Latino
Latino tells the story of a fictional Army Special Forces officer, Eddie Guerrero. He is a Mexican-American and Vietnam veteran. He describes himself as a soldier; it is all he knows. And it has given him a certain level of respect and status that might not be attainable otherwise. Or so it seems. It is certainly that way for his companion, Sergeant Trevino, looking for all the world as if he belongs in a British regiment at an overseas post as he struts about with a swagger stick. Trevino may not like the truth of what he is doing, but he is willing to ignore it. Eddie finds ignoring the truth hard to do when his Nicaraguan girlfriend, Marlena, challenges him. Waking up to that truth is a slow process. While Eddie struggles with who he is and what is going on around him, the audience endures the violence that seems to come so easily to those who have lost touch with their own humanity and no longer see ‘others’ as people.
“War is hell.” Thus spoke General Sherman, perhaps best known for his march to Atlanta during the Civil War, laying waste to the countryside as he went. Watching this film on the eve of potential war with Iraq, I wondered what parallels might make themselves known. The film itself is a commentary on American support for the contras. While no one can argue their brutality, the film’s makers were naïve if they believed the Sandinista leadership was the equivalent of Snow White. Brutality has no affiliation, save a human one. I suppose the film’s makers thought to finesse that inconvenient reality by focusing on the compañeros and the abuses they endured at the hands of the contras. Without a doubt, the compañeros were the real victims in those unhappy times.
One cannot question the filmmakers’ determination to tell the story they chose. Watch the funeral sequence, shot during an active thunderstorm. One lightning bolt lands behind the mourners, and another to their collective right, causing a ripple of surprise in their ranks. But through it all, the pro-Sandinista/anti-contra speech continues. They want their message heard. Does the politicization of the story matter? Yes, because it demonstrates how trapped the compañeros are. They want to live their own lives, and great power politics are getting in the way.
To illustrate the problem of a meddling America, we are shown Eddie Guerrero, a moral coward. He is unwilling, perhaps unable, to confront the implications of his chosen profession, until he finds himself in a country where the people look a lot like his own family. The uniform and the status it conveys is an expression of pride. It is also a shield used to justify the actions he takes, or doesn’t take. His initial indifference rings as real, even though uncomfortable to watch. Eddie is resting in a hammock while the contras tease their thirsty prisoners with water. Is Eddie disgusted? Perhaps, but he turns away. A small village attempts to honor Good Friday as the contras make their way through. This ritual, allegedly stamped out by the supposedly atheistic Sandinistas, is accorded no respect by the allegedly God worshipping contras. Two men and a young woman are singled out and taken away; the woman to be raped and all three to be killed. While the young men are digging their own grave, Eddie is absorbed by the condition of his feet and ankles. He witnesses the murders and does nothing.
Yet he is beginning to wake up to the events around him, and who he is. Marlena, a Nicaraguan widow with a young son, starts the process that ultimately results in Eddie facing the truth he has previously dodged. Until this assignment he has lived in the emotional shallows, a fact noted by Trevino who asks Eddie if he has given Marlena the obligatory invitation to California. If Trevino shares Eddie’s growing discomfort he hides it well. Unlike Eddie, Trevino resolutely refuses to look back, or within. At the disco he encourages Eddie to “forget about it” a mantra shared by the many American servicemen present, who retreat into alcohol and women to deaden whatever emotional response they may otherwise be experiencing. Eddie is participant and observer, walking the line between the status quo and rebellion against the injustice he knows is present.
Eddie’s personal Waterloo is Luis, an illiterate Nicaraguan teenager. Brought in by the contras and tortured for information he doesn’t have, Luis is ‘rescued’ by ‘good cop’ Eddie. He then schools Luis in being a contra soldier and thinks he has succeeded. Luis turns the tables on his would be mentor during the assault on the farm cooperative. It is in that moment that Eddie can no longer live in denial, he must confront the truth. Stripping off his uniform is a tangible way of stripping off the past and emerging into a new, and undefined present. Yet he holds on to his dog tags, against the day that his mother may need to know what became of her son. He does not want to be an anonymous body. The final blow comes when he sees Marlena among the people he would have killed and the realization of what he had almost done is written across his face.
Robert has a reputation for speaking out, at times intemperately. It can be criticisms of scriptwriters or charity representatives, or observations on the political scene, and in each case you can be fairly certain you know where he stands. This is not the case with Eddie. Robert has the unenviable job of making Eddie likable, and not because he has a pretty face. For all his moral spinelessness, Robert’s Eddie displays none of the false bravura of a man who will not acknowledge the darkness within him. Instead, Robert imbues Eddie with a vulnerability that enables the viewer to appreciate the conflict he must be feeling in himself. You watch him walk naked to the farm compound, his nudity ultimately relieved by a shirt tied strategically across his crotch, and you hope this is his redemptive moment. In the scenes with Marlena and Juan Carlos, Robert’s Eddie reaches for a life that is not his, and which gives him pleasure. The interactions with the little boy express the possibilities of a relationship Eddie wants to be a part of. But the scene with the gun is a powerful reminder that Eddie lives two lives, and the other one is quite unpleasant. The face and behavior of Eddie the doting boyfriend, is quite different from the face and behavior of Eddie the soldier. From the moment he takes leave of his family in California, to that final gut wrenching moment seeing Marlena at the cooperative, we know a great deal about what Eddie is feeling. There are times when we don’t like what we find out, but it is there all the same. It is quite a performance.
In the movie a U.S. official refers to “our Hispanics” when talking about the contras. And Eddie is finally aware that his skin color, his ethnicity, is the issue. Would his response to the violence around him been any different if he was not Hispanic? The movie is not interested in that question, but perhaps a future filmmaker, looking at Iraq, will be. We have Special Forces in Iraq now, do they work with “our Muslims,” “our Iraqis?” What are they doing? Certain countries, which are less punctilious than America about their interrogation methods, have become the keepers of suspected terrorists. America will benefit from their more thorough interrogations. Saddam Hussein has demonstrated a willingness to use violence to control his country and eliminate dissent and competitors. Who has the moral high ground here? Based on what? In the end, how much violence is too much? When does it cross the line? Where is the line? And does it really matter who is crossing it?