“Say no to communism,” Peace Corps volunteers tell young Colombian men near the beginning of Birds of Passage (Pájaros de Verano). Young and ambitious Rayapet (José Acosta) then embraces the logic of capitalism, leading him to a world of greed and violence.
Directors Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent) fuse the gangster film with an ethnographic study. They examine the violence triggered by Colombian marijuana trade in the 1970s by exploring its impact on the traditions and customs of indigenous Wayuu communities.
Young Zaida (Natalia Reyes) emerges from an isolation rite of passage into adulthood, and Rayapet tells her “You are my woman” after a ceremonial dance. Zaida’s mother Úrsula (Carmiña Martinez) is suspicious of Rayapet because he spends too much time with the alijunas (broadly speaking, Europeans or any outsiders).
Úrsula’s dowry demands drive Rayapet to conspire with his Spanish-speaking friend Moisés (Jhon Navaráez) to sell marijuana to the American Peace Corps volunteers. Rayapet’s weed-growing cousin, Aníbal (Juan Bautista), sympathizes with Rayapet’s dowry plight, and provides the product. Once Rayapet and Moisés deliver the goods to the Peace Corps kids, a businessman approaches them, interested in exporting more product to the United States.
The conflicts that follow will be familiar to anyone who knows basic gangster film conventions. Rayapet must choose between his friends, like Moisés, and his clan. When Rayapet strays from Wayuu traditions, there are problems. But when he adheres to those customs there are more problems, as Úrsula’s son Leonidas (Greider Meza) grows up to be a drunken hot-head, and Aníbal becomes corrupted by his new wealth.
Guerra and Gallego present a worldview through the eyes of the Wayuu, which pushes Birds of Passage beyond a simple genre film. Zaida has particularly vivid dreams that Úrsula has a knack for interpreting, and Rayapet remains haunted by some of his actions early in the film. The European-style house that Rayapet builds for his family sticks out in the barren landscape like a hallucination in a Salvador Dali painting. When the characters stick to tradition in a world driven by greed, the violence plays out like a quiet nightmare.
Birds of Passage screens on Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. at the Chazen Museum of Art as the kickoff to a series of Latin American films at UW-Cinematheque, co-sponsored by the UW Department of Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies.