Photo: POV
El General moves between the memories of a daughter grappling with history’s portrait of her father and the weight of that same man’s legacy in Mexico today.
The past and the present collide as filmmaker Natalia Almada brings to life audio recordings about her great-grandfather Plutarco Elias Calles, a revolutionary general who became president of Mexico in 1924.
In the documentary El General, premieres on PBS on July 20, and online July 21 through Sept. 4 on pbs.org/pov/elgeneral.
In his time, Calles was called El Bolshevique and El Jefe Maximo (the Foremost Chief). Today, he is remembered as El Quema-Curas (the Priest Burner) and as a dictator who ruled through puppet presidents until he was exiled in 1936. Through recordings by Calles’ daughter, El General moves between the memories of a daughter grappling with history’s portrait of her father and the weight of that same man’s legacy in Mexico today. Time is blurred in this complex and visually arresting portrait of a family and country living in the shadow of the past.
“The tape recorder makes me very nervous,” says Natalia Almada’s grandmother Alicia at the start of an old crackling audio tape recording. In 1978, Alicia, approaching the last years of her life, began to record her memoirs with the intention of writing a book about her father, Plutarco Elias Calles, one of a celebrated generation of revolutionary leaders — along with Álvaro Obregón, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata — who remade Mexico in the early 20th century and also one of Mexico’s most controversial figures. Though the book was never written, Alicia’s recordings inspired Almada (Al Otro Lado, POV 2006) to make the film. Almada brings to life her grandmother’s voice not only as a unique window into her country and family’s the past but as a lens through which to look at modern day Mexico.
A former primary school teacher and general of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), Calles ruled Mexico as president from
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