Machuca

"Look at me!", screams 11-year-old Gonzalo. The soldier stops his pushing, shoving and shouting. Amidst the chaos of a military action on a city slum, he pauses as his eyes now notice that the kid he is just tied to detain happens to wear expensive sports shoes, jeans, a nice full shirt...he is also blonde and white. 

Gonzalo is allowed to run away even as his friends are being shot and detained.

Machuca (2004), a Chilean movie directed by Andrés Wood, living through the aftermath of General Pinochet's military coup in 1973. A dictatorship that lasted 17 years, leading to about 15,000 deaths and 2000 who just 'disappeared'.

In this film, I was struck by the role of Fr. McEnroe, of St. Patricks School. An elderly man who has the clarity of thought to foresee the dangers of a society in which there is a wide disparity in the distribution of wealth. In his predominantly White school, he persuades parents to allow poor, indigenous children to attend his school for free. The story revolves around a friendship that grows between a rich white kid, Gonzalo and Gonzalo, a poor, hardscrabble child from a local slum.

 The movie leaves you wondering what would have happened if people like Fr. McEnroe had indeed succeeded in their social integration projects, and if Chile had not suffered so much under dictators.