My thoughts on the two boys is that they could be two boys here in the United States. I know in our schools today and even way back when I was in school we had divisions. In my time there were the popular kids (jocks and cheerleaders), geeks (smart kids), hoods (smokers and trouble makers) and nerds (quiet and non popular). Today when I visit my son's schools I see a lot of the same things, popular kids, computer nerds, quiet kids, trouble makers and a new group, Hispanic kids. I can easily see why Gonzalo and Pedro connected. They were both outcasts, Pedro because he was poor and Gonzalo because he was not popular. That made them easy targets for the bullies in the class. Pedro gave Gonzalo the courage to stand up to the bullies for the first time in his life and in doing so gave him the ability to see Pedro as a person and not a class of people. The rest of the students seen Pedro and the other new students as second class citizens, lowest of life that did not belong at their school. It was not until the end of the movie that we were able to see that social class truly made a difference in their friendship, no matter what Gonzalo came from money and Pedro was poor.

There was a huge difference in the rich and the poor in Chile during the time of this movie. I did not even see signs that there was possibly a middle class. You were either rich and had a air that you were better than everyone else or poor and lived in the shanty town and had nothing. I mean the poor even had to share a disgusting outhouse just to go to the bathroom. Times were hard in Chile during this time , even the rich had trouble getting everyday necessities like milk and bread. The difference was that the rich had the money and means to get what they needed even if it was from the black market. The poor like Pedro's family had to work hard and sell whatever they could (flags and cigarettes) to make money. The biggest difference was seen at the end when the military was at the shanty town taking people into custody and destroying their belongings. Gonzalo went to check on his friend and when he was about to be taken into custody all it took was for him to tell the soldier to look at his clothes and he was instructed to get out. That is sad that we can be judged by the clothes on our back.

The biggest message for me is that we should treat each other as human beings and like we would want to be treated. Even in our own country we put to much emphasis on money and material possessions.

I personally was wondering why this movie was called Machuca, I felt like Gonzalo was more the center of the story. We met him first and seen more of his life and his families life and how screwed up they all were. It was like a soap opera, we had the slutty older sister and her over bearing boy friend that constantly picked on him. We also met his father, always gone on business and his mother who was having an affair with an older married man. The only constant person in his life that cared about him was his live-in housekeeper. I mentioned earlier that as far as the social issues we see the same thing here. We are definitely divided by classes, we even joke that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I think the biggest difference is that here in the United States we have agencies in place to assist the poor and or down and out. We have food banks, homeless shelters, churches, welfare, unemployment and others. It is not a perfect system but at least it is there to help. I was disturbed to see the finale scene where the military came in and took the families into custody that lived in the shanty town, killed the young cousin of Pedro for trying to protect her father and then demolishing the shanty town so that it never existed. It is a scary thought to think that one day our government could come into our towns and do that to us just because we did not have money. It is even scarier to think that things like this still occur all over the world today.

This was a good thought provoking movie, still relevant today.