The contra insurgence in Nicaragua becomes the setting for a Chicano American's political awakening in this new fiction feature directed by Haskell Wexler. Eddie Guererro (Robert Beltran) is a Hispanic Green Beret sent to the Honduras-Nicaragua border to train CIA-recruited contra troops for a planned assault on the Sandinista regime. Guererro's romance with a Nicaraguan intellectual (Annette Cardona), his observations of the other American roughnecks who make up his cadre, and his own growing repulsion at killing fellow Latinos are the elements of a slow and painful evolution for him. Latino is the long awaited second feature directed by acclaimed cinematographer Wexler; his first, Medium Cool (see October 28), was a deft mixture of fiction and cinéma verité shot in the fray at the Chicago Democratic Convention in ‘68. Latino is a fiction that emerged from Wexler's observations while on an investigative tour of Central America; it, too, was shot on location, in Nicaragua, with the knowledge though not the official support of the government. Wexler was joined by cinematographer Tom Sigel and sound recordist Pam Yates, whose own Central American documentaries include When the Mountains Tremble (PFA, 11/84).