The Portrayal of Continental Latin America in the James Bond Films

This article stems from our long-term fascination with the James Bond flms (and with Ian Fleming’s original Bond novels) and the British Secret Service agent’s adventurous travels around the globe in what have been labelled “exotic locales”. Scholarly discussions have recognised that Bond’s travels play a role in the making and shaping of popular geopolitics (Dodds 2003; Dodds 2005; Funnell and Dodds 2017; McMorrow 2011), flm tourism (Chevrier and Huvet 2018; Kulcsár et al. 2017), and colonialism (McClure 2011; Metz 2004). These discussions reference continental Latin America while ofen refraining from in-depth analysis. Scholarly attention has mostly focused on the Bond franchise’s treatment of the Anglo-American connection and “the East”, ranging from the Soviet Union/Russia and Eastern Europe to Asia (Funnell and Dodds 2017, 45-134; see also Gehrig 2019; Lawless 2014). As for the Latin American context, studies have mostly focused on the Caribbean and the Bond franchise’s racial politics (Halloran 2005; McClure 2011). In a way, this is only natural, as direct British colonial interests in continental Latin America were limited to Belize, Guyana, and the so-called Mosquito Coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. Still, in Moonraker (1979), Licence to Kill (1989), and Quantum of Solace (2008) Bond operates extensively in Brazil, Central America, and Bolivia, respectively.

references to the history of European colonialism, slavery, and a troubled political and economic relationship with the US. Consequently, landscapes have metaphorical dimensions where representations of place become transformed into spaces that imbue the narrative with ideological meaning (Lukinbeal 2005).
In this article, we argue that landscapes in the James Bond flms serve as both cinematic spectacle and as a connection to the historical, external world: recognisable places and spaces of human action which add metaphorical meaning to the narratives. Funnell and Dodds (2017; see also Dodds 2005), among others, have argued that the James Bond flms help to create the spaces and places they portray in the minds of their viewers. Even when there is "a disjuncture between where flming is actually conducted and where the scene is set […] artifcial place images help constitute that place [...] and therefore become part of that place" (Dittmer and Dodds 2013, 79). This was even more the case prior to the advent of the Internet age and global mass tourism, when Dr. No (1962), Thunderball (1965, Live and Let Die (1973), Moonraker, and Licence to Kill undoubtedly contributed to the way many people saw (and continue to see) the Caribbean and continental Latin America.

When Latin America is understood in its broadest sense, including what
Clawson calls the "Caribbean cultural fringe" (2006,(8)(9), thirteen out of current twenty-fve Eon-produced James Bond flms see Bond operating in Latin America. While Caribbean settings are favoured, 1 only four flms 2 situate Bond indisputably within continental Latin America -the "core" of this cultural and geographic entity (Clawson 2006, 7-8). Three of these flms -Moonraker, Licence to Kill, and Quantum of Solace -are discussed in depth below; the fourth, Spectre (2015), involves a lengthy pre-title sequence set in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead celebrations. This sequence highlights the politics related to flming locations, the touristic gaze, and public relations: leaked emails revealed that the government of Mexico ofered the production team some 20 million dollars in tax incentives to encourage them to flm in Mexico City in order to ameliorate 1 This is in large part due to Fleming having purchased and developed the Goldeneye estate in Jamaica right afer World War II and subsequently spending time in the Caribbean every winter (Parker 2014). Furthermore, British colonial interests in this region were much stronger than in continental Latin America.
2 This article was written before the release of No Time to Die (2021). Based on the trailer and marketing material of the twenty-ffh Eon-produced flm, No Time to Die seems to take Bond to continental Latin America for a ffh time. However, the flm could not be included in this analysis.
A. Korpisaari and O.J. Hakola · The Portrayal of Continental Latin America in the James Bond Films potentially negative connotations of Mexico and Mexicans in flm (Tuckman 2015). The end result is a dynamic and beautiful cinematic spectacle, where huge skeleton props, skeletal decorations, and face paintings colour a festive image of the annual celebration. The sequence helped to popularise the Day of the Dead so much that, to prevent tourist disappointment, Mexico City has begun to organise an annual parade similar to the one seen in the flm. Many locals viewed such depictions of Mexico and the holiday as deliberate attempts to shif the world's critical gaze away from the country's rampant organised crime and drugrelated violence (Agren 2016). In Spectre, certainly the pre-title sequence avoids any such alienating interpretations of Mexico, and, as such, it ofers the potential for only feeting social or cultural commentary on the country. Bond also visits certain unnamed Spanish-speaking countries -located either in the Caribbean or in continental Latin America -during the opening sequences of Goldfnger (1964), Octopussy (1983), and Never Say Never Again (1983. Of these flms, the pretitle sequence from Goldfnger is particularly interesting, as Bond blows up an installation to prevent a "Mr. Ramirez" from "using heroin-favoured bananas to fnance revolutions". The short sequence provides an early reference in the flm series to Western fears of Latin American drug production (later encapsulated by the "War on Drugs" and the basic plotline of Live and Let Die) and the spread of the Cuban Revolution to other countries in the region. The larger corpus of Bond's adventures in Latin America suggests a repeated ideological pattern whereby these locales are represented as spaces of action and intrigue for the British spy who is rarely seen in the company of his American allies in a part of the world that was -and still partly is -considered to be the US's "back yard".
Below, we analyse the depiction of continental Latin America in Moonraker, Licence to Kill, and Quantum of Solace in turn, examining those flms' recognisable post-colonial, Cold War, and post-Cold War power relations in the context of Western colonial visual or narrative traditions and the socio-political history of continental Latin America. In particular, we acknowledge two sites wherein cultural, social, and political struggles for representation take place: the politics related to shooting locations within each flm's production, and their use of cinematic landscapes.

MOONRAKER (1979)
The frst flm to take James Bond to continental Latin America is arguably the most fantastical of the whole series, in which the Western billionaire industrial tycoon, Hugo Drax, is intent on wiping out humanity almost completely in order to start afresh, creating a new "super-race [...] of perfect physical specimens" in outer space. Prior to the space sequences, a portion of the flm's second half takes place in the Brazilian metropolis of Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. Immediately afer Bond arrives there, an iconic shot of Rio follows, showing Sugarloaf Mountain, the neighbouring Morro da Urca, and some of Botafogo Beach. The viewing platform on top of Sugarloaf Mountain, with its spectacular views of Rio, as well as the cable cars that run there, provide central locations for the flm's action. The types of establishing shots that rely on icons and stereotypes seen here utilise a representational legacy that is also recognisable to viewers without any personal connections to the real-world place, while at the same time the images reinforce archetypal visual landscapes (Chevrier and Huvet 2018;Lukinbeal 2005, 8). The world-famous Rio Carnival also serves as the backdrop for Bond's nighttime foray into Drax's local warehouse. Additionally, the huge Cristo Redentor statue, another central landmark of Rio, appears in the background of one shot shortly before the action moves away from the city.  (1964-1985see Keen and Haynes 2013, 512-520). Rather, parts of Moonraker feel like a travel advertisement for Rio (see Chapman 2007, 166-167), especially as both Air France and British Airways receive favourable attention. Consequently, this flm emphasises the spectacle of exotic landscapes and their scope for staging thrilling action sequences.
Following the Rio sequences and the cable car escape from Jaws, Bond learns that the source of Drax's nerve gas is the Orchidae Nigra, the black orchid, which grows exclusively in the area of the Tapirapé River in the Brazilian Amazon. Subsequently, Bond fnds his way (by boat and hang glider) to the remains of an ancient city, within which Drax's space shuttle launch centre is concealed. The use of the Amazon, a rainforest known for its biodiversity and as the fgurative "lungs of the world", adds metaphorical layers to Drax's megalomaniac plans. In these sequences, Moonraker engages the audiences'  (Field and Chowdhury 2018, 329-330) are situated not in the Amazon but in south Brazil; the boat chase was flmed in the Florida Everglades (Field and Chowdhury 2018, 330), and several of the exterior shots of Drax's jungle base at Tikal, Guatemala (Barillas 2013, 15). 3 Furthermore, a Mayan temple located in Tikal, many thousands of kilometres away, and replicas of Mayan stelae and other pre-Columbian artefacts from Guatemala and Mexico portray remnants of the ancient "great city". According to the flm, this city was built by a people who later became sterile and extinct because they worshiped the black orchid. In reality, however, nothing resembling the stone temple shown in Moonraker has ever been discovered in the Amazon, as pre-Columbian Amazonian peoples primarily used wood and other organic material for their building projects (Erickson 2008  Institute, the cover apparatus of a vast drug empire which represents, on the surface, the serenity and past spiritual glory of Native Americans, but which conceals in its dark, cavernous underbelly the "truth" of this seemingly peaceful place. 5 Thus, the building is itself a metaphor for the popular imagination of Latin America in the 1980s, at large: at once a place of apparent ease and plenty but one that is plagued by strife and confict, ofen connected to the drug trade. The negative metaphoric construction of Latin American spaces is also supported in the flm's narration: early in the movie, the derogatory term 5 As with Drax's jungle base in Moonraker, the Olympatec Meditation Institute references the rich pre-Columbian heritage of Latin America. According to Professor Joe Butcher, the televangelist who heads the institute, the compound is a Native American temple "rebuilt stone for stone and restored to all of its original glory". In actuality, the "ancient temple" is a more or less modern "vast concrete construction near Toluca", Mexico (Field and Chowdhury 2018, 455).
A. Korpisaari and O.J. Hakola · The Portrayal of Continental Latin America in the James Bond Films "banana republic" is used to compare Latin American countries quite unfavourably to the US; and the famous "plomo o plata" (lead or silver) metaphor is mentioned twice in connection with the widespread corruption afflicting Latin America (see Clawson 2006, 189-191;Goldstein and Drybread 2018 ofen try to undermine these actions (see Funnell and Dodds 2017, 63-64).
Although violence is always present in the James Bond flms, Licence to Kill is an uncharacteristically brutal entry in the series (see Black 2017, 138;Chapman 2007, 210, 251). At the beginning of the flm, a garrotte is used to kill a guard before Lamora's lover's heart is cut out of his chest ( around Mexico (Field and Chowdhury 2018, 452-457). Conversely, both Colombia and Cuba are specifcally named in Licence to Kill: cocaine is, on several occasions, referred to as "Colombian pure", and afer Bond discovers his ally, the mangled Felix Leiter (whom Sanchez has fed to a shark), a US law-enforcement ofcial suspects incorrectly that a chainsaw has probably been used as "Colombians love to use them on informers"; while Cuba is the country to which Sanchez tries to fee at the beginning of the flm, before being captured by Bond and Leiter, and through which he later apparently makes his escape from Florida to the Republic of Isthmus.
Perhaps surprisingly, the flm levels some criticism at the US, too. When the lefist Sandinista Front of National Liberation succeeded in ousting the Nicaraguan dictator Antonio Somoza Debayle in July 1979, the US was complicit in fnancing the so-called "Contras" (counterrevolutionary) paramilitary groups, which fought against the Sandinistas from 1982 to 1988 (Walker 2003, 34-56; see also Chapman 2007, 201-202). In Licence to Kill, of course, Dario, who is one of Sanchez's most trusted henchmen, "used to be with the Contras before they Well, look at what we did to this country. The Haitians elect a priest 6 who decides to raise the minimum wage from 38 cents to one dollar a day. It's not a lot, but it's enough to upset the corporations who were here making tshirts and running shoes. So, they called us, and we facilitated a change.
This makes it clear to viewers that Haiti, one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in Latin America, by several indicators, has had its share of political turmoil, attracting the opportunism and radical action that might upset 6 The priest referred to by Greene is probably Jean-Bernard Aristide, who won the unprecedentedly fair Haitian presidential election of 1990 but who only remained in ofce for less than eight months before the military toppled him (Keen and Haynes the interests of border-free rapacious capitalism. Similarly, Bolivia is shown to be a country plagued by widespread corruption and political instability (see Black 2017, 136). 7 This is in spite of the fact that, from 1982 until the late 2010sin other words, during the flm's production -Bolivia was actually a democracy. 8 The "failed state" which is advocated in Quantum of Solace's representation of Bolivia is very much visible in the cinematic portrayal of the country's landscape throughout. According to Camille Montes, an agent in the Bolivian Secret Service with whom Bond works, Greene's cover operation "Greene Planet" -an ostensibly environmentalist organisation -has bought up large tracts of land outside Potosí and has sold the logging rights to "a multinational corporation that cut down the forests". In reality, most of the area of Potosí is situated at elevations of over 4000 metres above sea level; the area is extremely arid and hostile to plant life and lacks notable forests of any kind. Thus, by portraying the rugged Bolivian landscape as a product of man-made interference, the flm suggests that the cause of its barrenness is connected with predatory capitalist endeavours which the corruption-afflicted Bolivian government allowed to take place.
Further political implications also concern the flming locations of Quantum of Solace: Panama City, Panama, which is located at sea level, doubled for La Paz, Bolivia, which, in actuality, is built in a canyon in the Andes mountains (Field and Chowdhury 2018, 608 supposedly set in Bolivia, were flmed in Mexico (Field and Chowdhury 2018, 609); but perhaps the single biggest geopolitical concern of the flm is that many of the scenes set in Bolivia were actually flmed in neighbouring Chile (Field and Chowdhury 2018, 609 Solace suggests that Latin America is a place to be avoided (see Dittmer and Dodds 2013, 86, 88). Laudably, however, these flms also implicate the US (and/or the West, more generally) as being partly responsible for the troubles currently faced by Central and South American countries. In Quantum of Solace, in particular, US ofcials are presented as actively unwilling to intervene on behalf of the Bolivians' sufering; conversely, in its anti-American framing, Quantum of Solace is the only flm of the three to consider the Latin American people as victims of imperial exploitation (see Funnell & Dodds 2017, 158-159). On the other hand, in Licence to Kill, once Bond exacts his revenge against Sanchez, he seems largely unconcerned with the fact that Lamora inherits Sanchez's vast wealth, most of which will have been accrued through illegal means; he equally shows no interest in seeing these assets redistributed to the state, to the people of the Republic of Isthmus, or to Sanchez's many victims. Finally, one striking similarity between Moonraker, Licence to Kill, and Quantum of Solace is that Bond is always forced to operate in continental Latin America either completely or at least partially as a rogue agent, with little to no ofcial support from MI6, suggesting that these are spaces (as opposed to places) that the institutional arm of Britain's imperial government is unable to reach.