Voces Inocentes Film Analysis

The 2004 Salvadoran film Voces Inocentes, directed by Luis Mandoki is truely deserving of its nomination to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The film is set in El Salvador in 1986 with a civil war ravaging the main character’s home town of Cuscatancingo. There are many themes in this film including dictatorships and totalitarian governments in Latin America and US involvement in Latin American conflict. However there is one theme that is represented time and time again throughout the film. This is the theme that children are innocent and just until someone teaches them to do wrong and become unjust. This exemplified in many scenes in the film, but there is one scene in particularly emphasizes this.

In the film Voces Inocentes, the main character is a boy named Chava. Chava lives with his mother and siblings in the town of Cuscataningo, which is a major place of warfare between the Salvadoran army and the guerrillas that want to free their country from a totalitarian dictatorship. The battles are extremely violent, leaving many casualties from both sides. The Salvadoran army becomes so desperate for troops that they decide that all boys at the age of twelve must serve in the military to fight the guerilla forces. Chava is eleven years old, and could be

He has clearly been corrupted by the army and been told that it is his duty to kill the guerrillas. His innocence has been taken away. One might argue that Beto has tried to corrupt Chava with his desire for Chava to join the guerrillas. But the whole time chava had a positive role model to keep him from being corrupted, his mother. Chava’s mother makes it clear to him that violence is not the answer and killing is not right. According to Juan Urena, “Chava’s classmate is seen shooting at the rebels, he is not a mother’s boy anymore, he is a violent man”