Time Out

Made in 1998, "Golpe de Estado" (Time Out) is an absurdist comedy about the guerrilla war in Colombia that might remind you of "Mash" or "Catch 22." When I saw the film yesterday afternoon (Aug. 31, 2001) at Lincoln Center's Latin American Film Festival, I assumed that director Sergio Cabrera was part of the widespread, largely urban-based "peace movement" that only wishes that the war, like a nasty case of the flu, would somehow go away. To my surprise, I learned today that he was formerly a Maoist ERP guerrilla and a highly visible candidate in the 1998 elections. While his first-hand familiarity with the guerrilla movement gave the film authenticity, his more recent political evolution also explains its ostrich-like unwillingness to get below comic surfaces to penetrate Colombia's tragic impasse.

In the remote mountainous village of "New Texas," the guerrillas have surrounded a tall antenna belonging to the American Cansas Petroleum Corporation, which was erected to transmit data from the oil fields under exploration to corporate headquarters. Their goal is to blow it up. Local cops, who function essentially as a detachment of the Colombian military, defend the antenna. The confrontation coincides with a soccer game in progress, which pits Colombia against Peru. The winner goes on to face Argentina in the 1994 World Cup playoffs.

Neither side can focus properly on the matter at hand as guerrillas and cops huddle around portable radios to hear the play-by-play. When a military helicopter is called in to launch a rocket against guerrilla sappers advancing on the antenna, the pilots are so preoccupied by the game themselves that they accidentally fire a rocket at the tower, which comes crashing to the ground in a fiery heap.

Local townspeople in "New Texas" are crushed by the destruction of the tower since it has been serving also as a television receiver. The only television in town no longer has reliable reception. If this is not bad enough, this television and the television in the nearby guerrilla camp are both destroyed in subsequent combat.

No matter how many admonitions the guerrilla and police commanders make to their troops to defend the revolution or the nation respectively, they can not get the game out of their minds. Eventually a local priest works out a truce that allows both sides and local townspeople to enjoy the game on a television made of parts salvaged from the shattered remnants of each camp's television.

When Colombia routs the Argentine team 5-0, both sides celebrate in a drunken feast that includes wet kisses between guerrillas and cops. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of permanent reconciliation between the two sides is the intrusive American oil company, whose only interest is in sucking the mineral wealth out of the country. Even the cops seem to understand this.

The conciliatory mood also affects the romance between a guerrilla combatant (Emma Suárez) and her lover (Nicolás Montero), a police captain who has infiltrated their ranks. In the course of participating in their daily life, he has learned not to hate them. When his lover discovers his true identity, she will have nothing to do with him at first. But in the spirit of conciliation that infuses the final scenes of the movie, love triumphs. Like Yossarian or Alan Bates in "King of Hearts," the two take off their uniforms and kiss passionately in a mountain stream far away from the fighting--a fairy-tale conclusion that clearly would never happen in real world Colombia.

Like the two characters, Sergio Cabrera gave up fighting in the early 1970s after spending four years in the mountains with the Maoist guerrillas. Giving up his machine gun for the camera, he became Colombia's most successful director. The fifty year old Cabrera explains his artistic goals as follows:

"I try to make small reflections on the great problems of the country. The first step toward peace is to dignify the enemy, and the movie is about that. . . . When there is a common objective, peace is possible." (Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1998)

While it is certainly true that the guerrillas in "Golpe de Estado" are treated with sympathy, Cabrera fails to communicate what made them guerrillas to start with. Local townspeople's main complaint seems to revolve around the right to see a soccer game rather than hunger or fear of being killed by paramilitaries. To make the point that the fighting is not about ideology, one of the characters is simultaneously in an affair with a local cop while being widely known as a guerrilla collaborator. This strains credulity, to say the least.

Cabrera's disenchantment with the revolution stemmed from an assignment in the early 1970s to persuade a group of Embara Indians to join the insurgency. He had to persuade them into sabotaging a dam project that was going to flood their lands. As he talked to them over two years, he became convinced that the Indians were better off accepting a relocation offer. He discreetly told the leaders his conclusion and left. Shortly afterward, he quit the guerrillas.

He told the Los Angeles Times: "I saw that was not the solution. The guerrilla is like the white corpuscles of a country that has an infection. The guerrilla is a symptom of injustice."

While one can understand why Cabrera might have felt inadequate to the task of recruiting indigenous peoples to a super-sectarian Maoist guerrilla band, the struggle itself demanded a higher level of engagement rather than withdrawal, based on this 1999 statement by the Embara people:

A Colombian indigenous leader whose people and means of survival have been irreparably damaged by a hydroelectric dam constructed with credit assistance from Canada's Export Development Corporation (EDC) will testify at parliamentary hearings into the crown corporation on November 16 in Ottawa.

Kimy Pernia, a member of the Embera Katio nation of northern Colombia, will testify before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which is conducting hearings into the legislation governing the EDC. Pernia's testimony focuses on the fact that Embera and non-indigenous fishing communities in the region have already seen their food security, livelihood and health put at serious risk by the Urra I dam, a multinational megaproject which went ahead without any prior consultation with those living in the area that would obviously be affected.

"We've identified more than 100 negative impacts on our people and on the environment on which we depend since the dam went up and it will only get worse when operations begin and our land is flooded to fill the reservoir," states Pernia. "This project has already caused many deaths, including the assassination of Embera leaders who have challenged the dam."

(http://www.web.net/~icchrla/Colombia/PR-EmbaraLeader-Nov99.htm)

Explaining his political evolution, Cabrera tells the LA Times, "I did not believe in democracy. "I believed in socialism. So all these years of reflection have led me to an authentic, sincere conviction, like someone who finds God late in life. I firmly believe in democracy." Of course, one might say that without economic equality, true democracy is impossible.

It is difficult to say whether Colombia's social revolution will ever be completed. But this much is true. In the course of an escalation in fighting that draws in United States firepower and troops, it will be essential to involve figures like Cabrera in the effort to keep the US out. Whatever else one might say about "Golpe de Estado," there was a clear statement that the Colombian people themselves must settle the problems of Colombia. If Colombia is in danger of becoming another Vietnam, this sentiment, although short of presenting a clear solution for the social and economic crisis, will certainly stand in the way of a greater catastrophe.