Sunday, September 7, 2003

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Ireland, dir­ectors Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain): Wow. This doc­u­mentary was abso­lutely jaw-dropping. The dir­ectors trav­elled to Venezuela to make a pro­file of President Hugo Chavez, and in the course of their seven month stay, were wit­nesses to the bizarre 48-hour coup which took place in April 2002.

Chavez, an immensely cha­ris­matic leader, draws almost all of his sup­port from among the poor, who make up about 80% of Venezuela’s pop­u­la­tion. Despite huge oil wealth, Venezuela has always been ruled by a small minority who have kept that wealth in the hands of the few. Chavez is obvi­ously not a pop­ular man among this crowd, nor in the eyes of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, who clearly want Venezuela to remain a source of cheap oil, espe­cially now. Chavez planned to shake up the state oil com­pany in order to facil­itate his plan to redis­tribute some of the wealth. This led to pre­dict­able protests from the wealthy class, who also happen to own most of the news­pa­pers, tele­vi­sion and radio sta­tions in the country. This private media empire had been an unre­lenting critic of the Chavez gov­ern­ment, even in the face of genuine reforms (for instance, under Chavez, health­care and edu­ca­tion were made free, for the first time in Venezuela’s his­tory!).

I don’t mean to ramble on, but it was incred­ible how this private media manip­u­lated images in order to fur­ther the aims of the coup plot­ters. After a very tense con­front­a­tion between Chavez sup­porters and oppos­i­tion sup­porters, snipers sud­denly began firing on the pro-Chavez crowd, killing at least ten. In response, some of those in the crowd who had hand­guns (about 25% of Venezuelans, according to the film) began firing back in the dir­ec­tion of the sniper fire. The private media actu­ally ran these images and declared that the Chavez sup­porters had fired on the oppos­i­tion crowd, killing ten of them. This ver­sion of events was fed to the Western media, including CNN, who ran the manip­u­lated footage uncrit­ic­ally. This crisis led dir­ectly to sev­eral high-ranking mil­itary offi­cials calling for Chavez’ resig­na­tion, and then sur­rounding the palace with tanks to force it. All the while, the film­makers were inside the palace with mem­bers of the Chavez gov­ern­ment. Chavez refused to resign, but agreed to be taken into cus­tody by the gen­erals after they threatened to bomb the palace. The oppos­i­tion then shut down the state TV sta­tion and broad­cast that Chavez had vol­un­tarily stepped down. In reality, he was kid­napped and held hostage on an island, unable to com­mu­nicate with his min­is­ters or family.

The “interim” gov­ern­ment con­vened the next day, whereupon they dis­solved the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, and dis­missed the Attorney General and the Ombudsman, effect­ively abol­ishing all of Venezuela’s demo­cratic insti­tu­tions. As word filtered out to the people that Chavez had been imprisoned, and had not resigned, huge crowds began to sur­round the palace. Emboldened by a crowd num­bering into the hun­dreds of thou­sands, the palace guards, who had remained loyal to Chavez even while con­tinuing to do their job for the new gov­ern­ment, hatched a plan to retake the palace. Within a few hours, they had suc­ceeded, and although many of the coup leaders man­aged to escape, some were detained in the palace base­ment. The min­is­ters of Chavez’ gov­ern­ment, including the Vice President, all in hiding, were informed and all came back to claim their rightful places again. When it became clear that the rank and file of the mil­itary had not deserted Chavez, they went to release him from his island prison and he returned to Caracas in triumph.

The whole thing had taken about 48 hours, and if it hadn’t been for the massive demon­stra­tions in sup­port of Chavez, the coup would have suc­ceeded. The film was an on-the-ground account and made no claims of objectivity, but the fact that so much of the story was altered or simply ignored in North America seems inexcusable.

So, although the film­makers were simply in the right place at the right time, they also man­aged to cover a lot of details that were very illu­min­ating. The fear and des­pair of the Chavez gov­ern­ment min­is­ters on the night of the palace siege, their relief and ela­tion when they were rein­stated, the protests of the ordinary cit­izens, and even the fears of the upper classes; all were detailed with great imme­diacy. A one of a kind film experience.

(9/10)

Tagged as: chavez, politics, venezuela

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