February 1984: On a rough and remote stretch of land off the Atlantic coast, a group of Miskito Indians are at war with the Sandinista military. Werner Herzog and French photojournalist Denis Reichle focus their attentions on the Miskito army's child soldiers.

In the opening scene, a young boy sits beside a portable radio. He switches it on and a love song plays. The boy sings along, though he is much too young to understand anything about love. He is also too small for his uniform and the Kalashnikov strapped across his shoulders. When the song comes to an end, he smiles into the camera.

Off-screen, the filmmaker recounts how he and his team walked for three weeks to reach Miskito soil. The Miskito population still numbers approximately 140,000. Despite their geographic isolation, protestant missionaries and Caribbean immigrants have brought about dramatic changes to their way of life. Herzog describes a "primitive socialism on a provincial scale" dominating the entire colony. The Miskito Indians have established an underground army. During the war against the Somoza dictatorship the Miskitos fought side by side with the Sandinista. Now, however, they are disillusioned and battle against them.

Herzog visits a Miskito underground army military camp called "Misura". It is based in Honduras and opposes the "new lords of the land." When an elite troop of mercenaries crosses the border over the Rio Coco to attack a convoy of trucks transporting ammunition, Herzog and Reichle join them. The troop is soon detected and they are attacked with gunfire; the Miskitos retaliate. No one is wounded but there is nothing to suggest that this clash was re-enacted for the benefit of the documentary. A skirmish causes the troop to take a detour through the jungle, where they are eventually forced to abandon their mission due to a shortage of water.

At this point in his narrative, Herzog discloses that the United States are keen to "support all parties who resist the Sandinista." At first glance it may appear to some that the daring filmmaker has recklessly sided with the Sandinista opposition – and some hasty ideologists have indeed accused him of doing just this. This is certainly much too simple a conclusion to draw, however, and not only because of the allusion made to America's interest in the conflict. The filmmaker is also suspicious of the background of the mentors who provide the Indians with their military training: they are former sentries of the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza. From within the Miskito army, Herzog and Reichle are able to document, entirely uncensored, the crimes and murders committed by Sandinista troops. The film admittedly sympathizes with the Miskitos, though by no means on an explicitly political level. Its compassion lies with the Miskito people and their tragic plight; in particular with the children sent off to fight a war that the rest of the world has barely noticed.

Werner Herzog attempts to reveal the background behind the conflict. He allows the Miskitos to relate their experiences of the destruction caused by the Sandinistas, of the murdered people and burnt down villages, and talks of the "systematic depopulation of an entire province;" yet the opposition is never given the opportunity to tell their side of the story. Herzog is aware that the Sandinista are already supported by apologists worldwide. Even when he mentions the conflict of modern Sandinista socialism, which threatens to destroy the ancient structures and traditions of the Miskito people, he does not leave room for any representative of the Sandinista to have their say. He does, however, expose the strategic lying of one of the Miskito child soldier mentors, who purports that the training camp is stationed in Nicaragua while Herzog truthfully maintains that these scenes were filmed in Honduras. But Herzog is not attempting a political analysis, and hence he calls his film a "ballad". In the opening and closing scenes a child sings along to a love song; it is symbolic of a longing which will most likely remain unfulfilled in his lifetime.

Approximately half of the soldiers in the Misura forces are children, some of whom are younger than 10 years old, including girls. Herzog and Reichle question them at length. The answers are all similar: members of their families have been murdered by Sandinista soldiers and they themselves are now determined to kill in revenge. They are prepared to "die for their country" in the war against "international communists".

The consistency with which "Ballad of the Little Soldier" moves politically between the two fronts, and which shows no trace of the optimism with which Peter Lilienthal made his Nicaragua film "The Uprising" five years prior, is revealed most clearly in the final interviews with the battle-primed children. Denis Reichle reflects on his childhood when, aged 14, he was made to fight as a Nazi soldier in Berlin against the Russian army. He defines the situation of children in Nicaragua and Honduras as "brainwashing". Herzog and Reichle's film is about child abuse. It is highly political, though not in an ideological sense. The undeniably moving finale confirms its politics to have an unconditionally moral and human grounding.

NB.: Denis Reichle conducted an insightful interview with Steadman Fagoth, the former Misura leader, which was published on 10th January 1984 in the German news magazine "Der Spiegel" and is still available to read online.

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

1984

Production Year

1984

color

color

Aspect Ratio

1:1,33

Duration

Medium-Length Film (31 to 60 Min.)

Type

Documentary

Genre

Anti-war / War Film

Topic

Violence

Available Media

Blu-ray Disc, DVD, DCP

Original Version

German (de)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Turkish (tr), Arabic (ar)

DVD

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Turkish (tr), Arabic (ar)

DCP

Subtitles

German (de), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Italian (it), Turkish (tr)