Not to be confused with the silly action crime film of the same name and year as this excellent John Sayles film, shot entirely in Mexico. It features 7 languages (including a little English), 4 of which are Native. Kuna (a southern Central American Chibchan language), Maya proper from the Yucatan, and Tzotzil (another Mayan language). But principle among them is a dialect of modern Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan) or modern Aztec. People not from Mexico or those who are unfamiliar with living Native American languages, tend to think of "Aztecs" as an extinct people--they are not. In fact many of the modern dialects are Nahuatl are widely spoken and quite healthy as living tongues--many have large numbers of monolinguals, who can't speak a word of Espanol. Our Nahuatl speaker here comes in the form of the character Domingo, a deeply conflicted soldier, the actor is Damián Delgado. The language is the clip above is Kuna.
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