Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

Q&A: "I Don’t Believe a 12-Year-Old Was Born to Kill"

Raúl Gutiérrez interviews CHRISTIAN POVEDA, director of ''La vida loca''

SAN SALVADOR, Dec 5 2008 (IPS) - A group of around 20 people settle into their seats in a small conference room in a hotel in the Salvadoran capital. They are here to watch "La Vida Loca", a 90-minute documentary about the Pandilla 18 youth gang, directed and co-produced by French-Spanish filmmaker Christian Poveda.

As the film unrolls, numerous members of the audience – former Pandilla 18 members, activists, international aid workers – are visibly overcome by emotion.

"People are left shaken. The movie is like a hammer to the head," said Poveda, a photographer with lengthy experience as a war correspondent, who sat down with IPS after the film to talk about his motivation for making the documentary and the experience of spending over a year with the gang members.

"La Vida Loca", a French-Spanish-Mexican co-production, is a grippingly naked portrait of the savagery and humanity of a group of gang members living in the neighbourhood of La Campanera, located in Soyapango, one of the outlying districts of San Salvador hardest hit by violence and crime.

The film exposes the plight of young people caught up in gangs, which are "feared and hated" yet at the same time "strangely captivating." It also reflects the marginalisation, family dysfunction and social rejection that gang members typically suffer "from the day they are born."

The documentary has already been screened at film festivals in San Sebastián, Spain and Morelia, Mexico, and will be featured at the Havana International Film Festival in December.

Poveda, 52, was born in Algeria, a French colony at the time, to Spanish parents who had fled there in exile during the Spanish Civil War. He grew up in the immigrant ghettos of Paris, and as an adult worked as a news photographer covering armed conflicts in the Western Sahara, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Argentina, Chile and Peru.

"At least 15,000 child and young adult gang members are victims of a system that shows no forgiveness, a system that has led them to turn into criminals and killers and to lead miserable lives. I believe that nobody cares about these youngsters. They are a lost generation," said Poveda.

"Is there any kind of prevention work being done in this country to keep young people from joining gangs? My answer is, no. Is there any other means of tackling the problem of gangs used in this country aside from repression? Once again, the answer is no," he added.

Here are some excerpts from Poveda’s conversation with IPS: IPS: What motivated you to make a film about gangs? CHRISTIAN POVEDA: I was motivated by the marginalisation of immigrant youth in France, where I grew up. While there is no comparison between the rates of violence in France and El Salvador, the poverty and marginalisation are the same, and these are what ultimately lead young people to commit crime.

Unlike the gangs in Colombia, Brazil or Venezuela, the Salvadoran gangs, as well as controlling entire neighbourhoods, have branches throughout the entire country and very strict and well-defined rules of operation, and are highly organised. They are genuine armies.

That’s why my idea was to take a close look at the worst of the youth problem in El Salvador and then show it as an example in Europe to say: "Look, if we don’t change our youth policies, this is where we could end up in 15 years."

IPS: What experiences had the biggest impact on you? CP: Sharing 16 months of my life with young people and then watching them die, and having to film them again. Until now, I had photographed a lot of dead people, but I didn’t know them. I had even done it during the civil war in El Salvador (1980-1992).

But filming someone dead when you’ve known them is completely different. Like "Wizard", a gang member who’s one of the "stars" of the film, and was killed a few months before we finished shooting – I used to see her in the bakery every day.

When you interview them, you realise how much hatred they feel towards society, and they show that hatred through the most violent actions possible. But you also learn that many of them live in a world of alcohol and drugs, and have suffered since the day they were born from marginalisation, poverty, broken families, abandonment, abuse, police repression and rejection.

I have never felt the sensation of being in hell, but I felt that the people I was filming really are in hell.

IPS: How did the filmmaking process work? CP: We spent around 16 months making the film. I went to Campanera every day, sometimes to film, sometimes just to spend time with them. The bakery, where we shot several hours of footage, was like a sort of meeting place. Most of the gang members who appear in the film spent a lot of their time in it or around it.

IPS: Why Pandilla 18 and not Mara Salvatrucha (the most notorious Salvadoran gang)? CP: I was in negotiations with both gangs. I met with leaders from both of them for several months. I even visited almost all of the prisons where the top leaders are being held, to talk about the movie. But in the end, the Mara Salvatrucha leaders turned down the offer.

In the meantime, I went to Soyapango to talk with the leaders of Pandilla 18 and we reached an agreement: the film would be shot over a long period of time, and would capture the human side of the gangs.

IPS: Did making the film change your perception of the gangs? CP: Not really. It confirmed the perception I had of these organisations, of the social problems involved. They have built a genuine, well-structured society, with a democratic system to elect their leaders, at the local, municipal and national level.

IPS: After spending over 16 months with the gang members, what are the human aspects that especially stood out for you? CP: They consider themselves soldiers and defend the gang with honour, and even with their own lives. I wanted to look into the human aspect, and explore that other side: who they are, where they come from, the sense of brotherhood among them, their feelings and emotions, their families. Of course, the film isn’t meant to portray them as little angels, either.

I don’t believe a 12-year-old child was born to kill. A social process has led him to become a killer at that age. And that is what we have to try to understand. Only then will it be possible to reduce the rate of violence. Where there is no poverty, there is no violence. But here they are trying to find a solution by sending in battalions of police to crack down on the young people and by building more jails to lock them up.

IPS: What are you plans for the documentary now? CP: It’s a tool to stimulate debate, and that gives me a great deal of satisfaction.