It is this same audience that visits Miami and thinks every Cuban living there will steal all their valuables. It is this same audience that looks at the antics of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and says, "That's what Latin Americans are supposed to do. We've seen this stuff in the movies."

And the result is a misunderstanding, a gross misunderstanding. Movies are just one example. But such a misunderstanding does not stop in the theater. It moves out to the streets of every major American city and to the diplomatic meetings between American ambassadors and their Latin American counterparts. America views Latin America as if it were one action-packed crime drama with lots of guns and drugs.

Forget about Latin American history and culture, America says. Forget about trying to understand this complex region by making a serious attempt to understand its people. Just give us reels and reels of Tony Montana swimming in tons of cocaine.

But it's only a movie, Hollywood says. It's not supposed to reveal anything.

Yet that is exactly what a movie does--reveal. In the case of the Latin American, a movie reveals a simple stereotype. And when such a stereotype is so consistently portrayed, it becomes almost second nature for any and every portrayal of a Latin American on the screen as well as off the screen.

Which brings us back to good ol' Mick Dundee and his nemesis Rico. If each character switched his nationality with the other, could the audience relate to a witty bushman from Colombia fighting against a drug lord from Australia?

Such a switch would be too confusing for the audience to understand.