By Matt Indignant
Profane Existence #58
Interesting things have been happening in Venezuela for over a decade now and as much as the Right loves to vilify it, as much as the Left loves to applaud it, no one in the US really seems to know what’s going on there except that Hugo Chavez does a great job of pissing off George W. Starting with a brief chronology of Chavez’s involvement in Venezuela’s socialist movement and his rise to power, this bilingual documentary includes interviews with academics, ideologues, bureaucrats, and people on the street. Most of this paints a pretty rosy picture of the movement, but the last 20 minutes shows us where it is failed, namely in the cooperatives and the government’s support of them. The DVD also includes a couple of somewhat forgettable featurettes: “Meeting Chavez,” and “Messages to the North American People.” All in all I think I have a far greater understanding of the situation thanks to this DVD. Venezuela does in 85 minutes what the Western media has failed to do in ten years: show us the inner workings and grassroots impetus behind the “Bolivarian Revolution.”
