For his latest film, Carla's Song, director KEN LOACH teamed up with scriptwriter PAUL LAVERTY. The film is a love story set against the background of the Nicaraguan Contra War. It portrays the gains of the Sandinista revolution which overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and also the violence suffered by Nicaragua as the US funded and organised a war costing the lives of more than 50,000 people, succeeding in forcing the Sandinistas out in 1990. NEVILLE SPENCER interviewed them for 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly.
Question: Paul, what's the story behind your decision to write a film script for the first time?
Laverty: I spent two and half or three years in Nicaragua working for a human rights organisation. All the stuff that I saw there made a really big impression on me — the violence and how systematic it was and how much money was invested in it.
In a way you feel like you're just spitting in the wind writing articles and reports, so I decided I would really try to personalise some of the statistics. I'd met victims of the war up in the north. Talking to the relatives and survivors, you tend to realise the terrible hurt behind these statistics.
When I came back to Scotland, I had this idea that I would try to make a film about it. I prepared a treatment, a rough idea of the plot. I wrote to Ken and to many other people, but he was the one who responded. It was over a long period of discussion and visits to Nicaragua that gradually we created a screenplay.
Question: What attracted you to the idea of making a film about Nicaragua during the Contra War?
Loach: Well, I'd been aware of it as a general issue, reading the papers and hearing the news as you do, but I hadn't really considered it as a subject to work on until I got a letter from Paul. It was a very interesting letter and so we met and the thing really took off from there. It was his personal experience and his passion about the issue that brought it to life.
Question: Your last two films have moved away from the everyday struggle of the British working class to the arena of grand historical struggles. What prompted the move, and how much of the concerns of your previous films carry over into Land and Freedom and Carla's Song?
Loach: I don't see it as such a big division. While the location and the time are different, the concerns are absolutely the same. The test is to make anything that's set in the past have the same kind of raw feeling and drama to it as if it were set in the present, so there shouldn't be a big division in style or content.
Question: How did you find Nicaragua today compared to the time in which the film was set?
Laverty: Although Nicaragua was in a war in the time I was there in the '80s, there seemed to be as much violence when we went back to make the film. It was a different type to the violence of guns, but there was a terrible kind of social violence — just the horror of seeing kids begging at traffic lights, of other kids sniffing glue, kids in prostitution and the feeling of terrible poverty in a way that wasn't apparent certainly in the early '80s, although towards the end of the war you could see that the war was taking its effect.
Managua's a much more dangerous place in the '90s than it ever was during the war. In the countryside too, there were brigands rather than organised armies, people who couldn't make a living without robbing people. So there was still a tremendous violence in the air.
You get a sense of social disintegration, 70% unemployment, massive poverty: you felt like Nicaragua was like any other country in Latin America. That's no accident; there was a billion dollars invested in tearing Nicaragua apart.
There was a tremendous feeling of optimism in the early '80s. They were teaching people to read and write, people were organised, they were into health brigades or work brigades. There was a real sense that people were taking hold of their own destiny. Going back to make the film, you could see that many people were beaten and were scrambling for a living. Life had become so much harder.
Question: How much of the hope and vision of the Sandinista revolution were still there?
Laverty: It's hard to quantify these things. But I was reading an article the other day in the newspaper about the landless organisations in Brazil — 220,000 in the main landless peasant organisation there. They're still trying to use the lessons of the Sandinistas, and they're one of the most successful and vibrant and dynamic organisations in Brazil. So I don't think it's just within Nicaragua.
People still recognise the importance of the revolution, especially today with globalisation, of using local resources for local people, instead of using cheap labour to export cash crops to rich western countries. That notion is still very important and I think the Zapatistas have shown that as well.
What people learned in the '80s they haven't forgotten about the general economic situation. Especially with the foreign debt, which is absolutely crushing. For every single man, woman and child in Nicaragua, they owe an international debt of $2500. When you think the average earnings are only $250 per year, it doesn't take a Glasgow bookie to figure out that that is slavery by another means.
Question: What reactions have there been in Nicaragua to you making a film there and to the final product?
Loach: The politicians were very interesting. Obviously, the right-wing politicians hated it. The government (the Chamorro government was in power when we made it) attitude was: well, you're bringing money and employment to the country so we have no view about the politics of it; we're pleased you're coming as a commercial venture.
People on the left were very supportive. The army was particularly supportive, the Sandinista Army who are basically the people who overthrew the dictatorship.
It was shown and [Sandinista leader] Tomas Borge came. It was during the elections and the Sandinistas were trying like mad to make people forget the '80s, which was a terrible thing to us. He said to us he liked the film but thought it was too pro-Sandinista, which was rather ironic.
When we showed it to audiences among students and country people, people in the town where we filmed, they were overwhelmed really, and we were overwhelmed by their reaction, which was very positive.