The subject is the guerrilla war waged by the people of the northern provinces of Argentina against Spanish invading armies from Lima, center of Spanish power in South America. The royalist forces were trying to reach and subdue the city of Buenos Aires, seat of a government that had declared independence from Spain. The commander of the guerrilla forces was General Martín Miguel de Güemes, a wealthy landowner turned military man by circumstances. Although Royalist soldiers were better equipped and trained, the guerrillas (sometimes armed only with improvised spears) took advantage of their knowledge of the harsh, forbidding terrain and were ultimately successful.
The term Guerra Gaucha (Gaucho War) was coined by writer Leopoldo Lugones in 1905 in a book of the same title. The script of this movie is based on parts of the book. Director Lucas Demare was a fixture of the Argentine movie industry with a career spanning three decades and including more than 40 films. Many of his movies were straight, forgettable commercial fare but he managed to film a few of merit and strong social content. For this film he counted with the most popular actors of the period: Enrique Muiño, Amelia Bence, Francisco Petrone, Ángel Magaña. The negatives: the script is often declamatory, naive and flag waving, and acting falls here and there into theatrical territory.
To my knowledge, there is no restored version of this movie, but the quality of the copy available in YouTube is at least acceptable and allows us to appreciate the excellent cinematography by American Bob Roberts. He began his career as cinematographer in two movies codirected by documentarist Robert J. Flaherty and then became an ubiquitous presence in more than two decades of Argentine cinema. The subject of the guerra gaucha was retaken in a 1971 film (Güemes, la Tierra en Armas, directed by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson) and in two miniseries in 2015 and 2021.
