South of the Border

By the end of the twentieth century the United States became head of international politics establishing its neoliberal ideology at a global scale. Western capitalism apparently buried the ideals of a once expanding communism (and socialism) which influence in the Americas only remained in Cuba, which the United States made sure to block and isolate from the rest of the world system. Nevertheless, as the classic liberalism revived with neoliberalism, in the same way the old and feared socialism is comes restored and stronger with the name of “The Socialism of the Twenty-first Century”. Oliver Stone’s South of the Border (2009) is a documentary that recounts the realities of five countries that have turned their traditional right-wing politics to a charismatic left-wing revolutionary mandate of “the people.” The socialist leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, and Ecuador share their opinion of the effecto of United States foreign policy on their countries and how their new movement in the protection of the most vulnerable groups (the poor, the indigenous and the worker) represents independence and real progress for all Latin American societies.

The documentary starts with a recollection of North American news that talks about Hugo Chavez’s “dictatorship” in Venezuela. Stone puts together media reports depicting Chavez’s government as a threat to the United States and all the Western democratic system like Cuba once was. However, by travelling to Venezuela, experiencing the life of its people beyond what is presented on the screen, and personality interviewing Chavez, the narrative of the documentary leans to left to supports the truth that is being hidden by the media (media that is probably influenced by people or corporations that protect American neoliberalist interests). There are very few personal comments from the director about the ideology since providing Chavez with an open floor to criticize U.S interventions in Latin America is more than self-evident support to the new ideological wave developing in most countries south of the U.S-Mexico border. In addition, the only times the United States’ perspective or comments on Latin American left-wing governments are shown, they are considered overreaction resulting from national security paranoia, conspiracy theories, or justification for controlling the region and its natural resources such as the Venezuelan oil.

Stone problematizes and to some extent destroys the idea that everything happening south of the border (politics, economy, culture) is the same. Chavez, for example, created policy that would benefit the lowest economic classes in the country and that meant using Venezuelan oil in Venezuela and for Venezuelans (cutting the supply to the United States). The Bush administration considered Chavez’s national policy dangerous for democracy and threatening for his government, creating tension between the two countries. When other of South America joined the new socialist movement, the United States unsuccessfully conspired to take their governments down because they were all the same as Venezuela, thus more anti-US leaders, less resource-access. On the other hand, we hear interviews from each socialist leader, Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Lula Da Silva in Brazil, the Kirchner couple in Argentina, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Each of them is intentionally shown very different materially, and ideologically speaking. Chavez with a military background, Morales a coca-grower indigenous, Lula a metalworker and labour union member, the Kirchner shown in their elegant house, and Correa with a revolutionary discourse. Each country has a different history and experiences different realities, but they all have been subjected to and exploited by American neoliberalism.

Cuba comes back to the story. For the Bush administration, Cuban communism might not be a threat or influence in the United States anymore, however, it could have influenced other Latin American countries. In contrast, how the other five countries of the documentary are portrayed, there is no support to Cuba or any of its policies. The interview with Fidel Castros’ brother is included to clear the misconception that the Socialism of the Twenty-First Century is the same as communism. In numerous occasions each president is asked whether the Cuban communism is the “grandfather” of their projects (since the “father” would be Venezuelan Chavismo) or at least it has inspired them, but the answer is clear: no, they share ideology and their projects seem to follow the same pattern, but socialism developed independently.

The last part of the documentary summarizes all the encounters with the socialist leaders, the paranoia and sensationalism of American news, and Latin America’s history of struggles due to indiscriminate foreign intervention in their politics. In addition, possible unfolding of the socialist wave of South America is discussed. Nowadays, this discourse could need upgrades, but by that time Obama represented hope and openness to new ideas that could clear Bush’s intolerance and reconstruct alliances with Latin America. Stone not only supports this new social and political movement, but he suggests that its expansion to northern countries in Latin America has shown that an historical change is starting.

Political changes like this new form of socialism that has decreased poverty, has increased technological and social development, and has stood up against neoimperialist forces to protect their sovereignty might be something that the United States is lacking. Latin America is portrayed as a victim of US foreign policy, powerless in the face of the economic and political control the United State has over most international organizations. Latin American politics are the result of the direct and indirect oppression, and socialism re-emerges within those conditions and to change them in favour of its people.

The Undefeated

The Undefeated (1969) tells the story of ex-Union Colonel John Henry Thomas (played by John Wayne) and ex-Confederate Colonel James Langdon (played by Rock Hudson) as they cross paths in Mexico and become caught up in the Franco-Mexican War (1862-1867).

The Civil War (1861-1865) stripped many wealthy Southerners of their estates, including ex-Confederate Colonel James Langdon and his community of about four dozen men, women and children. With nothing to loose in the United States, Langdon accepts an offer from Emperor Maximilian to lead his people over one thousand miles to the Mexican state of Durango, where an escort will await to take them to Mexico City. Meanwhile, Colonel John Henry Thomas is resigning from the United States Army, taking ten loyal men with him. Thomas plans to take the men to capture wild horses to sell to the army, which will enable them to restart their post-war lives. After an impressive round-up of three thousand horses, Thomas meets with United States Army purchasers who make him a poor offer. Thomas smells a scam and sells the horses instead to representatives of Maximilian, who promise to make payment upon their delivery on the Durango plains. Both Langdon’s wagon convoy and Thomas’s herders cross the border into Mexico.

The parties become aware of each other when Blue Boy, Thomas’s adopted Cherokee son, spots the tracks left by the Confederates as well as a group pursuing them. They approach the Confederate camp and despite highly-strung Civil War tensions stay the night. Surely enough, they are ambushed they next day by Mexican bandits demanding that they surrender their supplies and women. The Americans dispel their attackers with the Confederates shooting from within a tight circle of wagons and the Yankees delivering a surprise attack on the flanks. The battle results in an incipient brotherhood between Americans divided by Civil War allegiances, a theme developed to a greater extent in the Fourth of July party that follows, and a secretive crush begins between Blue Boy and Langdon’s teenage daughter Charlotte. However, the mood turns ominous as the French cavalry escort to the Confederates is found dead, murdered by Juaristas, and Blue Boy is beaten up by a bigoted Confederate captain.

Matters worsen when the Confederates are received in a Durango town with great fanfare, but once trapped inside a court yard find themselves the victims of an elaborate Juarista ambush. General Rojas singles out an astounded Colonel Langdon to explain that the Maximilian-affiliated Confederates are considered Juarista enemies. He explains that because Maximilian could not acquire any more European soldiers to support his reign, he is bringing down Confederates after the Civil War. Rojas demands that Langdon go to Thomas, who is awaiting payment for the herd nearby, and tell him that he bring the horses or the Confederates will be shot. Though Langdon is loathe to ask anything of a Yankee, he duly meets with Thomas. Though Thomas’s men will lose their payoff, their Christian mercy and American brotherhood lead to a decision to help the Confederates. As Langdon’s men are being selected for execution, Thomas and his men rally the herd into motion with guns blazing and break through a line of French cavalry that attempt to impede them. Horses pour into the plaza just in time and Rojas halts the firing squad. In an unconventional conclusion to an armed hostage situation, the three men drink together, each toasting to his political affiliation: Mexico, the United States, and the Confederacy.

The Undefeated offers a good piece of advice for any traveler: know the political climate of the country you are about to visit. John is savvy about the dangers of Mexico from the beginning. When his men ask if he is expecting trouble, John replies sardonically, “We got Maximilian on one hand and Juarez on the other, and bandits in between. On top of that, we’re Americans in Mexico taking a cavy of horses to a very unpopular government. Why should we expect trouble?” Langdon, on the other hand, did not realize his role in this geopolitical mire until held at gunpoint. Many Western movies portray American cowboys blundering into Mexican wars and coming to the aid of the morally righteous underdog; in The Undefeated, Thomas surrenders the horses badly needed by the Juaristas, but he had to be coerced into doing so as he was closing the deal with Maximilian. Even though the Americans to not extend their moral responsibility to the Mexicans, nor do they change the course of foreign political affairs unless made to do so, the Juaristas are nobly portrayed. It is notable that despite having ambushed the Americans, General Rojas is portrayed as dignified and not cruel; he is visibly relieved to call off the execution.

Above all, the core theme of The Undefeated is unity. The toast given at the end between Rojas, Langdon and Thomas is symbolic of pan-American unity, a favourite theme in United States history since the Monroe Doctrine which called for the U.S. to be vigilant for European incursions into “its” hemisphere. If Mexicans and Americans can unite against the French, so too can the Confederates and Unionists unite against the Mexicans. The extended scene of the Fourth of July party during a hiatus from attacks from Mexican bandits and Juaristas shows how a body politic can be brought together despite its diversity both by symbolic national events and a common enemy threat. Also, Blue Boy and Charlotte make their mutual affection public, and this is well-received by both of their fathers. This union between Native American and white Southern youths seems to celebrate diversity and the coexistence of cultures, however in the final scene we see that Blue Boy has cut his traditionally long hair to the shortness of a typical Anglo-American boy, turning him from a symbol of positive inter-racial relationships to the power of white American cultural hegemony.

Four Days in September

Four Days in September (1997) is based on Fernando Gabeira's book O Que E Isso, Companheiro? (What is this, Comrade?), which tells the true story of his involvement in the kidnapping of American Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick in September of 1969. The kidnapping was an act of resistance to the military regime that had been in power since 1964, and Gabeira's involvement in it has left him unable to acquire an American visa and enter the United States since '69. After the kidnapping, Gabeira was exiled from Brazil until the regime ended in 1979. He is now an active Brazilian politician who helped found the Brazilian Green Party and is a federal deputy for the state of Rio de Janeiro.

The film begins with a montage of black and white pictures of Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s, with the song "Garota de Ipanema" playing in the background. The viewer is informed of the 1964 military coup and the subsequent suspension of civil rights and freedoms by the junta in 1968. The first scene shows the streets of Rio full of protesters, yelling for the end of dictatorship. Among them is young Fernando Gabeira. Following this are scenes of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon and the celebration at the American Embassy in Rio, where Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick cuts a cake in the shape of the moon and is congratulated by Brazilian diplomats. Fernando and his friends Cesar and Arturo are watching the space transmission on T.V., pointing out critically that the United States is using their space program as a weapon in the Cold War. It is clear that these three young men are Communists, the very kind abhorred by the military government. When the T.V. is turned off, Cesar and Fernando inform Arturo that they are joining the armed resistance against the military government, and that they would like him to join. Arturo refuses, saying he does not want to risk his life. The following scene shows members of the official resistance movement blindfolding Fernando and taking him to a safe house, where he is introduced to his fellow recruits in the radical leftist MR-8 organization. They are all introduced under false names. The group consists of a pretty young woman, Renee, and three young men, Julio, Oswaldo, and Brandao. Oswaldo is Cesar's false name, but Cesar and Fernando pretend not to know each other. The leaders of the group are the beautiful tough-talking Comrade Maria and the muscular Marcao. Fernando falls in love with Maria at first sight. The revolutionaries' job is to forget their old lives, their friends and family, and fight the military dictatorship by creating civil unrest using guerrilla tactics. Their first job is a bank heist, which is successful except for the fact that Cesar is captured by the police after being shot in the leg while trying to escape. He is tortured and interrogated by secret service agent Henrique, but since he knows only false names, the interrogation is useless. The members of MR-8 are frustrated with the lack of media coverage their bank heist has received, and realize they must do something of more consequence to get attention for their cause. Fernando comes up with the idea of kidnapping the American Ambassador, which is sure to get international media coverage.

Experienced guerrilla fighters Jonas and Toledo join the group and help plan the kidnapping. Renee makes a contact with the head of security for the American Embassy in order to get the necessary information for the job. When the group has set up a safe house and been provided with the necessary supplies, they execute the kidnapping, blockading the Ambassador's limousine and taking him blindfolded to the safe house. Their demands to the military government are the release and transport to Mexico of 15 political prisoners, including Cesar. If these demands are not met within 48 hours, the ambassador will be killed. The following hours are stressful and strange for the kidnappers, who sit silently in the house, sweating, and waiting. During this period, Maria gives in to Fernando's advances and they have a passionate encounter. The Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick is revealed to be a very educated, kindly, and courageous man, for whom Fernando and Renee especially have much sympathy. He is treated kindly by all the kidnappers, who wear black hoods over their heads so that he cannot see their faces. Elbrick is allowed to write a letter to his wife to prove that he is alive, as well as being given food and drink. Fernando spends some time talking with him about politics, a conversation which convinces Elbrick that his kidnappers are just young kids caught up in an ideological fervour, and fundamentally good people. Jonas and Toledo question Elbrick, using Fernando as a translator, and ask him if the U.S. supports the military government. Elbrick answers that the United States does not support any non-democratically elected governments, and that military juntas are supposed to be in place for a short time only. This answer pleases the kidnappers. The news reports MR-8's actions favourably, reading out their demands to the public. This makes the group very happy, their political message finally being transmitted country-wide. When Fernando goes to get some food at a nearby pizza place, the taxi driver who gives him a ride tells him that the kidnappers are heroes for the Brazilian people.

Unbeknownst to Fernando, the purchase of a large number of pizzas raises suspicion, and the police are informed. This leads the secret service to discover the location of the safe house. They do not, however, invade, because they are afraid the Ambassador will be killed. As the deadline for the ransom approaches, the kidnappers must decide who will kill the Ambassador, and none of them wants to do it. Jonas, who hates Fernando, instructs Fernando to do it. Minutes before the deadline, the authorities contact the group and agree to their demands. Fernando and the Ambassador are relieved that no one has to get hurt. The following day, television footage of the 15 political prisoners arriving at a Mexican airport convinces the kidnappers that their work is done. They prepare the Ambassador for his release. Renee has washed his clothes and helps him get dressed. When he is ready, they drive to the Maracana Stadium, where a soccer game has just taken place, to release him. On the way, the secret service follows them in a car, but a police vehicle cuts the secret service off, insisting that the Ambassador return home safely. Elbrick is released among the crowds of soccer fans, and the kidnappers escape unscathed. In a touching scene, Elbrick is reunited with his wife Elvira, who is sick with worry. For the following month, the kidnappers must remain completely in hiding, but Fernando is so desperate to see Maria that he goes to her house to spend some time with her. At this point, the police barge in and capture both young people. Eight months later, however, another resistance group kidnaps the German Ambassador and demands the release of Fernando and his comrades. The demands are met, and Fernando, Maria, and the rest of the kidnappers are sent to Algeria. They are granted political asylum in Britain. Democracy returns to Brazil in 1989.

The Communist ideology that pervades this film portrays a very leftist-oriented Brazil. The leftist movement in Brazil is strengthened and intensified by the opposite reactionary traits of the military government, a strength that has remained in Brazil until today. The backlash against the military government in the film is a stronger foundation for this Communism than is the Cold War; in no part of the film do the revolutionaries allude to the Soviet Union or Marxism. Theirs is a unique Latin American leftist movement. However, in order for this movement to gain a voice, it must involve itself with a main actor in the Cold War, the United States. Unexpectedly, the capitalist pig that the young communist kidnappers expected in the Ambassador turns out to be a dignified, kind, and intelligent man with whom they can discuss their ideological views. And so the Cold War is shown to be an absurd concept in Latin America, a war that is largely irrelevant to the social and political dynamics of its nations and only causes damage with its rhetoric. The film shows a Latin American left which is not related to the Cold War, but to the nature of its people.

The fact that the Ambassador's kidnapping is the main cause for attention to the resistance movement in Brazil shows that the United States is of central importance to politics in Latin America. Brazil's plight seems to be ignored by the world until America is involved. The film puts emphasis on the validity of the Brazilian struggle, and of Latin American politics in general, with or without the United States' involvement. The fact that the Ambassador is truly external to the Brazilian political conflict of the 60s and 70s implies that the United States does not belong in Latin American politics because it too is fundamentally external to Latin America's political environment.

Rough Riders’ Round-up

Rough Riders’ Round-up (1939) is one of the earlier films featuring the suave singing cowboy Roy Rogers and, like so many Westerns set on the Mexico-U.S. border, centers around a retrieval mission for an American outlaw gone south.

The film opens announcing that the Rough Riders have returned from Cuba, which was an actual American military force led by Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War. The men are sent to assist the border patrol in Arizona, where the gangster Arizona Jack has been raiding ranches and then hiding out in Mexico. The dilemma is that even though the border patrol chief wants to pursue Arizona Jack, a Mexican mayor reminds him that due to the present state of political tension he is unlikely to be given permission to enter Mexico with an army. When the Rough Riders visit a cantina, the chief orders the central characters Roy Rogers, Rusty Coburn, and Tommy Ward to detain a young woman traveling to Mexico and thereafter escort a carriage arriving from Mexico with $60,000 in gold. Unfortunately, a man working for Arizona Jack overhears this conversation and his gang brawls with the Rough Riders to make them miss the carriage. In the confusion, the girl escapes by hopping unknowingly into the carriage, Arizona Jack and his men chase the carriage down, rob its contents and kidnap the girl, and Tommy is fatally shot.

The chief holds Roy responsible for the casualties, the loss of the gold, and Arizona Jack’s escape and so suspends him from the border patrol. This is exactly the outcome Roy wanted, for his suspension means that he is no longer bound by border patrol regulations, and is thus free to bring Arizona Jack to justice. The villain, and his henchmen disguised as Mexicans, are hiding out in a small Mexican town. As soon as Roy and Rusty enter they are ambushed and locked in a room alongside the young woman, whose name is Dorothy Blair. She is fleeing from her father who disapproved of her marrying George Lanning, an employee at his Mexico-based mine. Unbeknown to the trio, Lanning is a crook who has been facilitating Arizona Jack’s robberies for a cut of the gold. Lanning tells Arizona Jack to let Dorothy go, but make it look like an escape so that he cannot be implicated. However, Roy sees through the deception. When Roy and Rusty escape, Roy sends Rusty to bring the other Rough Riders to Mexico, and goes to tell the Blairs that they have been swindled.

Arizona Jack and his men lay siege to the Blair homestead while Roy leads the father and daughter out the back door. Just in the nick of time, Rusty arrives with the Rough Riders and they round up the swiftly surrendering Arizona Jack gang. The final scene shows a fireside meeting with Roy and Rusty, the border patrol chief and the Mexican mayor, and the Blairs. The chief and the mayor, both accountable to the bureaucratic demands of their institutions, establish that they will be vague on the geographic details when reporting on these events so as to not cause strife between their countries. They also tell Roy and Rusty that they are willing to overlook their procedural “irregularities” and the hero receives a modest, yet grateful, handshake from the Blairs. It is fitting that in the film, produced during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, all is finally resolved in a "fireside chat."

For such a simple plot, Rough Riders’ Round-up has an incredibly well-developed geopolitical context. The themes of hegemony, interventionism and national security crop up throughout, themes that were just as important to Americans when the film was set (1900, post Spanish-American War) as when it was made (1939, beginning of World War II). The Spanish-American War was motivated by an American foreign policy that was expansionist and also sought to expel foreign influence from the hemisphere. In Rough Riders’ Round-up, the U.S. secured the Caribbean by replacing Spain as the regional hegemon, and then had to exercise diplomacy with Mexico while at the same time securing its southern border. The result is that the previously open border is sealed off with bureaucratic red tape. For example, Dorothy is surprised to learn that she needs a passport to enter Mexico due to border patrol being tougher these days, and when Roy hears her plan to evade the border patrol he sternly detains her. The military as well as civilians must respect closed border policy; while the countries are in a diplomatically tense period, the border patrol chief cannot take his troops south as he once did. Fortunately for him Roy Rogers exists, a hero who represents an exemption from non-interventionist rules in a time of crisis, and ultimately saves the day.

Rough Riders’ Round-up depicts Mexico as benign, but it does so in an unusual way: by playing with the typical negative cinematic portrayal of Mexicans, it makes a conscious attempt to confront the its viewers' prejudices. Western movie audiences, especially of that era, were accustomed to the villains being Mexican banditos. This iconography is present in Rough Riders’ Round-up, but in the form of the Arizona Jack gang disguising themselves as Mexican banditos. Viewers must adjust their expectations when realizing that the threat comes from Americans, not Mexicans. In contrast, the main Mexican character, the mayor with whom the border patrol chief is perpetually consorting, is represented as having a refined character and being committed to cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico. He rationally dissuades the chief from crossing the border, and then diplomatically handles the fact that Roy crosses it anyway. When Roy and Rusty are locked-up next to a melodramatically behaving Dorothy, Roy says to her, “Trouble with you is you’ve been reading the wrong kind of novels” and Rusty adds, “and this happens to be a true story.” In this scene, the film makes a self-referential jab at the exaggeration typical of the Western genre, positing itself as the truthful projection of the Old West and its southern neighbour.

The Man from Monterey

The Man from Monterey (1933) stars John Wayne as Captain John Holmes, an all-American hero who saves Don Jose Castanares from loosing his ranch to land grabbers and his daughter to a sham marriage in pre-Union California.

The opening scene presents the premise of The Man from Monterey: The unscrupulous Don Pablo Gonzales is planning to acquire the ranch of long-time friend Don Jose Castanares by keeping him ignorant of an ultimatum by the United States government that Californians must register their lands by a certain day, or they will be turned into public domain. To ensure that he can claim title to this land, Don Pablo arranges for his dull and pithless son Don Luis to marry Don Jose’s spirited daughter Dolores. Subsequently, the bombastic Mexican sidekick is introduced to the plot, who achieves comedic effect by constantly repeating his long-winded name, Felipe Guadalupe Constacio Delgado Santa Cruz de la Varranca. He teams up with Captain John Holmes after Holmes valiantly steps in as Don Luis is victimizing him. This is the first of numerous run-ins between Holmes and Don Luis in which the former proves himself the better man.

Dolores falls for Holmes after a spectacular display of chivalry, using his fine horsemanship to save her in her runaway carriage after its driver was shot off by bandits. Little do they know that the bandits were hired by Don Luis so that he could display his chivalry, but instead he watches impotently from the sidelines. Holmes, a cavalry officer, has been charged with informing Don Jose that he must register his lands, so Don Pablo hires some American thugs to detain him. A fellow officer shows up and threatens to arrest their leader Jake Morgan, but Holmes skillfully defuses the situation, thereby earning an ally in Morgan. Don Pablo ups the ante by having Don Jose kidnapped, and tells a grieving Dolores that he cannot help her unless she concedes to marrying his son, which she woefully does.

At first Holmes suspects the Morgan gang, but after pinning the kidnapping on Don Pablo, he hatches a plan to infiltrate the wedding. Don Luis’s mistress Anita is employed to masquerade as Dolores, which she does by remaining veiled until the vows have been taken, meanwhile Holmes locates and rescues Don Jose, making use of a cross-dressing Felipe as a diversion. A duel ensues between Holmes and Don Luis, and just when Holmes is being overwhelmed by men loyal to Don Luis, a bizarre psychic communication occurs between the cowboy and his horse, who gallops to the Morgan gang and brings them to assist Holmes. With the conspiracy uncovered and its perpetrators defeated, Holmes and Dolores throw themselves into an embrace which brings the film to a close.

The Man from Monterey is set when America gained sovereignty over California at the end of the Mexican-American War (1946-1948) and portrays its shifting demographic and political character. Firstly, Anglo Americans are moving into the newly acquired territory, which is not appreciated by the Gonzaleses, the younger of which sneers: “As far as I’m concerned, gringos are all robbers.” There is truth to this statement; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) is one of the biggest land-grabs in history, when the U.S. forcibly incorporated almost half of Mexican territory. However, the filmmakers took pains to make U.S. hegemony appear benevolent; as Holmes explains to Don Jose: “The government has taken these measures for your protection, not to rob you. In no other way can we protect you from all the land-grabbers in California.” At the same time, Holmes tells the Morgan gang, “If I can’t persuade [Don Jose] to register his land, you can move in as fast as the law allows.” Benevolence only goes so far as American interests are concerned. There is a racial difference between the darker-skinned Mexican common-folk and the Hispanic upper class who fret about their land entitlements from the King of Spain; there is an implication that the Hispanic characters do not truly own the land, nor do the mestizo Mexicans, whereas the American characters speak of their right to it.

The supposed benevolence, orderliness and fairness of U.S. hegemony are embodied in the person of John Wayne. This establishes America as an idealized masculine power, in comparison with Europe, embodied by the incapable Don Luis, and Mexico, embodied by the servile Felipe. Wayne epitomizes the masculine ideal by being supremely competent in his every endeavor; he is a just and thorough lawman, a suave and successful lover, and a skilled and valiant fighter. Dolores pines for a man of “energy and ambition” and Holmes excels in both. The other male protagonists starkly contrast to the hero. Don Luis is a mean-spirited and deceitful person, so impotent that he stands by while Holmes steals Dolores and he relies on his aged father to carry out their plot. Felipe is emasculated on numerous accounts including his dog-like devotion to Holmes, his childish superstitions about fortune-telling cards, and ultimately donning the clothes of an old woman. These allegorical figures allow the spotlight to fall on Wayne, an icon that fuses Americanness and masculinity like few others have done.

Major Dundee

The title character of Major Dundee (1965) induces emotions atypical for a Western hero: he can be both pitied for his broken yet dogged spirit, and derided for his poor moral and tactical judgment. At the same time, Major Dundee fits the archetype of the hard-eyed and world-weary cowboy who is driven by two things: serving justice where others have failed, and achieving atonement for his murky past. This dual mission takes the form of heading to Mexico with with a ragtag army of Union soldiers, Confederate prisoners and common criminals, in order to hunt down Sierra Charriba, an Apache warrior who has been terrorizing the southern United States.

Major Dundee opens with Charriba and his Apache warriors raiding a New Mexico settlement; the fire-gutted buildings, blood-streaked man hanging upside-down, and the prone girl riddled arrows tell the viewer that they are wantonly brutal and thus deserving of vengeance. Upon witnessing this massacre, and hearing that the Apache have kidnapped the male children, Dundee resolves to settle scores with Charriba. The film is set towards the end of the Civil War, and to discipline Dundee for a breach in conduct he has been stationed in a prison for Confederate soldiers. Here he builds his army to capture Charriba, offering Union soldiers relief from their prison duties and the prisoners with parole. Dundee is warned that he will be shot for pursuing this dangerous course of action but, protocol be damned, he goes ahead. Soon he has amassed supplies and selected his men, notably Captain Tyreen and his band of Confederates, who have painfully swallowed their pride and agreed to help Dundee only until Charriba is taken or destroyed.

Five weeks into Mexico, where the Apache retreat for the winter, Dundee and his men lose track of Charriba. Unexpectedly, the kidnapped boys are recovered when an Apache brings them to the camp, but the good faith is shown to be false when they are ambushed and suffer dispiriting losses. Needing supplies, they stop by a Mexican town, but find an impoverished people under the thumb of the French colonial military. Dundee liberates the town, no doubt largely motivated by the beauty of its spokesperson, the expatriate Theresa Maria Santigo. A bountiful fiesta ensues late into the night. Sadly, after the gang relocates to another camp, the town is smote with a French reprisal. At this point Dundee, whose personal motives and soundness of judgment has been questioned by his dogged pursuit of Charriba despite loss of life, finds himself in moral dire straits. One of his lieutenants recovers a deserter among Tyreen’s men, as well as Theresa who fled the re-occupied town. Dundee is resolute on executing the deserter, despite Tyreen’s earnest appeals, and then Dundee is discovered shot by an Apache while having a post-coital dip in the lagoon with Theresa outside his own picket lines.

To have the arrowhead removed, Dundee is brought to Durango, where he falls into a perpetual drunken stupor and dismays Teresa by having sex with his Mexican nurse. When the French catch on to his presence Tyreen rescues him, despite his desperate, inebriated pleas to be left to perish. When he sobers up, the army lures Charriba into attacking their camp while they are supposedly asleep, only to launch an assault once they have the Apaches surrounded. Surprisingly, the legendary Charriba is killed not by Dundee or Tyreen, but a fresh-faced young soldier who shoots him unawares, then watches his rag-doll body tumble downhill. After the villian’s anticlimactic death, the army gallops back to the United States, but find themselves sandwiched between French military units chasing them behind and blocking the Rio Grande in front. Pitting their American ingenuity and determination against the superior numbers of the French, they manage to break through to American soil. Captain Tyreen looses his life valiantly, and Dundee leads on whoever is left of his ragtag army, without a hint of what future lies ahead.

Major Dundee is set during an epoch of great changes to the political map: the Mexico-U.S. border shifted, the U.S. underwent a Civil War, Mexico experienced an imposed French monarchy, and the U.S. fought to contain Native American tribes on reservations. The political entities involved in this turmoil are distinctly characterized in the film. The French are portrayed as a cold-blooded and rapacious colonial power, yet a law abiding one; they accuse Dundee of committing an “outrageous breach of international law” when he attacks them in Mexico, and do not chase Dundee across the border. The Americans, on the other hand, are maverick justice-seekers who liberate the underdog and chase down criminals regardless of their jurisdiction. The Apache also freely cross the border, but it is not suggested that their vagrancy and anti-American rancor may result from the persecution and displacement of their people.

Mexico is cast as the perpetual victim of looting and power struggles, and a place where the harshness of reality is easily soothed by liquor and women. As Theresa complains, “There seems to be no end of it. We’ve been attacked by Apaches, by local bandits, by freebooters from Texas, then liberated by the French and now the United States Cavalry.” Mexico is a revolving door for foreign criminals, oppressors and liberators and has become a beaten-down and impoverished nation as a result. Despite this, the Mexicans of Major Dundee are ready to have an extravagant fiesta at the drop of a hat, and the three female characters, the only characters from Mexico that receive significant screen time, readily give themselves to the American soldiers. However, this adventurer’s paradise cannot be enjoyed for long, as our heroes have to hightail it back to the Rio Grande the moment that the mission is complete. In Mexico, as Octavio Paz aficionados will agree, the fiesta and death are never far apart.

100 Rifles

Along with the typical Western elements of train hijacks and shoot-outs, 100 Rifles (1969) features almost all of the central characters provocatively wet and/or half-naked. However, when the protagonists are not dropping their clothes, they are delivering a story about personal responsibility, set against a very specific politico-economic backdrop.

The opening scene establishes that the Mexican military ruthlessly executes the Yaqui, the indigenous people of Sonora, upon the slightest provocation. Right in front of freedom-fighter Sarita (played by Raquel Welch), they hang her father for attempting to steal a rifle. In town, the brutality continues when nine Yaqui are presented before General Verdugo and gringo businessman Steven Grimes. As Grimes winces, Verdugo has them lined up so that he can slay three with a single bullet, minimizing his costs. One of our heroes, Yaqui Joe (played by Burt Reynolds), makes a ruckus so they can escape. His ad hoc plan fails and he is dragged before the sneering General, but an African-American police officer named Lyedecker (played by Jim Brown) halts the General from killing Joe, for he intends to bring Joe to justice in the United States for a bank robbery of $6000.

Lyedecker assumes that he can reason with the General, but finds out that his credentials are moot in Mexico, and he is just as much a prisoner as Joe. Joe escapes and Lyedecker pursues, and after outrunning the Mexican military they level with each other: Joe feels that in spending the $6000 on rifles to arm the Yaqui, target of an ethnic cleansing plan by Verdugo and his German advisors, he is finally doing something virtuous. Lyedecker aspires to be a full-time police officer, and catching this thief is another feather in his cap. They have little time to convince each other of their respective causes; the military arrives, handcuffs them together and brings them to where the rifles have been uncovered. The General wants to have them killed, alongside the Yaqui who are being executed for petty crimes, but as they face the firing squad Sarita appears and snipes the squad leader. She and other Yaqui pour over the walls, fight with the military, and retreat with the rifles and our heroes.

Joe and Lyedecker are constantly bickering, and Lyedecker resolutely wants no part in the Yaqui struggle; as soon as the military is off their backs he is going to haul Joe back north. The tides turn, however, when the military seize Yaqui children from a pillaged settlement to exchange for rifles, and Lyedecker feels compelled to assist in their rescue. The team successfully overtakes military forces, has a wild party, and leaves the ranch a blazing inferno. Lyedecker and Sarita have sex and his tenderness for her further aligns him with the Yaqui cause. Lyedecker and Joe find out from Grimes, who they took hostage at the ranch, where the stops are for the train to Nogales, where the General awaits. They hatch a plan to stall the train at a water tower, by means of diverting its military passengers with a half-naked Sarita showering beneath it, then hijack it and descend upon Verdugo. The plan works and a shoot-out ensues in Nogales. Lyedecker fires the last shot, killing Verdugo’s horse, which leaves the General to the Yaqui’s vengeance. With Sarita killed in battle, Lyedecker sees that the Yaqui need a leader and entrusts Joe to this task, returning back north empty-handed but a nobler man.

100 Rifles does not employ any conventions to inform the viewer that its context is based on historical fact, such as spoken/textual introduction, provision of dates, or use of real names, which is why elements of the story seem extreme or incongruous. However, there was indeed a epoch in Mexican history, the second reign of Porfirio Diaz (1884-1911), in which the Yaqui were systematically persecuted by the state, and if not killed were forced into labour. Also during this time, Germany adopted a policy of overhauling and equipping the Mexican military, in an effort to curb American influence. In 100 Rifles, this epoch provides a good vehicle for a range of social criticisms. To begin with, Steven Grimes is representative of American business interests in Mexico; he owns a railroad monopoly in Sonora that wrongly traverses Yaqui territory. He is duplicitous, self-interested and spineless; he has no qualms about the Yaqui executions but he does not have the stomach to watch it. His constant fretting about how “Washington” will react to events in Mexico implies that his activities are not legitimate, yet tacitly approved.

Furthermore, the power invested in the state and its representatives is also questioned, most notably when Joe and Lyedecker are moments away from death. Their desperate dialogue starts with incredulity that they are awaiting execution and ends with Joe condemning Lyedecker for wanting to be a part of the police establishment, claiming that the American justice system is just as brutal and arbitrary as the Mexican one. From amoral capitalism to skewed law enforcement, the Mexico of 100 Rifles is a place where ills seen in the United States are played out to greater extremes. These issues, with the added component of race, were particularly important in Civil Rights Movement era 1969 when the film was made. Race is also explored in the movie; it is centered on the racially-motivated slayings of Yaqui by the Mexican government, its leading characters are African-American and Yaqui-American, and it has an interracial sex scene. However, though Lyedecker found that in Mexico justice must be served outside the system, in that a criminal bank robber can become a heroic freedom fighter, he ultimately returns to the United States with faith in the system, determined to stay the course in becoming a cop.

Desperate Cargo

Crime thriller Desperate Cargo (1941) is focused entirely on action; the dialogue does nothing more than advance the plot and the settings are neither specific nor believable. Evidenced by the two settings in which the film takes place, the fictional cove Puerto Nueve of an unnamed Caribbean island, and a seaplane with warped interior dimensions, both place and space have minimal importance in Desperate Cargo; what matters is catching the crooks and getting the girl.

The opening sequence occurs in a balmy Puerto Nueve hotel and lays the groundwork for the crime around which the film revolves. Two men named Ryan and Dessler show up to see a man named Carter; maintaining his disguise even before the hotel staff, it is assumed he is a notorious crime boss. Carter has planned a heist and has hired the others to pull it off; their objective is to steal close to half a million dollars stored in a safe on a Trans-Caribbean Airways plane, which is due to arrive soon in Puerto Nueve. This may be peanuts for modern Hollywood thieves, but the figure elicits an awed whistle from Ryan.

Later we are introduced to leading man Tony Bronson, an American playboy who enlists bellboy Jose to drive away two flirtatious Latin women when platinum blond Ann Howard catches his attention. When Howard and her friend Peggy Morton, a self-proclaimed gold-digger, go out to dine with Morton’s long-time love interest and New York newspaper correspondent Jim Halsey, he invites Bronson along. The girls work their charms on Bronson, who happens to the Trans-Caribbean Airlines purser, lying that they must get back to their Broadway jobs in order to secure their passage back home. As they wait for the delayed plane there is some romantic chemistry between Howard and Bronson, but he is enraged when he catches on to her deception, accustomed to being the player rather than the one played.

Despite his wounded ego Bronson does not cancel the tickets, and all board the Trans-Carribbean Airways seaplane. Its lengthy corridors and spacious cabins demand a suspension of disbelief, but the action quickly distracts from volumetric details. The thieves from the opening scene brandish their guns before the passengers, who oddly seem more inconvenienced than terrified, and proceed to empty the safe. They land on water and tie up the crew, revealing their plan to escape via another plane and set this one alight. The passengers, led by the stoic Bronson, acquire a gun which leads to skirmishes and shootouts. Bronson saves the day by exiting the plane, swimming to where the crew is held, and leading the men in a surprise attack on the villains. The near death experience prompts Bronson and Howard to become enamored once again, and catalyzes a romantic relationship between Morton and Halsey. They arrive in Miami, we are informed by a diligent crew member, only four hours late. Not bad!

Some characters are in Puerto Nueve for business: the would-be thieves, Bronson, and Halsey. Others are there for pleasure: the vacationing Howard and Morton. However, the reason why this generic island has such a transient and diverse American presence is taken for granted, until one line of dialogue reveals the big picture in a flash. We hear Halsey, in mid-phone conversation to New York: “. . .and it’s encouraging to note the effect of the American Good Neighbor Policy in such a small town of Puerto Nueve. That’s all for today. I’ll cover the cotton angle tomorrow.” In contrast to the rest of the dialogue in Desperate Cargo, this line offers concrete geopolitical details; the island has recently and conspicuously been absorbed into the U.S. sphere of influence and its primary goods are of economic interest.

However, one wonders what this “effect” is, and how it might be experienced differently by Americans versus Caribbeans. The affluent hotel and smartly dressed Latin women suggest that American money has been infused into Puerto Nueve, but the only other evidence of American presence is a surge in crime and violence, from a knife inexplicably launched at Halsey, to a bar brawl involving Bronson, to the thieves hiding out while planning their heist. Interestingly, the film explores some murky ethical territory in heated exchanges between Morton and Howard, the former arguing that gold-digging is a perfectly equitable exchange of a woman’s entertaining presence for a man’s wealth and influence, and the latter morally opposed but resigning to necessity. In a film situated on an anonymous island into which U.S. free trade policy is embedding its claws, a discussion on the ethics of gold-digging is not entirely out of place.

That Night in Rio

Rio de Janeiro has long been famous for the boisterous festival that is Carnival. So what better opening scene for Irving Cummings’ musical comedy That Night in Rio than a performance of tiny waists, rotating hips, and shaking chests to the beat of "Chica Chica Boom Chic" sung by the samba queen herself, Carmen Miranda. Here we meet two of our protagonists, American Larry Martin (Don Ameche), impersonator and stage performer, and the beloved Carmen Miranda, putting on a fantastic number for the posh clientele at a theatre in Rio de Janeiro. Offstage we realize that the two stars are romantically entangled in a fierce love affair; fierce as in the shoe-throwing mood swings and rapid-fire Portuguese of Carmen who is convinced of Larry’s unfaithfulness, and Larry’s witty, American-drawl banter, able to win her over again and again. Back in the theatre, the distinguished Baron Manuel Duarte and his lovely wife Cecilia (Alice Faye) arrive and the crowd immediately grows silent. Coincidentally, it is now time for Larry to take the stage and perform his flawless impersonation of the Baron as a playboy, which the Baron finds amusing and Cecilia reluctantly accepts as the truth. This impersonation is truly flawless as both the characters of Larry and Baron Duarte are played by Don Ameche, and therein lies the key to the story.

After the show, the Baron attempts to hit on Carmen Miranda (who outright refuses his offers), while Cecilia and Larry share a romantic moment in the lounge singing a spontaneous melody about "a midnight serenade, when they met that night down in Rio." Of course, as a shrewd audience, we now feel that the outcome of this love rectangle is purely predictable; however, That Night in Rio should not be written off as your classic romantic comedy just yet. The plot thickens the next day when Baron Duarte realizes that his stocks have plummeted from a refused airline contract and he must get twenty million dollars in the next 48 hours before the news is released. While Manuel flies to Buenos Aires to strike a deal, his financial sidekicks Penna (S. Z. Sakall) and Salles (Curt Bois) cook up a plan to stall the investment banker Machado (J. Carrol Naish) into thinking all is well: they hire Larry to impersonate Manuel for the night of the Ambassador’s ball. Larry first goes with Penna and Salles to the stock exchange and finds that there are a few things he needs to learn, such as a simple, friendly wave to the floor actually means that you want to buy shares! At the ball, Larry plays the part perfectly, unaware that Cecilia is in on the plan as she enjoys the evening with a man who genuinely wants to spend time with her, rather than her playboy husband. The plan is almost foiled when Manuel returns early from Buenos Aires during the party, but he joins right in with the ploy. Here we see trick photography of the two men in the same room (both played by Don Ameche), along with rapid dialogue and deceptive decoys in order to evade Machado. Larry is finally cornered by Machado who insists upon speaking in French, which Larry does not speak but succeeds by answering in unintelligible mutterings. The night ends with the Baron pretending to be Larry (unbeknownst to Cecilia) as he tries to find out how faithful his wife is. He becomes furious after Cecilia declares her love until he realizes that with her womanly instinct she knew it was him again all along. The next day the Baron realizes that he cares deeply for his wife, but still wants to teach her a lesson by getting everyone to make her believe he actually arrived that morning and not the night before, throwing the Baroness into absolute dismay at what she thinks she’s done.

Meanwhile, the Baron receives news that he wasn’t granted the loan from Buenos Aires. Suddenly Machado marches into the Baron’s office and presents him with a cheque to buy the airline company. Here the Baron, Penna, and Salles realize that Larry had actually saved the day when he confidently bought up stocks and then unknowingly agreed to sell the airline to Machado when they had "conversed" in French.

Back at the Baron’s house, the tables turn yet again in the game of love when Cecilia reprimands Larry for taking advantage of her the night before and, after Larry claims innocence, she realizes that it had been the Baron all along. To get the final hand, she hires Larry again to pretend to kiss her and make the Baron jealous. Larry, sensing only ill-fortune for himself in this predicament, manages to tell the Baron of the plan before it comes to fruition, saying "She wants to start all over again and live happily ever after, like they do in the movies." The final switch comes with the Baron seizing the opportunity to literally sweep his wife off her feet and carry her upstairs, with her kicking and screaming all the while as she thinks that he is still Larry. The movie finishes with both smiling couples, Cecilia and the Baron, Larry and Carmen, singing along together in the lounge of the theatre, proving that happy endings are possible.

And yet, the happy ending of this film reflects its focus on the upper-class elite, from both Europe and Brazil, living in Rio. The movie was released in 1941, capitalizing on WWII soldiers’ need for exotic fantasy, even to the point of Larry being pictured on the movie poster in army attire, an outfit which he wears only once in the movie while he is onstage. The film also followed on the heels of the US "Good Neighbour" policy which was introduced by President Roosevelt to encourage economic growth and cultural exchanges between the Americas. This coincidence is reflected in the opening number as Larry sings, "My friends I extend felicitations, to our South American relations. May we never leave behind us all the common ties that bind us." The desire for cross-cultural ties is even hidden in the basic fabric of the film as both couples comprise an American and a Brazilian. Any affairs that we may initially have thought possible characters of the same nationality are quickly aborted as the couples realize their true feelings. Such a film attempts, through means of upper-class fantasy, to forge strong bonds, whether they be cultural on the surface or underlyingly economic, between the US and Brazil, as well as to showcase Rio de Janeiro, with the help of Brazilian superstar Carmen Miranda, as an alluring vacation destination to escape daily worries and keep your hips knocking from side to side long after the credits have rolled.

YouTube Link: the film's opening (subtitles in Portuguese), with "Chica Chica Chica Boom Chic."

See also: Copacabana, Week-End in Havana, The Gang's All Here, Carmen Miranda.

The Adventurers

The Adventurers is a sprawling (and frankly turgid) three-hour epic detailing the life and times of one "Dax Xenos." We meet young Dax as a young child playing with a dog in idyllic countryside that, we are informed, is the country of "Corteguay, South America" in 1945. The next we know, however, a bullet comes whistling from a nearby hill, the dog has been shot dead, and Dax is running for his life back to the hacienda. So much for childhood innocence.

Corteguay, you see, is caught up in a revolutionary insurrection supported by Dax's father, an otherwise peacable lawyer. But the forces of officialdom, in the person of a Colonel Gutiérrez, are busy conducting reprisals, which involve killing most of Dax's family, having raped the womenfolk, before Dax's wide eyes. The child is infused with the spirit of revenge, as well a certain cynicism towards sexual relations. He eagerly takes the chance to machine-gun some of Gutiérrez's men responsible for the outrage. And later a brief juvenile romance with the revolutionary leader's daughter is somewhat dowsed in cold water when the two watch surreptitiously as two adults cavort naked in the countryside and, in response to the girl's question "What are they doing?" the boy replies "I suppose he's raping her." "Raping?" "He rapes her and she rapes him." "Let's do it," suggests his playmate. "No," Dax sternly replies. "You are too young. And I think I have to kill you afterwards."

For all that the movie may have set out to offer a critique of such cynicism, in fact it never really shakes off the impression that first bad things happen, and then later they happen again. That's just the South American way.

So the revolutionary leader General Rojo naturally enough becomes as tyrannical, or perhaps more so, than the leader he has overthrown. He is more concerned to build opulent palaces than to feed the poor, and he callously sacrifices his former friends on the altar of his own in ambition. In turn he therefore ultimately faces a guerrilla uprising, in which the now adult Dax participates. Almost at the end of the movie, the new young Turk invades the country's radio station and broadcasts to the nation the news that "Corteguay belongs to the Revolution." At which General Rojo, listening to this message in his now ruined throne-room, mutters to himself that "Corteguay will always belong to the Revolution."


In between these opening and closing vignettes of recurrent and inevitable violence, we follow Dax as he grows up far from his native land, in opulent Italy. Here he cavorts with the aristocracy, beds a succession of beautiful rich young women (including for a while as a paid gigolo), and hones his sullen, inexpressive persona. "He just does not feel," as another character says of our unlikeable hero. This, however, is not quite true: Dax is hot on feelings of revenge and (quite possibly also self-)hatred. He's simply less adept at the tenderer side of life.


Europe is little better than Latin America in the movie's cynical portrayal: admittedly, there is are rather fewer massacres or political assassinations, but all the luxury and wealth in the world hardly conceals the coldness of ritual debauchery in which people are either objects for brief sensual gratification or pawns for ambition's advancement. The only likeable character throughout is the Xenos family's faithful old retainer, a buffoon-like figure with the ironic nickname "Fat Cat." He's fat, but not from the profits of aristocratic hauteur, commercial double-dealing, or absolute power. He's the endless second fiddle, the closest thing that Dax has to a conscience.

Perhaps, as the 1960s came to an end, the world really did look as miserable as this film (released in 1970) makes it out to be: superannuated decadence in Europe, superficial gaiety in the USA, and permanent unrest in the periphery. "Dax" may sound like a brand of soap powder, but through him we see only the grubby underbelly of global so-called civilization, and no sense that anything is about to change. Disillusion is all.

Octopussy

Almost every Bond movie (Dr No being a significant exception) starts with a pre-credit sequence in which 007 is seen in a brief episode of high-octane derring-do. Though often only tangentially connected to the films that follow, these brief teasers are often very memorable in themselves: The Spy Who Loved Me opens with a famous stunt in which the British agent skis off a cliff only for the canopy of a Union Jack parachute to open over him, while the recent version of Casino Royale features a lengthy parkour-style chase with Sebastien Foucan.

For Octopussy, the thirteenth film in the official franchise, the pre-credit sequence takes place somewhere in Latin America. It's not entirely clear where, in part because here this episode is even more starkly removed from the rest of the action then usual: in what follows, a merry romp that takes Bond from London to India and Germany (both East and West), no mention is ever made of an earlier trip to the Americas.

Perhaps we're in Cuba: that would seem to be the reference intended by the numerous bearded army types in olive-green uniforms. Or it might be Argentina: that's what's suggested by the horsey atmosphere of the show-jumping event at which Bond makes his appearance. But as always with Bond, and especially in this movie, it doesn't really pay to ask too many questions. Why after all is the show-jumping taking place right next to what's apparently a military airfield in which some kind of top-secret weapon is being installed into the nosecones of fighter planes? Who knows or really cares: the stunt's the thing.

And so the Commander's horsebox is soon shown to contain a dummy equine that in turn conceals a miniature jetplane with folded wings. Bond takes to the sky and engages in a cat and mouse chase (he being the mouse) with an incoming heat-seeking missile that he cunningly manages to divert so that it blows up the aircraft hangar that seems to have been his intended target in the first place. Only then does he realize that he'd forgotten to fill up with gas that morning, so he lands on a roadway and rolls up to a gas station, asking the bemused attendant to "Fill her up, please."


The pre-credit sequence is both diversion and invitation, teasing delay and full-throttle initiation into the world of Bond, James Bond. It's a Bond movie without even the pretence of a plot: winging it (quite literally) on formula alone, from sultry maiden to nifty gadget, exotic locale and tongue-in-cheek humor. It's a sketch for a movie that might have been, a reminder that what follows is but one chapter in the fast life and times of Britain's number one special agent.

And Latin America, in this movie at least, is also a mid-point: it's where authoritarian regime meets tropical colour, where East meets West, and we meet Bond. It's neither as staid as London, as grim as East Germany, or as over the top as Delhi. It's peripheral and excessive, but in this film in which excess is everything (subplot upon subplot, two villains, two Fabergé eggs, even two Bond girls) it's also the axis around which everything turns. For we'll return to an airforce base at the film's climax, but this time Bond's task will be to defuse a bomb, to prevent a (nuclear) explosion rather than to set one off. So the Cuban/Argentine scene at the start is equally a foretaste and comic double of the (supposedly) serious threat that lies at the heart of the movie's ragged plot. It's a seven-minute obverse of the film as a whole.

YouTube Link: the pre-credit sequence.

The Swarm

There's some dispute as to how to refer to the bees that feature in the hideously bad disaster flick The Swarm. Though they're generally described as "the Africans," one scientist insists that it's more accurate to call them "Brazilians." For they arrive in the United States by way of South America, and fly to Texas by crossing the Caribbean.

In some ways these killer bees' precise origin doesn't matter: what counts is that they're foreign. The film goes to some lengths to distinguish them from native honey bees. Indeed, the reason why lead scientist Brad Crane (played by Michael Caine) refuses the military's suggestion to drop industrial supplies of pesticide upon the swarm is that the vital US bees would suffer unwanted collateral damage. He screams at the general: "The honey bee is vital to the environment. Every year in America they pollinate six billion dollars' worth of crops. If you kill the bee you're going to kill the crop. And if you kill the plant you kill the people. No! No, general!" And lest we miss the point (for Caine does a remarkable amount of shouting in this movie) and leave the cinema fearing bees of all kinds, the movie's final credit drives the point home:

THE AFRICAN KILLER BEE PORTRAYED IN THIS FILM BEARS ABSOLUTELY NO RELATIONSHIP TO THE INDUSTRIOUS, HARD-WORKING AMERICAN HONEY BEE TO WHICH WE ARE INDEBTED FOR POLLINATING VITAL CROPS THAT FEED OUR NATION.

So the film makes it clear that these foreign bees pose a double threat: to the population at large, but especially perhaps to the industrious American worker.

The potential allegory is patent enough. A brown mass is poised just south of the border, and invades first the Southwest to overcome local residents by sheer force or numbers as well as their lethal but invisible venom, driving out hard-working citizens and installing themselves in their place. The threat first strikes the small-town life of a place such as the film's Marysville, with its hick ways, flower festivals, and touching love triangles between elderly bachelor and spinster schoolteacher. Even the old-fashioned virtues of summer picnics are at risk, because they're everywhere, faceless swarms with their unintelligible murmurs and crafty but unfathomable ways. Next the danger travels to the larger cities, such as Houston. By this time they're unstoppable: they're in the elevators and hallways, almost everywhere you turn.

Latin America is full of dangerous critters: anacondas, piranhas, even creatures from the haunted sea. But The Swarm suggests that the most pressing danger comes from the migrant hordes who slip across the border and infiltrate themselves into our everyday lives.

In the end Crane, side by side with his (rather unbelievable) lover interest Capt. Helena Anderson, hold off the tide at least for the time being. But the movie ends with the definite sense that there will be continued attempts to breach the southern border, and that if anything the next time it will only be worse. Because in fact they're already here, and they've been quietly reproducing: "The invasion didn't just now begin. They have been here for some time, breeding, increasing."


YouTube Link: the movie trailer.

Snuff

1971 saw the release of Slaughter, a low-budget exploitation flick, filmed in Argentina and set in Argentina and Uruguay.

The film told the story of a cult led by a Mansonesque figure rejoicing in the name of Satán or Satahn. The young women who follow Satán, all hippie types with flowing hair and a predeliction for removing their blouses, are kept in servitude by a sort of sadomasochistic desire: transgressions are punished by ritual torture that is experienced as erotic pleasure and observed with voyeuristic glee.

They are therefore easily enough persuaded to kill for Satán, and spend most of the film doing just this: random strangers are murdered in airport bathrooms; knifings take place under the cover of Carnival; a corner store hold-up becomes a massacre; and so on. In a bloody climax there is the eponymous "slaughter" itself, as the group kills a Uruguayan playboy, his friend, his friend's girlfriend, his pregnant actress lover, and his German arms dealer father who, in the film's final scene, is rather inexplicably discovered in bed with his son's lover.

Slaughter was hardly a success, showing briefly in a few theatres before disappearing, apparently without trace.

Five years later, however, the film was re-released, under the new title of Snuff, and now with an extra five minutes' footage tacked on to the end.

(Albert Walker has watched and summarized the whole film, so that you don't have to, at the agony booth.)

This new ending cuts back from the actress in bed with her lover's father, to the set on which the action is (supposedly) being filmed. Mirroring the theme (taken from what is now a film within a film) of the erotics of both violence and voyeurism, a member of the crew asks a woman, who may be either another crew member or an actress, whether she was turned on by the scene they've just shot.

Soon the two are making out on another bed conveniently located within the set, while the film's cameramen have turned to record this snippet of what is ostensibly cinema verité.

Suddenly things turn serious, as in the face of the woman's panicked protests, the male crew member gets out a knife and, while others hold his victim down, proceeds first to slice off her hand and then to disembowel her. In the movie's final shot he brandishes her entrails, before the screen goes white and briefly sprocket holes are seen as the camera runs out of film. On the soundtrack we hear the film reel come to an end and the whispered conversation of the crew: "Shit, we've run out of film! Shit!" "Did you get it? Did you get it all?" "Mmm, yeah, we got it all. Now let's get out of here."

It would seem that we have just witnessed a real murder taking place on screen.


Or such at least is the legend and mystique of Snuff. For this is the original "snuff" film (though the term had been coined to describe putative films shot by the Manson family themselves): a movie in which an actress actually dies, for the voyeuristic delight and horror of a bloodthirsty audience immune now to special effects, desiring the Real.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth of Snuff. The added footage quite patently bears little relation to the film whose making it apparently documents. The only continuity is that this final murder is as unconvincing and schlocky as any of the killings we have seen in the preceeding 75 minutes: it is hamfistedly shot, with obviously crude and unrealistic special effects, and enough signs of post-production and editing to reveal that it is as much a piece of fiction as what has gone before.

And yet the controversy that the film provoked upon its release, first initiated by the producer who, for instance, paid protestors to picket the cinema in which it was playing, but later picked up and amplified by both the police and the press, and that fact that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, most people simply assume that snuff films really exist, demonstrate that somehow we want to believe.

Somehow Snuff enabled this belief to become firmly instilled in popular consciousness. And surely its success, the now permanent incrustation of what was a cheap marketing trick to sell a failed horror movie, owes something also to the context of the film's production and re-release, as summarized in the movie's tagline: "A film that could only be made in South America, where life is CHEAP!"

For both Snuff the film and "snuff" the subject of rumour and gossip allude to the twin notions of a general lawlessness south of the border, and the then current political violence in the Southern Cone, as Argentina limped towards its May 1976 coup d'etat, while Uruguay and Chile were already under military regimes.

Slaughter had hardly done much with its Latin American setting: we see the actress victim arrive on a Lan Chile flight via Santiago, then phone her lover in Punta del Este encouraging him to take his motorboat across the Rio de la Plata to the San Isidro yacht club, but for instance the fact that this journey involves an international border crossing remains unaddressed. But on being re-released as Snuff in 1976, the film's violence now carries a double reference: not only to the late 1960s decay of flower power and hippiedom with the nightmare of the Mansons, but also to the political violence that would grip the Americas in the 1970s.

Snuff, in short, becomes a film about the dictatorships, and an allegory of a violence that is in plain sight, paraded before voyeuristic eyes, a violence that is real but pretends to be theatrical, mirroring the film's own violence that is so theatrical as it pretends to be real.

[Update: "The Idea of Cinema", a much longer essay on Snuff, and on snuff.]

Creature from the Haunted Sea

It's been argued that the proliferation of "monster movies" and B-movie science fiction in the 1950s is a symptom of Cold War anxieties. The Thing, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman... grotesquerie ruled the roost in the drive-in movie market during the period, inciting and reflecting fears of an unknown, often semi (but not quite) human other. See, for instance, Keith Booker's Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War.

Creature from the Haunted Sea places its semi-alien creature directly in a Cold War context, with its tale of post-revolutionary Cuba and a vaguely anthropoid sea monster, but without much in the way of discernable anxiety. The film is, rather, a spoof of such paranoia, albeit with the message that paranoids have to be telling the truth at least some of the time, even inadvertently.

In the end, however, the movie's as much about mass tourism and the end of narratives of heroic individualism as it is about East versus West, capitalism confronting communism.

The plot, such as it is, of this frankly absurd comedy concerns a gang of US freebooters who agree to smuggle out gold from the Cuban treasury for a group of anti-Castro military men, including a General Tostada and a General Cabeza Grande. The gang plans, however, to double-cross the Cubans and take off with the gold themselves. To this end, once they are all at sea their leader, Renzo Capetto, invents a story of a dangerous monster on whom he blames his men's murder of one of the Cuban recruits accompanying the cargo. Little does he know, however, that there is indeed a monster out there, who also seems set on picking off the crew.

In addition to the Cubans, this crew includes Capetto's moll, Mary-belle Monahan, along with her brother, Happy Jack Monahan, plus Capetto's side-kick, Peter Peterson Jr. In addition, a US agent, Sparks Moran, who is also the film's narrator, has somehow added himself to the company.

Fleeing the monster and playing into Capetto's hands, the entire party head to a small, deserted island just of Puerto Rico, where Capetto sinks the boat on a reef, and consigns the box of gold to the bottom of a shallow bay, planning to come back and dive for it later.

Here's where the plot really gets out of hand. It so happens that the Cubans are in fact expert frogmen, and therefore can't be put off so easily. Everyone goes diving, and the freebooters and the monster combine to take them out one by one. On the beach, it turns out that the island is not so deserted: Pete Peterson finds himself a mate who shares his own bizarre skill in imitating animal noises; Happy Jack also brings a woman onto the scene, but she is more interested in Sparks (who in turn is rather more interested in Mary-belle), so Peterson's paramour introduces him to her daughter Mango. To cut an over-long story short, in the end almost everyone gets eaten by the monster, who is left happily playing on the box of gold.

What's most interesting--and also most absurd--is the way in which this desert island on which the last half of the movie is set proves to be far from a pristine paradise. Sparks heads off for a walk and soon comes across a phone built into a cliff-face. He calls a fellow-agent back in Havana, but is unable to say much as shortly someone else (in fact, director Roger Corman in a cameo) is hanging around waiting for his own turn on the phone. Walking away, Sparks then bumps into a gentleman in full business suit tramping around the rockpools as though he were strolling up Wall Street.

Meanwhile, Mango, coerced to hook up with the abandoned Happy Jack, complains (in Spanish, while Happy Jack looks on adoringly and uncomprehendingly) that she is always being forced to do this: "You are very sweet, if a trifle stupid," she tells him. "My mother is always making me take up with weird strangers. It's like a come-on for tourists. She likes for me to heat them up--so she can sell them coconut hats and sandals."

So though the monster appropriates the Cuban renegades' captured loot, an indigenous capitalism is alive and well already in this beach-fringed jungle.

The outlaw gang is completely oblivious to the fact that capital has well and truly preceded their own not-so-triumphant arrival. Indeed, obliviousness and stupidity are the watchwords for all they do. Sparks is wholly incompetent as a secret agent, however much his narrative tells us otherwise. The era of plucky individuals as the advance guard for enterprise is finally what's sent up most comprehensively in this movie. For all their supposed ingenuity (using kitchen plungers as murder weapons, sausages for radio components), the Cubans, Paretto and his gang, and Sparks alike are ultimately half-wits caught between the natives' seduction and the sea creature's predations.

And heck, if this cookie monster creature with table tennis balls for eyes can get the best of you, then you hardly deserve to survive anyhow...

insularity?

It's an oft-heard reproach that Americans (that is, people from the United States) don't know or don't care enough about the rest of the world. Frequently, indeed, this is a self-reproach, as with Morgan Meis's "Monday Musing" over at the fine blog 3 Quarks Daily.

But surely the very frequency and ease of this (self-)critique should induce some second thoughts.

Hollywood particularly is lambasted for its role in a "cultural imperialism" that Americanizes the world without reciprocally taking sufficient notice of otherness. But this critique of the film industry ignores the vast number of movies that place otherness, and the problem of otherness, squarely centre-screen.

It also passes over the way in which cinema itself has been dedicated, since its inception, to the exploration and inhabitation of difference--albeit, it is true, from the safety of our more or less plush movie house seats, and nowadays our more or less plush armchairs and sofas from which we watch our DVD rentals.

There's no need to turn to "independent" or non-mainstream cinema to search for images of Latin America, for instance. As this blog is dedicated to showing, Latin America has figured at the heart of the movie industry since, well, at least since Edison sent his cameras to Cuba and Puerto Rico to document the 1898 war against Spain.

And from 1898 to the present, there's hardly a major director (from D W Griffith to Orson Welles to Hitchcock to Peckinpah to Soderbergh) who hasn't shot at least one film, often many more, in or about Latin America.

One might object that this isn't the "real" Latin America, but it's worth saying once again that to lament the distance between stereotype and reality is to miss the point entirely.

We are left then with the rather interesting observation that Hollywood's obsession with Latin America functions in such a way that it can leave its audience with the impression that still, somehow, they have learned nothing about what is presented to them. Which is a much stranger and more intriguing fact to be explained than the (counter-factual) assumption that somehow difference was never there in the first place.

Does Latin America on Screen then function somewhat like Poe's famous purloined letter? So clearly before our eyes that we cannot really see it at all.

The Gringo in Mañanaland

DeeDee Halleck's The Gringo in Mañanaland is composed of several hundred clips showing US film portrayals of Latin America from around 1910 to 1960.

The most recent film cited is, in fact, the 1963 Fun in Acapulco, but the majority of Halleck's sources are from the period 1925-1955 and so cover the height of "good neighborliness."

Films spotlighted include Flight (1929), The Stoker (1932), Marines Fly High (1940), Carnival in Costa Rica (1947), Tropic Zone (1953, with a young Ronald Reagan), and The Naked Jungle (1954), but also many others. In addition to fiction and feature films, Halleck incorporates newsreels, promotional films, and documentaries.

The Gringo in Mañanaland shapes this collage into one overarching plot, articulated in terms of the film's titled subsections: "Arrival," "The Past," "Paradise," "Ambition," "Problem #1" (white women), "Thrift," "Problem #2" (armed men), "Technology," "Cooperation," and "Partners."

As Halleck herself puts it, the narrative that emerges is, in brief, that "the hero discovers paradise and bananas, he has a problem with bandits and women, he calls in the marines, the bandits cooperate, and the good neighbors are happy." From Paradise Found to Paradise Profitably Exploited to Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained, all thanks to US enterprise and US armed enforcement.


Halleck suggests that this narrative combines "the essential Latin American stereotypes." I'd say, rather, that it's in the very nature of a stereotype to be inessential: there is always, in other words, something arbitrary or excessive about a stereotype, however recognizable or intuitive it may be.

The plot that The Gringo in Mañanaland distils certainly resonates not only with the pre-WWII period of American interventionism (in Cuba and Puerto Rico, Haiti and Nicaragua, and elsewhere), but also especially with the Reagan era's tragi-comic return to gunboat diplomacy. After all, Halleck began her project in the 1980s, during which time she was also very invested in Central American, and particularly Nicaraguan, solidarity.

But each generation constructs the Latin America that it deserves. And to argue that that the stories told about the region are always only about the armed enforcement of economic exploitation is as simplifying, reductive, and, in the end, misleading as any of the "stereotypes" that are here subject to critique.