FILM OF THE INTERNAL ARMED CONFLICT GUATEMALTECO. Analysis of the Film “La Hija del Puma” (1994)

Abstract

La Hija del Puma, is a film directed by Ulf Hultberg and Asa Faringer. It is based on the novel Pumaens Datter by the writer Monica Zak. The film weaves a politicalreligious-mystical story, about the slaughter perpetrated in the village Yalambojoch, made real, and happened in Guatemala’s indigenous highlands. The film is classified as fiction, though some experts say that given the autobiographical overtones and documentaries that owns it is a “documentary drama”. The film portrays the intimacies of the Maya worldview and constitutes one of the most faithful accounts of the bloody reality that Guatemala lived during the internal armed conflict.

This article reflects on the fiction film as a means to enter the processing of socio-historical themes. Presents the methodology carried out to analyze the film. Find that “La Hija del Puma” (1994) presents different codes of meaning among which: The nahual as divine protection and the possibility of escape; the horror wears military, the racist undertones of the war, the terror as a tactic of this; and ideals or struggle that unites the brothers.

The article is the result of research Cinema as sociohistorical laboratory and its educational implications, which advanced the author at the Universidad of Alcala-Spain.