected the DRC's complex and mercurial geopolitical situation. In the beginning of the film a brief survey of the Congo's history provides viewers with a cursory introduction to significant events that have occurred in the country in the past two centuries. Throughout the film viewers also gain a better (but also introductory!) understanding of how the 19th century colonization of the country and the subsequent exploitation of the Congo's mineral rich terrain continues to effect the country's political and sociological status.
Throughout Virunga viewers are treated to stunning shots of the landscapes found within the park. However, the beauty of this varied and verdant terrain is a profound paradox, for harrowing atrocities—mass murder, systematic sexual violence, ethnic cleansing—have occurred almost continually amidst the Congo’s jungles, fields, lakes, rivers, mountains, valleys, and farms for the past twenty years (in and outside of the park). The ongoing conflict in the Congo, is complex and multifarious. Many of the issues that have fueled fighting in the past twenty years have roots in pre-colonial issues of identity, strains imposed by the late nineteenth-century colonization of the country by King Leopold of Belgium, numerous post-colonial political and sociological developments, and perhaps most significantly the mass exodus of Rwanda’s civil war apparatus into the Congo’s eastern regions, following the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Many of the enduring ethnic tensions and much of the recent violence has a resource base. The Tutsi, who are pastoralists, must fight for the fields they require for their cattle. Beneath the Congo’s jungles, mountains, and grasslands are gold, diamonds, tin ore, and coltan—a mineral ore used in cell phone chips. The high global demand for coltan, and Congo’s rich supply of the material has had a profound impact on the country in recent years. The effects of mining have gained increasing significance as cell phones have become more prevalent, and the coltan mining industry is intrinsically linked to the current violence and humanitarian disaster in the Congo.
Drilling for oil in Virunga National Park would not only have violated the site's World Heritage Status and exacerbated political tensions but would have also perpetuated the legacy of intervention that has been so detrimental to the country's development. Fortunately, Soco's plans for the park were canceled in June 2014.
To learn more about the political situation in the Congo I would recommend:
Alex Veit, Intervention as Indirect Rule
In author and expert Jason Stearns' own words: "A blog about Congo, its politics, and tribulations.":
http://congosiasa.blogspot.com/
On the emergence of nationalism, colonialism, and strategies for imagining "communities":
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/11/soco-oil-virunga-national-park-congo-wwf
On Richard Mosse's work in the Congo:
http://www.jackshainman.com/exhibitions/past/2014/richard-mosse/
and last but not least about the Netflix documentary, Virunga:
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