Editor's Note:
Since the end of the civil wars that ravaged the area in the 1980s, Central America has largely dropped off the radar screen for the mainstream US media. But US influence in the region remains paramount, and political violence and economic dislocation have left contemporary Central America with difficult roads ahead.

PLEASE NOTE: Some of these videos contain violent imagery.

To order any of these videos, contact us by email at info@lavavideo.org, by phone 212-243-4804, or by fax 212-243-2007. Our website, www.latinamericanvideo.org, allows for secure purchases by credit card.

New Title

Testimony: The Maria Guardado Story   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Randy Vasquez
Documentary   63 minutes   2001
With English subtitles
This gripping and complex documentary recounts the story of Maria Guardado, whose political activism stems from the horrific ordeal she suffered during the civil war in her native El Salvador. Kidnapped and brutally tortured by CIA-assisted death squads, she now lives in Los Angeles. Testimony treats her odyssey, and the trauma that provoked it. But if the inner demons of her past still torment María Guardado, they have also moved this inconspicuous old woman to be an energetic and ubiquitous presence in political activism. The video documents her first return visit to El Salvador in twenty years, where Guardado reconfronts her past and draws inspiration for her tireless struggle for social justice.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95

Building the Revolution

In the Absence of Peace   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Michael Martin
Documentary   54 minutes   1988
Dubbed into English
This documentary explores the human and social costs of the continuing military and political conflict in Nicaragua, in the aftermath of revolution following four decades of dictatorship. It is the story of people living under the stress of poverty and war, and their hopes for the future as they attempt to construct a new and fundamentally different society.Thematically structured around the experiences of ordinary people, this work is organized into three parts. In Part 1, people describe the political and social conditions in Nicaragua that caused the popular insurrection against Somoza. Part 2 asks what "the revolution" means to Nicaraguan farmers, workers, and professionals, illuminating the social and economic changes have occurred since July 1979. The final section examines US involvement in the continuing conflict, and its role in the peace process, through the eyes of Nicaraguans.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95

Exhuming the Dead

Bitter Memories   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Nefertiti Kelley Farias and Carlos Bazua Morales
Documentary   30 minutes   2000
With English subtitles
Bitter Memories collects the tragic testimonies from survivors of two of the many massacres committed by the Guatemalan military in the rural areas of the country in the early 1980s. This video, an important contemporary document of the tragic and historic moment when the survivors participate in the exhumations of the victims of the 1982 massacres graves in northern Huehuetenango, Guatemala, and the Mayan ceremonies that took place in honor of the dead. As the bodies are excavated and mourned, so too is the tragic history of this troubled nation.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95

African Roots

Promised Ship, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Luciano Capelli
Documentary   51 minutes   2000
With English subtitles
Limón, Costa Rica, is a settlement of Jamaican and other West Indian immigrants who came to work on the banana plantations at the turn of the 20th century. One of these laborers was Marcus Garvey, whose vision of black dignity and repatriation would later attract a following of more than 6 million black men and women across the Caribbean, Central America, and the United States. Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association was a massive black power movement in the early 20th century, which founded a steamship line intended to transport black people to back across the Atlantic to their ancestral homeland. Although Garvey’s dream never came to fruition, his return to Limón, and the arrival of ships from his Black Star line, had a tremendous emotional impact on the black townspeople of Limón. In this documentary, the old-timers of this forgotten fringe of the African Diaspora recall Garvey’s effect in giving the people of Limón a model of pride, dignity, and hope for the future that even Garvey’s arrest by the fearful FBI could not quash. Some of the old people of Limón have even held onto the tickets they bought on the Black Star line 80 years ago, just in case one day, that proud black ship sails into port to take them to the African promised land.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95

The Price of Dependency

Hurricane Mitch: Uncovering the Costs of External Debt   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Victoria Maldonado
Documentary   30 minutes   1999
With English subtitles
In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept through Central America causing unprecedented damage in Honduras and Nicargua. The severity of the destruction and the amount of time needed to re-stabalize uncovered a deeper crisis: an economic crisis, caused in great part by years of heavy external debt burdens which prioritize debt payments and international markets over people. This video enables viewers to hear from the people of Nicaragua and Honduras who know they are paying off this debt with their lives. They tell of their struggle to expose the global imbalance of wealth and the need to break the crippling cycle of indebtedness. They challenge their government and the citizens of wealthy nations to work for change.
Purchase Price: $ 150.00

Your Tax Money in Action

Houses Are Full of Smoke, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Allan Francovich
Documentary   180 minutes   1987
With English subtitles
Extensive interviews with US government and military officials reveal the CIA's secret war against the guerrillas of Guatemala and El Salvador, and its attempts to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. This classic documentary provides unique insights into the many interests behind the conflicts in Central America during the 1970s and '80s. Many of these architects of counter-revolution have since been reappointed by George W. Bush, making the documentary more relevant than ever.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95

Other Featured Titles

• Discounts on LAVA's Spring Titles (May 2004)
  
• The Latin American Cities Collection (May 2004)
  
• Asian Diaspora (April 2004)
  
• New Release (April 2004)
  
• Jewish Studies (April 2004)
  
• Classic Latin American Cinema (March 2004)
  
• Women's Studies (February 2004)
  
• Satire and Symbolism (February 2004)
  
• New Releases (January 2004)
  
• Discounts on LAVA's Fall Titles (December 2003)
  
• The Vision of Manuel Antin (November 2003)
  
• Now Available on DVD (November 2003)
  
• New Documentaries (October 2003)
  
• Recent Chilean Cinema (October 2003)
  
• The Work of Daniel Burman (September 2003)
  
• Fernando Birri's 'Los inundados' (September 2003)
  
• The Overthrow of Allende (September 2003)
  
• The Sixth Section (August 2003)
  
• Fall Tour: Dispatches from Rebel Mexico (August 2003)
  
• New Documentary (May 2003)
  
• A Tribute to Fernando Birri (May 2003)
  
• Documentaries on the Arts (May 2003)
  
• Documentaries on Music (May 2003)
  
• Crisis in Argentina (April 2003)
  
• Video in the Villages (April 2003)
  
• New Releases (March 2003)
  
• New Feature Films (March 2003)
  
• The Work of Rafael Rebollar (February 2003)
  
• Mexican Documentaries (February 2003)
  
• Landscapes of Memory (February 2003)
  
• New Documentaries-January 2003 (January 2003)
  
• New Films from Colombia (November 2002)
  
• New Chilean Documentaries (October 2002)
  
• New Mexican Documentaries (October 2002)
  
• Contemporary Cuba (October 2002)
  
• New Feature Films from Argentina (September 2002)
  
• The Pinochet Case (September 2002)
  
• Revisiting Central America (May 2002)
  
• Globalization and its Discontents (April 2002)
  
• New Documentaries (April 2002)
  
• Indigenous Video from Brazil (February 2002)
  
• Documentaries from LAVA (February 2002)
  
• New Feature Films from LAVA (November 2001)
  
• New Documentaries from LAVA (October 2001)
  
• Work from Colombia and Ecuador (October 2001)
  
• New Releases from LAVA, Fall 2001 (September 2001)
  
• New Releases (May 2001)
  
• Work from Peru (April 2001)
  
• New Releases from Brazil (March 2001)
  
• THE LATIN AMERICAN VIDEO ARCHIVES (February 2001)
  
• Cuba's Independent Video Movement (November 2000)
  
• This Month's Featured Artist (November 2000)
  
• New Tiles at LAVA October, 2000 (October 2000)
  
• Featured Titles at LAVA, Fall 2000 (September 2000)
  
• New Release of Mexican Feature Films (September 2000)
  
• New Titles at LAVA - April 2000 (April 2000)
  
• New Titles at LAVA (March 2000)
  
• New Titles At LAVA (February 2000)
  
• Puerto Rico (November 1999)
  
• Exclusive Release (November 1999)
  
• Two New Titles Directed Betty Kaplan (October 1999)
  
• Eva Peron Has Arrived (October 1999)
  
• LAVA's Featured Titles for September (September 1999)
  
• Latin American Civilization (September 1999)
  
• For Teachers By Teachers (January 1999)
  
• Brazilian Indigenous Community Video (November 1998)
  
• Welcome Back (September 1998)
  
• What's New (May 1998)
  
• Films Based on Books (February 1998)
  
• MoMA Presents Thorn of the Mountain (January 1998)
  
• CUBAN FEATURE FILMS AND DOCUMENTARIES (November 1997)
  
• VIDEO BY AND ABOUT INDIGENOUS PEOPLES (October 1997)