Canoa: A Shameful Memory

Enrique Lucero

Felipe Cazals' Canoa: A Shameful Memory, from 1976, is a memorable drama recounting the massacre of a group of young hikers by an irate mob in the small village of San Miguel Canoa in southern Mexico in 1968. The villagers had been egged on by the local priest who took advantage of the then current demonstrations on Mexico's university campuses to agitate the villagers against outsiders. The priest, in his sermons, had decried the unrest on campuses as the work of communist agitators. The populace were eager to strike back at those who they thought were undermining their traditional values and religion. It is important to note that a great deal of the popular uprisings in rural Central and South America in the 19th and 20th centuries, like the War of Canudos in Brazil, were reactionary in nature, instigated to defend mother church and traditional values perceived to be under siege. 

The movie is filmed in a faux documentary style with characters addressing the camera directly in an informal manner. Primarily this is through Salvador Sánchez who drolly plays a character generically named a witness. It is to Cazals' credit that Sánchez's character turns out to be a most unreliable narrator whose allegiances are shifty. This adds another dimension to the film and helps flesh out its portrait of the rural community. Cazals also adds elements from sources outside of the documentary genre, including the influence of Mexican muralists, balladeers, and Pop Art. This ensures that Canoa... lives and breathes a little more than traditional leftist agitprop.

The film's most obvious flaw is its depictions of the victims who are bland stick figures. The villains are much more indelibly etched, particularly Enrique Lucero's priest. The priest is portrayed as a fascistic strong man coldly manipulating the populace. The priest is so chilly he even wears sun glasses during mass. Lucero is perfectly cast, calling to mind his performance as Death in Roberto Gavaldón's masterpiece Macario. Cazals also utilizes traces of the horror genre, particularly the shots of torch bearing villagers bent on destruction which invokes the legacy of James Whale's Frankenstein. This last element had an impact on the work of Guillermo del Toro who has acknowledged his debt to Cazals.