La Recta Provincia and the Logic of Resistance: Magic as Decolonial Heterotopia in the Film Brujería (2023)

Abstract: This essay analyzes the film Brujería (2023), directed by Christopher Murray. Set in 19th-century Chiloé —an island in southern Chile— the story follows Rosa, a young Huilliche girl who seeks justice after her father is murdered by a German settler. When the local authorities refuse to help her, she turns to La Recta Provincia , an Indigenous organization of sorcerers who use magic to administer justice. Drawing on the historical background of this group, decolonial theory, and Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, this article argues that magic in the film constitutes a heterotopic space that disrupts colonial logic and enables alternative ways of being and knowing. Divided into three parts, this work explores: (1) magic as epistemology, which challenges Western paradigms and generates alternative modes of knowledge; (2) magic as justice, which explores the use of magic in the Indigenous legal system; and (3) magic as territory, where physical and symbolic places resist the colonial hierarchies and mechanisms of domination. As a cinematic heterotopia, Brujería constructs a counter-archive that confronts the erasure of Indigenous cosmologies and communities imposed by colonial systems.