Experimental Latin American Cinema: History and Aesthetics

8. The Past Engulfs the Present: Josué Méndez’s Días de Santiago

Following an extended stint in the Peruvian armed forces, the protagonist of Josué Méndez’s Días de Santiago (2004) returns to Lima.1 Inquiring about financial aid for veterans, Santiago Román (Pietro Sibille) initially states, “Soy ex-combatiente. He luchado por mi patria tres años” (“I’m a war veteran. I fought three years for my country”). However, when Santiago goes for the first time to the nightclub where his classmates meet and marvels at seeing teenagers dancing, drinking, and having a good time in the afternoon, he recalls his past differently: “Seis años sin poder pasarla así, como cualquiera” (“Six years unable to have a good time like all the rest”). The screenplay offers two dates. During his military service Santiago fought against (alleged) terrorists (tucos), such as the members of Shining Path, and Ecuadorians (morros) amid the eruption of a border conflict. Although the film gives few specific time references, the allusions have historical parameters: Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán was apprehended in 1992, and in 1995 Peru and Ecuador again clashed in their fifty-year border conflict.2 Therefore, Santiago must have been in the service from approximately 1992 through 1995 and perhaps a couple of years earlier or later. Disgusted with military life, Santiago retires to be at peace with his conscience; however, the civilian life to which he returns proves no less CHAPTER EIGHT THE PAST ENGULFS THE PRESENT Josué Méndez’s Días de Santiago Josué Méndez’s Días de Santiago 147 harrowing. Santiago must come to terms with the mistrust of his wife, Mari (Alhelí Castillo), who is afraid of his outbursts and seems unaware that they are caused by post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. He also discovers the ongoing cycle of family violence in the life of his brother, Coco (Erik García), who is caught in a marriage that compounds spousal abuse with child neglect. Moreover, as his sister-in-law, Elisa (Marisela Puicón), seduces Santiago, she asks him to kill Coco. The biblical interdiction is echoed by another taboo, incest, when Santiago discovers that his father (Ricardo Mejía) sexually abuses Santiago’s sister, Inés (Ivy La Noire). About to shoot his father on the spot, Santiago finally gives in to the entreaties of his mother (Lili Urbina), “No malogres tu vida” (“Don’t ruin your life”). In Días de Santiago, one of the first Latin American movies to focus on the problems of combat veterans experiencing PTSD, Méndez offers social critique as he charts the difficulties of reinsertion into civilian life. The Peruvian filmmaker develops an experimental aesthetics that consists of alternating shots in color to suggest contemporary reality with shots in black and white to allude to the protagonist’s past. The combination re- flects the paradoxical position of this psychic phenomenon, located on the threshold between remembering and forgetting, between experience and its absence (Huyssen, 16). Méndez stresses these aspects of traumatic repetition in ways corresponding to the symptoms that the American Psychiatric Association first codified in 1980. PTSD previously was called Figure 8.1 Santiago is seduced and betrayed by his sister-in-law. Courtesy Tropical Cinema. 148 Drama “shell shock, combat stress, delayed stress syndrome, and traumatic neurosis” (Caruth, 3) and has been widely recognized in the United States, where there has been a boom in publications on PTSD addressing war veterans and their families. Méndez’s film joins a long tradition of Latin American cinematic representation of the trauma of war. Luis Alberto Restrepo’s La primera noche (2003) chronicles the vicissitudes of the protracted Colombian civil war waged between guerrilla organizations and the army for more than forty years. Restrepo presents the perspective of a soldier who witnesses the carnage of the army against unarmed civilians, particularly his own family. Restrepo’s work heightens the drama by beginning close to the focal point of the action and alternating sequences on the lives of the protagonists, moving from the massacre to their perilous escape to the capital and the main character’s demise. Argentine film director Tristán Bauer’s Iluminados por el fuego (2005) calls attention to the nation’s dereliction of duty when he opens the film with the suicide of a veteran of the Malvinas/ Falklands War as a consequence of undiagnosed PTSD. Méndez’s...