I have to be honest. I have a close personal connection with this documentary and its protagonist, Maria, who welcomed me many times when I lived in San Salvador, during and after the signing of the Peace Accords and the period of “Reconciliation.”
Maria Navarrete, known as Maria Chichilco, was a guerrilla captain from 1979 to the Peace Accords of 1992 during El Salvador’s civil war. She fought in the Chalatenango department as a rural military leader for the Farabundo Mari Front for National Freedom (FMLN in Spanish). The FMLN fought against a repressive government backed by the United States in what was a brutal campaign to crush what were referred to as the “communist” tendencies of the people.
The movie had hardly begun when I started to feel the tears trickling down my cheeks, because this movie is an expression of love for humanity, for the dreams of social justice and for a past of hopes and ideals that have yet to come to fruition.
Through this movie, we decode the past seeing it in a historical context, with the changes that have happened since then and the many hopes that are still out of reach.
Maria’s Story was filmed in 1989, three years before the end of a brutal civil war that took the lives of 75,000 Salvadorans. This critically acclaimed and award-winning film first aired on the PBS Documentary Series, P.O.V. in 1991. This new edition includes an interview with Maria in which she reflects on this period in her past and the state of justice in El Salvador in 2010.
Explaining the relevance of this new edition, director Pamela Cohen observed, “the history of this woman is the history of a mother and a family, and these qualities are universal and transcend the moment. The idea of a woman fighting for her family and community, and in terms of where we are 20 years later, we are still inspired.”
Maria’s Story is filmed beautifully, keeping in mind that it was made more than two decades ago, when film technology was very different, utilizing a new film technique for the time called small format film.
Even more impressive is that the cameraman filmed the material with a steady hand in a very dangerous a combative atmosphere.
The director managed to keep the documentary about the human aspect, rather than focus on the sensationalism of the images of war.
We see exquisite details of the countryside in the middle of a violent world: clear waterfalls cascading over gleaming rocks covered in green moss, dawn dressed in a mixture of orange and pink woven in with the mist over peaks in the distance, the sun shining through the tops of the trees like handmade lace.
The manner in which the camera allows us to enter the daily life of this woman and her family is intensely intimate. They specifically chose the most simple and habitual moments of Maria’s life to tell us her complex story and that of her country.
It is through these encounters that the viewer comes to understand the internal conflict and the extreme sacrifice made by this family to take these existential options.
We see the tenderness with which her husband Jose removes a crumb of food from Maria’s skirt while they eat sitting on the ground, knowing that the next day they will have to separate for more than a month, and maybe forever. Or the care with which the daughter tends to her mother’s injured foot after walking several days in old shoes filled with holes.
The intimacy of this film sometimes comes close to crossing the line, as mentioned by Maria in an interview with www.elfaro.net: “One day they even filmed me nearly naked, bathing. The cameraman had climbed up on a board over the faucet… Thank God we weren’t completely naked.”
The film lacks a more complete explanation as to why there were so many young guerrilla fighters. To make up for the monetary help given by the United States to the military, the death of 70,000 and the destruction of whole towns in the countryside, the guerrilla soldiers had to recruit everyone, even young people. In the armed conflict of San Salvador, this dynamic was unique and shocking.
Maria’s Story presents an intimate perspective of the painful past, filled with passion for a change for the better. In a way, Maria’s dreams came true. After fighting feverishly for power, 19 years later the deceased of FMLN gained their victory when in 2009 the ex-guerrillas became a powerful political party.
In the wise words of Maria Chichilco, “Personally I feel satisfied in having done a little something. I wasn’t going to set the whole world free. It isn’t like that. Although someone thinks he would like to do great things quickly, it isn’t possible. I understand that life and the development of humanity is a process, a long process. Some people may accomplish something, one step, and we are trying to move another step… and others enter to take another step.”
Maria’s Story will be shown on Friday, June 4 at 7:00 p.m. in the Mission Cultural Center (2868 Mission Street, at 24th Street). After the film, there will be a talk with director Pamela Cohen. For more information, visit www.missionculturalcenter.org.