“Aguirre, turn around with the burden because the rumor is spreading that Vicentin went bankrupt, crazy! So just come because they are not going to pay”. This comment between an agricultural producer and a transporter is the starting point and a kind of synthesis of what the audiovisual director is trying to reflect. Andrés Cedrón on the Vicentin case, a fraudulent maneuver in the middle of a bankruptcy and a failed nationalization of the plant by the government of Alberto Fernández. The documentary is titled “White collars. The Vicentin case” and will premiere this Thursday, June 20, at 6 and 8:30 p.m., at the Cairo cinema.
“It seemed essential to us that it premiere in Rosario, for everything that this cause generated and in pursuit of that federal spirit that we are looking for so much,” highlighted the Neuquén filmmaker trained at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), author of “Las Caracas”, “Se va a termina” and “Coronados de Gloria”, among other audiovisual projects. He also insisted on not falling in a political view of the documentary, but rather to observe it as “another worker who pursues that desire for popular sovereignty of resources.”
Vicentin: between the looting and the riches of Argentina
“I was always struck by how little “We talk about the generation of wealth and a new plunder of our own resources and the population,” comments Cedrón in statements to The capital regarding the film, which premieres precisely on Flag Day, about the still unfinished plot behind the Vicentin case, one of the most important agro-exporters in the country that emerged in Avellaneda (Reconquista) and that went from having an asset of US$ 630 million to show a capital loss of US$ 1,328 million, of which, to this day, no one offers answers about their fate, since the activity and production of the plant indicated otherwise, according to the testimonies described in the documentary.
Over the course of one hour and 40 minutes, the film reviews the beginnings of what began as a general store by two Italian brothers who went on to monopolize the entire region through cotton production, even in an area dominated by La Forestal, and then migrated to the soybean oligopoly in non-stop growth.
>> Read more: Vicentin: former directors are prosecuted for defrauding the treasury
“I was always very interested in everything that happened on the waterwaythat’s why the financial stress that Vicentin accused caught my attention,” says Cedrón, who affirms that since “minute zero of (that) December 5, 2019 was committed to the cause, added to “food sovereignty» that was promoted by the government of Alberto Fernández.
“That’s why I was pivoting three variables: what happens to the Paraná River, “the Argentine countryside for Argentines, and foreign trade and the world”says the director who, like several specialists in the field, still wonders how the company went from celebrating its 90th anniversary on a Friday night to declaring financial stress the following Monday.
Thus, almost two years later, in January 2024, the assembly was closed, which included in-depth field investigation and shots at the Vicentin plants, the Courts in Rosario and the Santa Fe Legislature where a public hearing was held.
The Vicentin case: a journey to know the truth
documentary filming vicentin.jpg
Part of the filming in the surroundings of the Avellaneda plant, in the north of Santa Fe.
Courtesy Andrés Cedrón
“We rely a lot on the contest file and the work done by the observers, defending the workers, that is why we try to make it an information documentary so that it is not pointed out as ideological, but with a very strong classist charge from the social ties between the economic, the political and the judicial,” says Cedrón.
Cedrón prefers to stay with that journey that he tells through his documentary in which he tried to bring down to the viewer’s level what the mechanisms of capital evasion and flight are in Argentina.
>> Read more: Vicentin: a Reconquista court approved the bankruptcy agreement and asked to lift precautionary measures
“The idea is to learn who the actors are and demystify that we are great producers of food for the population and all kinds of myths that economic power is responsible for expanding. That is why this journey of knowing the truth with a question of class, as another worker, so that once and for all we remove that veil that identifies us with an economic power that is foreign and does not invest in the country; the producers are hostages of the multinationals,” considered the audiovisual director.
During filming, Cedrón toured the plants of the private ports along the coasts and at the entrances, and was surprised by their magnitude and the technology typical of the first world. “That’s why I think it’s revealing to show the quantity and quality of those plants,” he says.
