La Cueva Negra
hd video | rt 20:00 | 2012

La Cueva Negra is a moving image project and photo series which explores the Paso del Indio site as a layered repository of symbolic and material histories. The site is well known in the archaeological community. Twenty years ago, during the construction of a multi-lane highway, a complex (possibly Archaic, definitely Pre-Taíno and Taíno) indigenous burial site was discovered and many objects and remains recovered. But the site was paved over for the construction of the expressway. Paso del Indio visibly holds many conflicting histories, embodied in the landscape and built environment. During the original excavation (1992-1995) laborers from the surrounding villages were hired as manual labor. The project starts from the site's material history, the recollections of the workers and archaeologists involved, what we know, and what we think we know about a landscape and how these layers of material and belief interact to create a new contemporary cosmogony, one built on the trash, the graffiti, the expressway, the river, the village, the karst bedrock and the traces of previous inhabitants worldview.