Historias de Agua is a 53-minute Peruvian documentary directed by Juan Manuel Torres-Solari Injoque and Gabriela Delgado Maldonado. It was released in 2017 in the Congress of the Republic of Peru. The documentary visually and narratively travels the path of water, from its origins to the cities that consume it. Unfortunately, this tour is a tragic history of pollution that comes from colonial times and that, to this day, claims human lives due to the high contamination of heavy metals in their bodies. In this way, Historias de Agua highlights the fragility of water sources and their surrounding ecosystems when they are related to the terrible contamination of mining activity.

It achieves a significant impact on the viewer as it gathers testimonies from people who experience the contamination of their waters, crops and animals that they consume for a living. Thus, like a trip, it transports us to the heights of the Peruvian Andes to see through the screen the impact of the mining tailings generated for years and that today coexist with the population a street away. The documentary closes by showing us Lima, the capital of Peru, where one third of the national population lives exposed to a simple catastrophic earthquake to run out of water for months. And when asked: do you know where the water you drink comes from? There are only wrong and doubtful answers.

I was interested in seeing this documentary because it is a national production, which reflects the reality of a country that calls itself a miner, like Peru, but which, behind it, we find poverty, pollution, misery and death. Definitely this documentary has a great message with it, and it is sad to admit that despite this, today, three years after its premiere, things are not different from then. The protests by children with high levels of lead in their blood as a result of mining contamination have been, even during the COVID 19 pandemic, news that has made the headlines.

Historias de Agua is available on Youtube through this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K8Sk93qP00