An Evo of the People

Cocalero (DVD, 97 minutes), a film by ALejandro Landes, 2007, distributed by Morocha Films, www.cocalero.com

Evo Pueblo (DVD, 90 minutes), a film by Tonchy Antezana, 2007, distributed by Buena Onda Pictures, www.evopueblo.com

More than two years since the election of Evo Morales as Bolivia’s president, continuing interest in the elective, political, and demographic aspects of the Morales phenomenon has led to further explorations of his biography, both written and audiovisual. The emerging body of film material may play a particularly important role in counteracting Morales’s often strained and even fractious relationship with the opposition-friendly Bolivian news media. Such was the case with the considerable number of films celebrating Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and others, films that have been of undeniable political value to the Cuban Revolution’s international reputation. Today’s other leftist governments in Latin America seem less eager to acknowledge the political potential of film, and relatively little has been produced on Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Argentina’s Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, or Ecuador’s Rafael Correa—while filmmakers have shown more interest in Morales and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva.

Ecuadoran filmmaker Alejandro Landes’s likable profile of Morales, Cocalero, is akin to João Moreira Salles’s Entreatos (Intervals, 2004), an intimate portrait of Lula the presidential candidate; both films construct the image of an amiable and affable leader. Morales’s appeal comes across as many-layered and often contradictory, as does the antipathy he attracts on both right and left. This is symptomatic of the difficult political scenario he must confront: To be a genuine man of the people in Bolivia is to spread himself thin over too broad a demographic and cultural spectrum.

Some of Morales’s detractors argue that he is not a true Indian, since he speaks none of Bolivia’s indigenous languages fluently. But as can be seen in Landes’s documentary, Morales claims neither ethnic nor ideological purity. His disarming, unpretentious style and lack of verbal skill invite mockery, but they can seem trustworthy compared to his predecessors. The cunning of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was thinly disguised by his gringo drawl, and the mellifluous former TV journalist Carlos Mesa never inspired confidence. Appearing onstage beside Chávez at the 2005 anti–Summit of the Americas in Argentina, Morales seems almost shy and self-effacing.

Interviewed by a hostile journalist from Santa Cruz, home to his bitterest opposition, he refuses to be provoked; at that city’s airport, he reacts to apoplectic racial insults with good grace. As revealed by the interviews included as extras to the DVD of Cocalero, arguments intended to invalidate, pigeonhole, or discredit Morales tend to be self-defeating.

Both Cocalero and Tonchy Antezana’s biographical drama Evo Pueblo,­ released seven months later,­ are keen to present a positive view of their subject. But Cocalero has been better received in Bolivia since its Ecuadoran director offers an outsider’s perspective and therefore enjoys­ greater tolerance. Evo Pueblo, on the other hand, has received largely­ negative comments from critics and far from universal public acclaim. Antezana is Bolivian, which puts him at an immediate disadvantage among both Bolivian film critics and moviegoers.

Although Evo Pueblo was not government-financed, and Antezana promised it would not be a hagiography, some have disparaged its discourse as oficialista, while Antezana has also been attacked for presenting Morales as a dissolute hedonist.­ Evo Pueblo’s opening scene, perhaps the least convincing in its mise-en-scène, presents the 1781 execution of Tupac Katari, the Aymara rebel against Spanish rule, whose reported final words, Volveré y seré millones (I’ll return as millions), serve to foreshadow a current leader whose revolutionary credentials some have questioned. This scene leads directly to Morales’s birth in a tiny house on the high plain, thus making explicit the film’s central thesis: that Morales’s popular origins link him to the country’s indigenous revolutionary forebears. Yet the establishment of this heroic predecessor does not preclude a depiction of the mundane aspects of Morales’s life as the film then ranges over its main pre-presidential phases: childhood on the altiplano, time as a young man in the city of Oruro studying and doing a variety of jobs (brick making, baking), before moving to the tropical Chapare, where he becomes politically conscious among other coca-growing settlers from the Andean region.

But the narrative stops short of the 2005 election: As Antezana tells me, the film would have been much more controversial if it had touched on the presidency. As things are, controversy has never been far away. While some people saw the film as publicity for the president, Antezana says, others saw it as “tepid,” having hoped for a stronger, more heroic protagonist. “None of the things that occur on-screen require either a hero or a villain,” the director maintains, adding that he set out to present “a man of flesh and blood who likes football, women, music, etc.”

Part of Antezana’s “flesh and blood” approach is his use of “natural” actors. Although this might lessen the film’s professionalism, at the same time it creates a persuasively authentic feel, not least through the uncanny resemblance of the adult actors to their subject. If this is an Evo of the People, as the title tells us, it is acted by the people. Early in the film, the visual appeal of the altiplano setting, and of many of the childhood locations, distracts from the acting by a mostly amateur cast of whom little is asked until the second part, when, during the Chapare scenes, the acting really does become a problem. This is primarily the fault of the script’s preference for labored verbal explanations—rarely as convincing as the re-created scenes such as that of Morales’s near fatal confrontation with the military.

One of the more sympathetic Bolivian commentators, Pedro Susz, has talked of the film’s “reverential distance” in painting an intimate portrait that nonetheless preserves respect and a certain gravitas. Ricardo Bajo, meanwhile, describes the film as pragmatic cine posible. However, Antezana has put himself into an invidious position, analogous to that of Morales himself: Faced with an impossible variety of expectations and demands, he has been unable to satisfy more than a few. Morales appeared at the film premiere flanked by the two actors who play him as a young man (Valerio Queso) and as a presidential candidate (Vidal Ortega). Their striking resemblance to the president rather compensates for their shortcomings as actors. The moment was milked for its comic and populist potential; when Morales raised his arm to wave to the public, the actors simultaneously did likewise in an obviously choreographed gesture.

Cocalero, as befits a documentary, is a far more informative piece of work. It complements Evo Pueblo in that it focuses entirely upon the run-up to the December 2005 election and gives us a clear understanding of Morales’s party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), by spending considerable time with Leonilda Zurita, a candidate in Morales’s Chapare power base. It offers numerous insights into the nature of this leader’s appeal and the historical moment that provided him the opportunity to become president. This kind of information is given both in the documentary itself and the lineup of interviews that form part of the DVD’s extras, with opposing viewpoints from Vice President Álvaro García Linera and former U.S. ambassador Manuel Rocha. Less partisan opinions are offered by Carlos Mesa and U.S. journalist Noah Friedman-Rudovsky.

Cocalero also presents us with an Evo of the People, visible in scenes where he eats breakfast in a market or walks unmolested through the streets of La Paz. Moreover, some of the content of Antezana’s dramatic reconstruction is borne out in Landes’s documentary; Morales’s political inclinations, his tastes and personal traits, are all reflected in his relaxed joking. In fact some of Landes’s footage would not have been out of place in Antezana’s film and suggests that, simply, Morales really is like this. Other material included in the DVD extras reveal that people in the Chapare tend to approve of Landes’s film. Cocalero also presents elements beyond the scope of Evo Pueblo; Morales’s influence on his own presidential campaign, for instance, shows that his grasp of public relations is by no means as shaky as many would have us believe. Landes’s touches of visual humor are significant, such as the homemade Statue of Liberty glimpsed on the way to the TV studio in Santa Cruz that quite eloquently reflects the city’s overall political allegiance and cultural inclination.

But Morales himself does not lack a certain raw eloquence and sense of comic timing. Any viewer mindful of recent Latin American history will be struck by the sheer incongruence of the scene in which a breezy and casually dressed Morales answers questions from the military top brass, whose assumption of superiority is palpable. Their unsmiling, fidgety impatience with this perceived Indian upstart is compounded by his reply to the question of whether he would respect the institutionality of the armed forces. Morales talks of his own first days of military service, when his initial confusion and blind obedience had him saluting everyone in sight. Then he poses another question: If he is elected and becomes the constitutional head of the armed forces, will he not be entitled to their respect of his authority?

Keith John Richards teaches literature and film at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia. His book, tentatively titled Latin America Through Film, is forthcoming from McFarland.