La huella es el olvido

the long version

SYPNOPSIS Francisco Burdett O’Connor, a General from the Bolivian Army Division, Peruvian Brigade also the Colombian Army Colonel of the Liberator’s Order of Venezuela, Cundinamarca and Peru, is on his deathbed. His whole life he has been known as Colonel O’Connor, a hero, combatant, enemy and liberator. Now, intimately recounting his conquests in the Latin American fight for independence from the Spanish Empire, he is confronted with himself as an old man and father. It takes him back to the freedom and simplicity of being a child growing up in Ireland, and being known simply as Francisco. It faces him with the contrast of his time as a happy child, to his life fighting for freedom as a liberator. And reminds him of losing his mother and the guilt and pain that drove him to leave Ireland and head into the unknown, to leave his life as Francisco and become O’Connor. He recounts aloud to his son he believes is by his side in his dying hours. He speaks of the joys and heartbreaks, aesthetics and ceremony and harmony and rhythm of fighting a war. He also speaks of pity and human pain, of repugnance and inhumanity and the loss of ethics and decency.