Salt and Fire

Filmed in Bolivia, Salt and Fire (2016) is another episode from from Werner Herzog’s catalogue of man-vs-nature stories. This time, Herzog’s fascination for Latin American nature is presented as a manner of critique to environmental studies that separate human interrelations from their “objective” measurements of natural disasters. A scientific delegation funded by the United Nations travels to Latin America to finish their studies of Uturunku, an active supervolcano whose eruption could cause a worldwide catastrophe. Upon arrival, the delegation is taken hostage by the CEO of an international company that has been declared responsible for producing the ecological disaster in Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flats in the world, whose growing toxicity will soon affect the surrounding villages.

A militia group led by a company easily bribes the government, police, and people in the airport to take their place when the international scientific delegation arrives. With fake documents, they convince the group that there was a change of plans and then take them hostage to an unknown location on the mountains.

As in Aguirre, Wrath of God, the plot of this Herzog movie develops around mystery and the unknown. Soon the dialogues are only between the leader of the scientific delegation Laura Sommerfeld (Veronica Ferres) and the CEO Matt Riley (Michael Shannon). Many days pass and the long conversations of Laura and Riley only confirm that there is something that we do not know. We see a lot of dysmorphic art distorting reality or exposing a different one. Typical of Herzog’s nihilist messages of his movies. Everything is in question.

Laura is taken to an island in the middle of the Salar de Uyuni and she is abandoned with two blind children called Huascar and Atahualpa. After a week, the few supplies Laura and the kids had on the island are at an end. Riley comes back and explains that everything was part of a plan, from the hostage-taking to the week with the two blind children in the island. The mystery is exposed. The salt flats were a man-made disaster (Laura already knew that), but Riley wanted Laura to understand that studies of nature with statistics and calculations could not reflect a deeper layer of the problem which is the human cost of the disaster.

Bolivian landscapes are the perfect set for Herzog's story. As in many of his movies, Latin American history, resources, culture, people and landscapes are the inspiration for fascinating plots for fictional stories. Herzog portrays the beautiful scenery of the Bolivian salt flats and Andean volcanos, but at the same time presents another reality in which those same elements could be equally disastrous. Latin America can be dangerous, its governments easily corrupted, its tourists easily kidnapped, but it can also be a beautiful place with incredible geological formations that are so magnificent that seem close to fantasy. We can see this dichotomy at the end of the movie. Riley is tormented about the noxious atmosphere his company has created around the salt flats which killed the mother of Huascar and Atahualpa (the same toxins caused their blindness), but then they take pictures that foreground the remarkable beauty that looks like it is taken from a surreal painting.

Though the extraordinary locations of the movie are real, Bolivia is not once mentioned throughout the movie. the salt flats and the volcano are the only places that are important. Other locations, like the airport where the group arrives or the village to which they are taken, remain anonymous. There is nothing to learn about Latin America in this movie. How can someone learn something from a fictional place with fictional history? Following the pattern of Herzog's previous films, this movie asks us to make our conclusions. Everything in this movie (locations, kidnapping, dialogues, images) exposes different manner to see reality, multiple intentions, theories and points of view.

Tambien la Lluvia (Even the Rain)

También la Lluvia (Even the rain) is a 2010 Spanish movie directed by Icíar Bollaín. It is a history and political drama production that takes place in Bolivia, which includes a dual narrative. The first one is the creation of a movie about the first religious opposition to the enslavement of indigenous people in New Spain during the colonization period. The second one recounts the struggles of poor communities to protect their right to get drinking water opposing a process of national privatization of its supply, carried by an agreement between the city´s municipality and a multinational company. The movie production crew hires locals to perform as extras in the project, while at the same time the political tensions intensify behind cameras. The movie illustrates the events of the Cochabamba water war, as it is known in Bolivia´s history, which took place from 1999 to 2000 and resolved in the expulsion of the multinational and the dissolution of the water privatization law that started the conflict.

The movie director Sebastián (Gael García Bernal) travels to Bolivia with a crew formed of Latin American and Spanish people in search for the place and people that will bring his movie the most accurate amount of realism compared to how the events really happened (but they only get what is within their low-budget). Sebastián chooses Bolivia because of its tropical landscape and the facial features of its people which are alike the Taino tribe that Colón first found in his arrival to the Caribbean. His Spanish executive producer, Costa (Luis Tosar), has arranged a casting call in the heights of a Cochabamba neighbourhood, where more than hundred people wait for even the smallest job opportunity. From this initial part, Bolivia is shown as an impoverished place and its people always act in community, which can turn violent if unheard, especially among those with Quechua ancestry. In both revolutionary stories (one led by the Indians in the movie, the other by the people in Cochabamba), the leadership is in the hands of Daniel, a member of the Cochabamba community and activist. He becomes the main character in the movie performing as Atuey, whose crucifixion starts an Indian revolt against the Catholic Crown rule. However, Daniel´s involvement in the water war complicates the project but also makes all the crew aware of the injustices committed in the region, so much that Costa (who showed very little interest at the beginning) ends up providing support to the “insurgents”.

As we can see in the movie, the Bolivian government and national media labelled the protest as an anti-modernization rebellion that had the objective to destabilize a legitimate democratic state. However, just like Sebastián’s character wants to give a voice to the other side of history, to the Indians, in the same way, Bollaín opens the floor to explain the water war favouring the protesters’ viewpoint. By doing this, the plot sympathies with a socialist ideology highly critical of globalization and neoliberalist practices such as the commodification and privatization of services and natural resources. The story advocates for an understanding of social justice through the eyes of the poor, the worker, the exploited, and thus all those social issues shape our perception of Latin American societies and their essence, at least the one portrayed here.

One of the most impactful scenes shows both narratives merging. The leader Atuey brings about a demonstration of all the oppressed Indians against the armed Spanish conquistadors (apparently more powerful, but very small in number). The crowd of natives get uncontrollable after seen his leader being executed. Right after the scene is over, a group of police officers arrive to take prisoner the revolt leader Daniel (Atuey), but all the local people that were acting in the movie successfully rise to defend him. This merging of the two stories duplicates a narrative of struggle and rebellion that let us with one conclusion: not much has changed since colonization. How is so? What about modernity? The critique of modernity is self-evident. The so-called “modernity” of the neoliberal society is just a name given to new forms of exploitation of the same groups: the indigenous and the poor workers in the Cochabamba case.

What does the portrayal of these events tell us about Latin American society? The coloniality of power relations has become a difficult problem to overcome in Latin America. At the end of the movie, Daniel says that a demonstration with force was the only way to make a meaningful change. That is what is being somehow justified with a socialist perspective. When people go to the streets to protest there is an actual reason, a real discomfort, it is not only a selfish act, especially when those people are influenced by a long history of struggle that comes from colonization. Revolutionary rebellions are what it takes in Latin America to stop the socially careless, and economic driven forces of global neoliberalism.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Two American outlaws escaping to Bolivia at the turn of the century seems like improbable concept for a movie, but Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is loosely based on the real lives of Robert LeRoy Parker (alias Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (alias the Sundance Kid). The history of this notorious duo is an amalgamation of fact, hearsay, journalistic sensationalism and American Old West mythmaking. What director George Roy Hill offers is a portrait of a powerful friendship that stayed true under the stresses of pursuit by lawmen who wanted them dead or alive, love for the same woman, relocation to a foreign continent, and the impossibility of escaping their past.

Early in the film, Cassidy (played by Paul Newman) explains his plan to Sundance (played by Robert Redford) to go prospecting in mineral-rich Bolivia. Cassidy is the brains of the operation while Sundance is a lightning fast gunslinger. When they return to the Hole in the Wall Gang hideout, a member challenges Cassidy for its leadership. Cassidy boots him in the crotch then appropriates the idea of robbing the Union Pacific Flyer twice, for its owners would refill the train with money not expecting a robbery on the return trip. After a successful hold-up, Cassidy and Sundance gloat on a balcony overlooking the mayor, who is ineffectually trying to rally townsfolk to catch the Gang. We meet Etta, who while being the devoted girlfriend of the gruff and reticent Sundance, has a tender relationship with the affable Cassidy. This is illustrated in a dialogue-free interlude where they ride a bike and monkey about in the countryside to the soundtrack of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”

The mood becomes darker and strained when, after they are surprised during the second train robbery by cavalry hired by the railway tycoon, they are forced into a lengthy chase sequence. The Hole in the Wall Gang splits in separate directions, but the pursuers follow Cassidy and Sundance. They are betrayed while hiding out at a brothel and denied amnesty by a friendly sheriff, who tells the pair of their inevitable demise. The posse tracks them through the night and the next day with amazing skill and persistence; the pair determines that among them are the expert Indian tracker Lord Baltimore and notoriously tough lawman Joe Lefors. Cassidy and Sundance are pursued over much terrain before being forced to jump from a cliff and be carried away by the rapids far below. They end up back with Etta and learn that E.H. Harriman, the railway tycoon, put together the outfit to stay on their track until they were killed. At this point they decide to go to Bolivia, and Etta states her intent to go with them, but adds ominously that she wants to be absent when they are finally killed.

The journey is illustrated in a series of sepia photographs. When the trio arrive in their Bolivian destination they are dismayed by its rustic appearance, and Sundance curses Cassidy for his harebrained ideas. They resume their criminal life after Etta gives the men Spanish lessons with “specialized vocabulary” for bank hold-ups. A humorous sequence shows the pair blundering through a robbery with a Spanish crib-sheet, and struggling to recite with Etta phrases such as “This is a robbery. Esto es un robo.” Soon their routine is perfected and they are living decadently, with wanted posters for the “Bandidos Yanquis” showing their notoriety. The honeymoon is over, however, when a potential sighting of Joe Lefors scares Cassidy into wanting to go straight. The men are hired as bodyguards for a humble and eccentric American mine owner, which they fail at when Bolivian bandits kill him. Being forced to kill the bandits shakes Cassidy, who has never killed a man, and the pair decide to return to robbery. Etta, perhaps with a premonition of their demise, leaves the next day. In the town of San Vicente, a boy recognizes a stolen mule and alerts the police to the outlaws. The police descend upon them, starting a climactic shoot-out in which Cassidy and Sundance are seriously wounded due to lack of ammunition. While the bloodied men are recovering strength in an abandoned building, poignantly discussing their next destination of Australia, the Bolivian military gathers outside. When the pair unwittingly exits the building, the camera captures them in a sepia-toned freeze frame to the sound of repeated volleys of rifle fire.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid enthralled the American public, evidenced by being amongst the 100 highest grossing films of all time (adjusted for inflation) and multiple Academy Award accolades. The pathos generated by the close male friendship between the outlaws, who are bound to meet with an untimely death, plus their fetching yet vulnerable female counterpart, largely accounts for the film’s appeal. However, the heroes are also partly conceived as Old West Robin Hoods, an archetype with universal appeal. Partly so because they rob from the rich and keep for themselves. In the United States, the noose of capitalism and modernity tightens around Cassidy, an older cowboy who remembers freer and simpler times; he curses the newly impenetrable banks, the immensely rich and powerful railroad barons, and the bicycle, a modern invention that threatens to replace the horse. He rebels against this by blowing up trains and appropriating easily and ill-gotten wealth, but then is forced to escape to Latin America. In doing so, Cassidy steps multiple decades back in time. Bolivia recalls California in the height of the Gold Rush, when humble but hardworking folk could become rich, not just aristocratic sons who inherit railroads. The charmingly outdated Bolivia is the only apt place for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, symbolic of the romantic frontier spirit outmoded by the modern commercial one, to meet with their inevitable death.