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“Return to El Salvador” is the sort of earnest documentary that usually finds a home in liberal churches.

This isn’t to disparage its effectiveness, merely to recognize the commercial difficulties facing this sort of movie. Narrated by Martin Sheen, Jamie Moffett’s film takes us to that Central American country in the wake of last year’s national election where, for the first time in 20 years, a left-wing candidate triumphed over that of the Nationalist Republican Alliance.

From 1980 to 1992, Salvadoran leftist rebels fought a civil war against a government controlled by a right-wing oligarchy with roots in a 19th-century plantation economy (and getting help from the Reagan administration).

A truce was declared, but except for an end to open conflict not much changed — in fact, it got worse. The rich remained in charge, and rightist death squads continued to cull vocal troublemakers. During the war, five people a day were assassinated; over the last 17 years, that number has averaged 13 a day.

The election of Mauricio Funes encouraged many Salvadoran exiles to return home. Among them are the nominal “heroes” of this film, Luis and Sonia Ramos, who fled to the U.S. two decades ago, leaving behind their three children after Luis received death threats.

As recorded here, their return to their homeland was joyous but premature. It coincided with the disappearance of Marcelo Rivera, an environmentalist who opposed a gold mining project by the Canadian corporation Pacific Rim. After two weeks, his tortured body was found at the bottom of a well.

The Salvadoran attorney general claims Rivera, a non-drinker, had been carousing with gangsters before he vanished. Reporters looking into the case have received death threats.

While the tone of “Return to El Salvador” is cautiously optimistic and generally even-handed, there’s no escaping the lump of outrage at its center. Among the death squads are individuals who received their training from American agents during the civil war; moreover, the film maintains that many illegal Salvadoran immigrants to the U.S. are fleeing persecution and economic deprivation perpetrated by America’s long-standing foreign policy that any government is better than a leftist one.

It’s our mess, too."

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