Robert BeltranLatino: America's Secret War in Nicaragua

Latino is not the best film about the war between the Reagan government and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s. My favorite film on that war is Under Fire (1983) directed by Ron Shelton and starring Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy and Ed Harris. I lived in Nicaragua for several months after the war ended. Nicaragua is a country with beautiful lakes and many volcanoes. The American supported dictator Somoza did nothing to remove the rubble of an earthquake in Managua, the capital city. After the Sandinistas won the war they cleaned up Managua and built parks.Don't miss Oliver Stone's film Salvador with James Woods and James Belushi, the best of the three mentioned here. The wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua were funded by the US government, which hired mercenaries who killed many peasants. Reagan funded the wars in Central America by selling arms to Iran, which was opposed by Congress (known as Iran-Contra). Thousands of peasants in both countries were killed by our government and their proxies while pretending they were winning the war against Communism.You will see very little of Nicaragua or El Salvador in any of these films because there are only two countries that have a large enough film industry to make a film like these: the US and Mexico. Latino has actors that look like Central Americans,but they mostly speak English (very few people in that area speak English fluently). I guess that Latino was filmed mostly in Hollywood.Under Fire was filmed primarily at Mexican sites that look like they could be in Nicaragua and El Salvador and, except for the American actors, they speak Spanish.

Make no mistake this is a film that involves a political war and a small piece of history that most of us won't be aware of but while the story itself is made up the facts of what occurred is real.Robert Beltran gives a great performance of a Latino green beret who comes to question his assignment and ultimately wakes up the viewer to ask themselves if what the government is doing at any given time the right thing. After all we are only told bits and pieces of these things and films such as this one help to clarify. To bad it's only available on vhs.

Excellent movie and a must watch. The US has spend more than 100urs destroying the American continent. With propaganda and the placement of dictators in Central and South America today we see and feel the blow back of those actions. You must be blind not to see what the US has done around the world with the same lame excuses and lies.

Wonderful propaganda piece. Socialist songs and everything. The actor who later plays Chakotay in Star Trek Voyager, openly displays his politics in this movie. And we open the door a crack to view the true nature of Hollywood culture, things they rarely admit.The title of course is ham fisted and betrays the purpose of the film, to drive a wedge between hispanics in America and our nation. Instead of a realistic look at Nicaragua in the 80s, we get instead a fairy-tale story of a mini-Utopian collective farm, nothing about the real fighting that actually happened between the Sandanistas and Contras. Real film can be seen by searching "sandinista mulukuku", for example.

not very realistic to what really happened and from what I noticed very one sided point of view. I do not recommend.

This movie is highly political and got a lot of flack from the establishment when it was released. It is quite possibly based on a true story, in my opinion, but there is no way to verify that. Thought provoking! "Unrated" but I'll give it an "R" rating, or at least a "PG-13" (war violence, language, nudity, sexual situations).

good movie.. it was a present for my dad who was an extra on it. spanish subtitles. he loved it.

A must see documentry for all Americans. Years of misguided, self-serving foreign policy has made our state dept and successive leaders the target of hate and loathing around the world but especially in our closest southern neighbors. Should be mandatory curriculum, along with the real history of the Native American experience during the creation of the New World.

Bien y a tiempo