Posted: 06/30/2011

Latino: America’s Secret War in Nicaragua

(1985)

by Ruben R. Rosario

Haskell Wexler’s Latino is a film with good intentions on which it fails to capitalize. The 1985 film, now released on DVD by Cinema Libre Studios, deals with the U.S. Military involvement with Contra Militias to try and overthrow the Nicaraguan Socialist Party. The film’s protagonist is Eddie Guerrero, played by Robert Beltran, a Green Beret sent to train Contra soldiers to prepare for an invasion into Nicaragua. Along the way he meets a woman named Marlena, played by Annette Cardona, that falls in love with him and makes him question his motives for being there. The film attempts to alert its viewers and have them understand the wrongdoings of American backdoor military dealings while masquerading as a typical 80’s film.

Wexler, an accomplished cinematographer whose credits include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, American Graffiti, and Days of Heaven, can’t decide on a central focal point to deliver his true message. When the chemistry between Beltran and Charles starts to get interesting, the film cuts to something happening in the Contra camps. When shocking images of the horrors of what’s happening in Nicaragua appear, the film then jumps to something else that gives away the weight of the images being portrayed. One of the worst offenses in the film is when Beltran comes to an important realization. He starts to question why he’s there fighting, coming to the notion that he is contributing to the destruction of the Latino people that he should be helping. This results in the rest of the night binge drinking around strippers, with him truly forgetting the Latino male that he is and where he came from.

The DVD version by Cinema Libre Studios has some very good and bad in its contents. The bad is that the video and audio quality are just not good at all. Presented in 1.33:1, the video is dirty, full of artifacts and cigarette burns in the upper right of the screen. The audio is distorted during some of the dialog and sounds very bad throughout the film. Where Latino really shines is on the special features on the disc. There is a set of production notes included that not only go into the detailed making of the film but also give a timeline of the actual events that took place. There’s a great interview with Wexler talking about how he got the film made and other subsequent films thereafter. Even with all of these great materials, it can’t help save Latino, a film that has been forgotten over the years, and sadly, for good reason.

It’s a real shame that the film isn’t as good as the material that Cinema Libre put together, because it could’ve been something truly revolutionary.

Ruben R. Rosario is a graduate from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Audio for Visual Media. He works as a freelance location sound mixer, boom operator, sound designer, and writer in his native Chicago. He’s an avid collector of films, comics, and anime.

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