Could any of the people who've seen this tell me how acurate this film is? Since my dad actually is from El Salvador I wanted to show him this film but first would like to know if this film would insult him (who has lost many cousins in the war that took place in the film).
sharemy mom is from el salvador and was there during the war. im not sure how accurate it is but we both hated it. she feels it trivialized the war and portrayed all salvadorans in a negative light. he might like to see it so that he can find out for himself.
share[deleted]
Can anyone explain what this war was about?
shareI don't know much, but I think that the country was/is a totalitarian state, and the peasent rose up as conditions were more than they could bear. But they were branded "Commies" and the US intervened cause Nicaragua (which was Communist at the time) endoresed them or something like that. Could anyone confirm?
shareAccurate enough for entertainment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador
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A bloodless coup led by General Tomás Regalado took El Salvador into the 20th century. Regalado's peaceful transfer of power in 1903 to his handpicked successor, Pedro José Escalón, ushered in a period of comparative stability that extended until the Depression-provoked upheaval of 1931–32.
In 1930, General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, the country's Minister of Defense, took power in a coup d'état. Soon after, Martínez, now President, suppressed a 1932 revolt consisting of farmers and Indians in the western part of the country. The revolt was conducted by the newly formed Communist Party and its leader Agustín Farabundo Martí. The military conflict left more than 20,000 people dead in retaliatory massacres, which came to be known as "La Matanza;" this marked the beginning of a series of de facto military dictatorships that would rule El Salvador until 1979, when General Humberto Romero of the Party of National Conciliation (PCN) would be overthrown in a reformist coup.
Under the authoritarian rule of Maj. Óscar Osorio (1950–56) and Lt. Col. José María Lemus (1956–60) considerable economic progress was made. Lemus was overthrown by a coup, and after a confused period, a junta composed of leaders of the National Conciliation party came to power in June 1961. The junta's candidate, Lt. Col. Julio Adalberto Rivera, was elected president in 1962. He was succeeded in 1967 by Col. Fidel Sánchez Hernández. Relations with Honduras deteriorated in the late 1960s. There was a border clash in 1967, and a four-day so-called Football war broke out in July 1969. The Salvadoran forces that had invaded Honduras were withdrawn, but not until 1992 was an agreement settling the border controversy with Honduras signed.
Following increasing clashes between the Marxist group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), El Salvadoran Armed Forces (ESAF) and rightist vigilantes known as death squads, a civil war errupted that would last for twelve years (1980-1992) and claim the lives of approximately 75,000 people. Among the victims of the war included Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who is believed to be the greatest apostle of the poor in Latin America for delivering his message of peace and equality for all Salvadorans. He was assassinated while delivering his homily on Sunday, March 24, 1980.
The assassination was carried out by Alvaro Saravia, whom in 1979 left the Salvadoran military, and from that time worked closely with Roberto D’Aubuisson. D’Aubuisson, in conjunction with elements of the Salvadoran armed forces and far right Salvadoran civilians in El Salvador, Guatemala and the United States, founded the far right political party Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (“ARENA”),which is now in power in El Salvador. D’Aubuisson organized death squads composed of civilians and military figures that systematically carried out politically-motivated assassinations and other human rights abuses in El Salvador.
According to the 1993 United Nations' Truth Commission report, over 96% of the human rights violations carried out during the war were committed by the Salvadoran military or the paramilitary death squads, while 3.5% were committed by the FMLN. During the war, a small group of military advisers from the United States helped to train government forces, which were heavily funded by the U.S. as well. In the meantime, the guerrillas of the FMLN were trained and funded by the communist government of Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, as well as supported by several eastern european countries and the USSR itself, creating one of the last scenarios of the Cold War. After the fall of Communism in Europe, the conditions for peace negotiations were finally set. A ceasefire was established in 1992 when the rebels of the FMLN and the government of President Alfredo Cristiani of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), signed "Peace accords" on January 16, 1992 that assured political and military reforms and punishment for some human rights abuses during the civil war; death squad activity was virtually eliminated (though pockets of death squad participants are still believed to exist) and several of the military participants responsible for ordering the assassinations of Salvadorans and Americans alike were impuned from punishment, and granted assylum by the United States.
I was talking to a co worker of mine who went through the whole Salvadorian civil war and he said that in reality it was even worse than the movie.
The outlying areas of San Salvador and many cities were reduced to rubble from being constantly being bombed by the military who suspected them of being concentrations of rebel activity.
As to who were the good guys??? There were none, the rebels were just marginally better than the government and both had their own death squads so somebody had to be careful what he said or did at the time.
Right now, both sides run the government and they are both corrupt.
The only ones who suffered were the El Salvadorian people.
As for Boyle, according to the audio commentary and the documentary. James Woods "improved" on the original character. Oliver Stone commented that James Woods though of his Boyle character as being better than the original.
Stone showed that, however briefly, that neither side was particularly good, although the rebels had reason, they resorted to the killing of not only soldiers, but in many cases, according to people I've spoken to that were there, innocent civilians who were neither part of the coup or rebels.
"Why always with the fighting?"
-Dr. John Zoidberg
It was about the same things as todays war in Iraq, Bolivia and Afghanistan. The US wants the natural resources of the third world. They support any fascist goverment that will let them have it and kills or supports the killings of all that is against. Did you think colonialism was something of the past? It is not. That is the main reason there still is wars and poverty. The west is raping the thrid world, over and over again. Supressing deocracy whenever they can.
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism
Nat94110, I would the movie is fairly accurate, but not entirely. Both of my parents are from El Salvador. My dad made the war out to be more complicated than what is shown in the movie. Though he left El Salvador 3 years before the war. I believe the scene of Romero's assasination is inaccurate. From I what I remember in the movie "Romero" and a brief glance of the UN truth commision report, Romero was not shot at close range as in the movie or with a pistol.
share[deleted]
In the DVD, Woods said after viewing the film years later, a woman from El Salvador came over to him crying. She said this story needed to be told as she was a lone survivor of her family. She said that now her family can rest in peace because the world knows what happened. Obviously, the characters and scenes are not accurate. But it certainly was very much like that and most likely worse. Stone mentioned that the Mexican Censor, the film was filmed in Mexico, did not let him make the streets and towns as dirty as he wanted because it made Latin America look bad. He responded that he is just showing how reality is. I can see why someone might not like the film because there is no good people in it. In war, there really is a black and white good and evil sides.
shareAs I understand it, most of the events portrayed in the film were true, but it's important to realize that the film is presented entirely from a Western POV. The killings of the nuns, the assassination of Romero, and other key elements did occur. The reality that was glaringly absent was the situation the PEOPLE found themselves in. I've spoken with many immigrants. It was a nightmare scenario of being caught in the middle. Paranoia made the Salem Witch Trials look like an afternoon tea. Death squads from both the Left and Right accused villages of supporting the "enemy," and many innocent villagers were slaughtered as "examples." Often, I've been told and read, squads would descend on a village and immediately "draft" young men into joining their groups. Most were never seen again.
Assuming Boyle's account was accurate, there's no reason to believe much in the film was made up; truncated greatly perhaps, but overall, the film covers the major events that the mainstream press covered in a Time or Newsweek kind of way. I teach at a CA University with many Salvadoran immigrants, and students share family stories of killings and disappearances. It's part of their heritage and family lore. Mass graves are still out there, and thousands are still missing.
Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in.share
Movies are never accurate.
The short answer is it's as accurate as a movie is going to get, subtracting poetic license and all the dramatization of historical events.
However, in my opinion, I think it is accurate in the sense that it tells the story from the perspective of the people who are suffering mass deaths (cue the scene of piles of dead bodies), political disenfranchisment (cue the rigged elections and turbulent political shuffle), and the total media blackout on atrocities committed and the nature of the uprising (cue the main character's struggle and his friend the photographer to get the true story out of El Salvador and into the world's awareness).
As one poster said here, the things that went down in El Salvador are much worse than this movie touched upon, and the truth of the matter was that the U.S. media was spinning this event as a Communist uprising until U.S. Americans started dying. It always takes American casualties to get the media's attention. By that time tens of thousands of Salvadorans had already perished in this massacre which the U.S. funded in the millions with military personnel, money, and arms in the explicit attmept to quell the guerilla uprising from succeeding. For them, it was enough that one Latin American country had rebelled against them (Cuba) and had survived their economic embargo. They didn't want to lose anymore countries to the surge of popular uprisings in countries where the few controlled most of the wealth and the majority had little to stay alive. It would have wreaked havoc on their economic and military interests in the region.
Another thing to note that the movie does not touch upon is that in El Salvador, as well as other Latin American countries, there was a military base in the U.S. (Fort Benning?) called the School of the Americas. Most of the dictators and soldiers that took part in tortures and violence against peasant/poor uprisings had been trained in this school in order to sharpen their skills as murderers and make them more effective torturers against enemy combatants that were captured. It was rumored that ArchBishop Romero's assassin had been trained at the School of the Americas. Manuel Noriega was a student of this school, for example. The school was later renamed and it continues in operation under its new name to this day.
The scene of ArchBishop Romero's assassination also might have been poetic license. Some say he was shot from the back of the Church.
So....I guess I gave the long answer in the end. The movie is also controversial because those that were on the side of the wealthy or middle class for the most part sided with the rightness of US intervention and keeping the poor classes repressed (much like in Chile during Allende's reign; speaking of which the film Machuca is an excellent companion piece to Salvador). They viewed the peasant uprising as the desperate attempts of people who were resentful and power-hungry, or they labelled them all Communists and viewed them as puppets of a foreign, Marxist ideology. *Sarcasm* The U.S.'s role in El Salvador would never cross their minds as foreign intervention. *Sarcasm* On the other hand, the poor peasant population of El Salvador viewed the rich as elitist and the middle class as loyal subjects of the oligarchy (it was a very thin middle class). They took the Marxist ideology as their political tool for reshaping the country, but in the end what they wanted was an end to the repression from the military, more opportunites for health care and education, and overall an opportunity to feel like their voices and struggles were heard politically and economically.
So when you ask how accurate the movie is, bear these things in mind. And please, do not be one of those who watches movies to learn about history. Keep the movie in mind, but do your own research. History is not set in stone and it is very subjective.
Traveler, there is no road;
the road is made as you travel.
-Antonio Machado