The movie “Innocent Voices” explains the atrocious civil war in El Salvador in 1980s. The movie goes with the story of Chava, who is a boy of eleven year-old who lives with his mother and siblings in a little village in El Salvador. It goes with the story of Chava’s “hardworking mother, struggles to survive in the midst of the civil war in 1980s El Salvador (Maltin 647). The village is situated between the Salvadorean army’s controlled capital and guerilla fighters’ controlled area, as why it faces frequent attacks from both areas.
The movie visualizes Chava’s, his friends’ and family’s daily lives, and portrays the sufferings of those how neither want nor responsible for it. Chava’s, family fallen in a worst situation when his father left them for USA. When Chava’s father left living them went to the United States during the war, that time Chava was the only man of the house. At the side of gunfights at night the army makes round in village even at school for recruiting the twelve-year-old boys for them. Boys falling in twelve-years-old are always afraid of. Despite of daily gunfight and recruitment rounds Chava and his friends seek occasions to play as children. Here the movie strongly points out a child’s viewpoint about the war and shows both the fears and the little enjoyments they experience. This movie acutely shows the child’s view, as when a woman said to Chava and his friend to spit out the gum given by the US soldiers (since US soldiers train the army to kill them), they didn’t do it. Because they understand only the taste, not any war politics. Innocent Voices is a rare, influential representation of childhood spent in a war zone.
It is a rare movie regarding the Central America’s immediate past of social, cultural, and political reality with an honest look. Several references of America’s involvement in El Salvador’s civil war can be found in this movie such as US financial aid and soldiers for training the Salvadorean army.