Bolivian actor Vicente Salinas Berneros died yesterday of natural causes, according to local media. He was an iconic figure of Bolivian cinema, having starred in three films by renowned Bolivian director Jorge Sanjinés, a key figure of Latin America’s Third Cinema movement.
Salinas Berneros played the role of Andrés Mayta in the 1966 feature film And So It Is / Ukamau, a peasant seeking revenge after the rape of his wife by a mestizo, and the role of Sixto Malku in the 1969 feature film Blood of the Condor / Yawar Mallku, a member of a Quechua community who dies after denouncing the sterilization practices performed on local women by American doctors. Additionally he also acted in Aysa (1965), the third and last short film by Sanjinés.
Filmed in Quechua in a remote Kaata village, Blood of the Condor became a foundational film of Third Cinema, a political and aesthetic Latin American movement in the sixties and seventies that decried neocolonialism and the capitalist system. The film, originally censored by the Bolivian government, achieved international acclaim after it was released locally and lead to the expulsion of the Peace Corps from the South American country.
After working as an actor, Salina Berneros worked in mining as an administrator, and for the last years of his life he spent his time on craftwork, creating guitars and charangos in his artisanal workshop.
