When The Mountains Tremble (DVD)

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In 1982, a former general staged a coup in Guatemala, voiding the constitution, dissolving parliament, and suspending political parties. During Jose Effrain Rios Montt´s year of power (a coup would depose him as well), Guatemala´s Independent Human Rights Commission reports that no less than 14,000 murders were committed, most of them large-scale massacres of Mayan peasants, which has led to charges of genocide.

Yet, at a time when President Reagan was asking Congress to approve funding so that the Guatemalan people could protect themselves from "subversives" intent on overthrowing the government (i.e., Rios Montt´s dictatorship), only the CIA knew the truth. Until, that is, a couple of independent filmmakers heard about a peasant insurgency in Guatemala and somehow got past the border guards that were turning away journalists. And they saw first-hand what was really going on. The Mayans and other indigenous peasants remained as much of a slave caste as when the Spaniards first took the country away from them 500 years ago. To protest, or to try to improve the lot of fellow peasants, was to be "kidnapped," tortured, and eventually killed. Rios Montt´s brief reign was the last straw for a people who had endured much suffering at the hands of the rich ruling class.

Directors Pamela Yates and Newton Thomas Sigel did their own camerawork and managed to get behind-the-scenes shots of the Mayans and also the military, many of whom had no idea why they were persecuting the peasants. When the duo had all but completed their film, they met a 21-year-old Quiché peasant woman, Rogoberta Menchu, who had a presence and a voice and a story to tell, a story they incorporated into the narrative. As if testifying before the Congress that continued to pour money into fighting the insurgency—part of Reagan´s embarrassing Iran-Contra legacy—Menchu sits in front of a black screen and without emotion relates the story of her family´s and village´s struggle. Menchu´s calm but weary voice—speaking in her own language, with English subtitles—provides the narrative, as frames of her sitting in her colorful peasant dress alternate with black and white and color shots of testimonies from others and shots of the insurgency as it developed and spread.

Menchu would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and "When the Mountains Tremble" would go on to win a special jury award at the Sundance Film Festival, a blue ribbon award at the American Film Festival, and the Grand Coral Award at the Havana Film Festival (some of the interviews with survivors was of exiles living in Cuba). This is the 20th anniversary special edition.

The only inauthentic portions of the film—ones I frankly wish weren´t included—were background re-enactments of a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala in 1954 and similar scene at the U.S. capitol. The scene with the ambassador was performed using the original taped transcript of the meeting (shades of the Nixon era), and so it´s certainly authentic. But it would have seemed less soap-opera-like and less obviously staged (I mean, fans of "A League of Their Own" will recognize Marla´s father as the ambassador) if they had chosen to simply feature voices speaking the parts while the camera continued to chronicle the peasants whose lives were being bartered away. "For us poor peasants, there is no childhood," Menchu says, and there are shots of the peasants hacking away at stalks of sugar cane taller than any of them, toiling in the fields for "landlords" and working in factories as overseers look on.

"When I was 11, Menchu says, "two of my younger brothers died on the plantation"—one poisoned by a crop-duster while picking cotton, the other of malnutrition. And when her family took two days off to bury the two boys, they were penalized 15 days pay. The filmmakers effectively use Menchu´s recollections as transitions and to provide context. Years later, as the peasants were accused of being "subversives," another brother was taken away and tortured. Then all the villagers had to go to see the 20 "subversives," who had no ears and swollen bodies, her brother among them, and watch as they were doused with gasoline and burned alive. There´s some battle footage and executions, but by and large the filmmakers avoid showing the bloody brutality, and instead focus on the emotions of the peasants—as when, for example, they show the funeral of Luis Alberto and the way his death caused an entire village to rise up and fight. But there is no more powerful footage than seeing the peasant women forced to work the landfills, some with babies in slings on their backs, or of a guerilla recruiter talking to an entire village, and the army pulling up with their AK-47s and giving a village 10 minutes to assemble, or else. The editing can be a bit jarring at times, as when stock footage of a Miss Guatemala pageant suddenly appears and then it´s back to the struggle. But overall, "When the Mountains Tremble" is a moving and eye-opening film—the kind of tell-it-all film one almost expects might come out of Iraq some day soon.