In Abner Benaim Invasión, his 2014 documentary about the 1989 United States Invasion of Panama, history gives way to "historias" as official archival footage is rejected for the sake of first-hand accounts that are unable to cohere into a singular and stable retelling of the attack. There is little material archive for Benaim to film: it was three days into the invasion when journalists were allowed entry into the key battle sites. During this time Panamanian newspapers, radio, and TV stations were overtaken, and at times bombed; witnesses say that American soldiers raided hospitals to steal medical records detailing the number of deaths. The remnants that survived cohered into an official U.S. archive that boasted the invasion as a humanitarian success, a triumph of democracy in the face of dictatorial injustice. It is as if two distinct events took place on December 20th, 1989; two uncanny realities recorded in contradictory archival forms. Archivization, writes Jacques Derrida, “produces as much as it records the event;” following Derrida, this videographic piece investigates the different historiographies produced by the invasion and more broadly questions the link between history and historiography in the context of documentary film as an archival space.
