Set in a stark landscape of cliffs and precipices high above the Argentine pampas, Mariana Travacio’s All That Dies in April follows the members of one small family as each makes a solitary journey out of their treacherous mountain home in search of a better life. Lina has dreamt for years of leaving her tiny village in the drought-stricken region. Her son left long ago to find work and a better fortune. Relicario, her husband, is content to stay put in the land of his ancestors, tending to their graves. Ignoring Relicario’s pleas, a desperate Lina decides to abandon their home in search of her son, work, and water. She starts her journey on foot, and Relicario eventually follows behind, bringing a donkey and a sack with his ancestors’ bones. Both witness unspeakable violence, cruelty, and folly, but the hope of reuniting their family keeps them alive. Poetically charged, restrained, and delicately condensed, this is a suspenseful ancestral tale rooted in a long Latin American history of rural displacement and perpetual inequality.
