Leopoldo López, a right-wing opposition leader in Venezuela who supported the military overthrow of the democratically elected government there in 2002, complains about my film (South of the Border), saying "Mr. Stone argues that the assault on human rights is of secondary concern."
But my film argues the opposite. It's just that the "assault on human rights" in Venezuela has come from the right, from Mr. Lopez and his allies. One of the first decrees by the coup government that Mr. Lopez supported was to abolish the elected Congress and the Supreme Court. Protesters were shot, and officials of the constitutional government arrested. And the victims of political violence to this day in Venezuela are also victims of the right - mostly poor peasants organizing for land reform, killed by landowners.
The struggle in Venezuela is not so much about one man, President Hugo Chávez, as the right would have us believe. It is a political battle between the left and the right. Not surprisingly, as in the rest of South America, it is the right that has the ugly record on human rights and issues of democracy. And it is the right that represents the rich -- López was former mayor of one of the wealthiest areas of Caracas -- against the majority of the people, much as in the United States.
Mr. López offers a "Tea Party" view of Venezuela, in which everything that is wrong with the country is the fault of the left government, and Chávez -- like Obama for the Tea Partiers -- is a "dictator." López is very selective in his use of statistics. He does not tell the reader that since the Chávez government got control over the national oil industry, poverty has been cut in half, extreme poverty by more than 70 percent, and thousands of doctors added to the public sector now provide health care for the poor.
Some of his statistics are misleading. For example, the 650 percent increase in prices he refers to is an average of 19 percent annual inflation. This is high, but much lower than the pre-Chávez years, where inflation passed 100 percent in 1996. Most importantly, it is real economic growth, not the price level, that matters; and inflation did not prevent the country's record growth from 2003-2008 that cut unemployment in half and pulled so many people out of poverty. Most Venezuelans are better off since they have a government that decided to use the country's oil wealth for the benefit of the majority. That is why Chávez has been re-elected twice, each time by a larger margin.
As Mr. López's opposition colleague Teodoro Petkoff has acknowledged, the Venezuelan opposition pursued a "strategy that overtly sought a military takeover" from 1999-2003. It is that right-wing strategy -- which has been supported from Washington -- that has presented the biggest threat to democracy and human rights in Venezuela.
Brad Hirschfield: Holocaust Lessons From Oliver Stone
Sorry about my english, I'm a Venezuelan and spanish speaker.
People live in Venezuela in fear of the government. This fear is not a paranoid product of racism as happens with the tea party in the U. S. This is the fear based on reality that comes when government officials come and silence and kill your neighbors. When government officials have power over your future and of your children. When you don't have the certainty that in some years from now your family will be able to survive or be slowly silenced unless they become part of the government party.
The fight against U. S. irresponsible capitalism of the later years and corrupted CEOs in this country has nothing to do with Venezuela. Please don't make the assumptions that Venezuela's struggle can compare to the United States
and do not read too much into the certainty that this post will be flooded with corporate 'sock' accounts and proxies for the chamber of commerce.. they can be readily identified by two consistent markers; 1.) they almost always have less than 10 fans (often 0, account created on the spot, just for your article.) and 2.) their comments reveal a deep affection for authority and for accumulated wealth.
Your film may be right in terms of showing the better side of Chávez, to be fair, but it is not balanced.
Any person, government or political ideology isn't just made up of "better" sides. There's always a "darker" side that is worse, something nobody should be proud of, and this cannot be denied.
I would have a lot more respect for you, Mr. Stone, if your film included at least an attempt to be faithful and accurate about a few of the criticisms made against Chávez. By refusing to do this, it is clear that you prefer to serve as a promotional vehicle and not as a filmmaker who cares about the complexity of reality.
It's not surprising though, since you and your fellow filmmakers who worked on the "opinionated documentary" (sic) in question have admitted that you didn't care about hiding your sympathies. But the way to fight anti-Chávez bias is not to make a ridiculous pro-Chávez film, it is to portray the truth, which requires making decisions that, unfortunately, neither you nor any of your supporters have made.
P.S Oliver - any chance of a movie on Brian Boru? (You'd be the man for the job)
Do you care to provide any proof of your allegations, anonymous one?
@greenworld1: 'go live there.'
I'd love to! Actually, I'm slightly more inclined to move to Cuba, Bolivia or Ecuador, but Venezuela would do.
Too bad your JFK film was so terribly attacked, for it had so much truth about how
the right wing killed him. You have to wonder if some of the Secret Service was in on
it as some were told to back off of the car just before the shooting and then, contrary
to hundreds of hours of training, his car slowed down instead of speeding up !
Look at the Zap. film, it is obvious.
and like Castro, who I used to have more sympathy for when far left, he shoots his mouth
off for long periods and makes a fool of himself.....
Having been New Left I know the arguments, democracy is rigged, only enough opposition is allowed to make it seem fair, etc....and some of that certainly is true at times in the US and elsewhere....maybe it's really bad and Obama and the Dem's are only puppets of the super rich elite and those secret societies like Skull and Bones.....but that would leave almost no hope, and for our kids and the future I have to have at least a little.....
Chavez, there are plenty of other leftist that could take over or win elections, he should do the right thing and get out of the way. And making deals with corrupt and greedy Russia is another bad sign.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5510
I hope you read more about both sides, then see the situation in a more balanced manner.
But Chavez is obviously heading towards total dictatorship, which he promised not to do.
Brazil, etc. are more diverse and still open societies.
Mr. Director, you are not dumb, are you? The one AND ONLY reason that happened is because of rising OIL prices, which in large part happened due to friends' (Bush/Cheney) policies.
2002 elections were fair? But what about EVERY SINGLE election held since? Also fair? Yeah, I thought so... Just as fair as elections in Cuba, North Korea, China and Zimbabwe.
And finally, can you tell me why there;'s more murders in Caracas per capita, than in Baghdad?
Chavez is a dictator, who hopefully will be removed before he completely destroys t nation!
Here's an interesting excerpt from a CNN report on the subject:
Murders down in Caracas, but police wielding heavy hand
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- When the murder rate soared early in the
decade, Caracas residents who could afford it bunkered down, shielding
themselves behind steel bars and high walls topped with broken glass.
They spent millions of dollars on security patrols, guard dogs and bulletproof
windows.
The police also took action, staging mass roundups and detentions and
setting up roadblocks to frisk motorists.
Now the murder rate is down dramatically, and many parts of the city are
safer.
Yet the people of Caracas aren't claiming victory. Some districts remain
exceedingly dangerous, and the cost of fewer murders by civilians appears
to be more killings and other abuses by police.
Police officers "combat the situation of poverty with indiscriminate
repression," said Tarek William Saab, a human rights lawyer.
It might be interesting to note that the date of this article is 29 September 1998! So, Caracas had a high homicide rate long before Hugo Chavez became president. Moreover, the Caracas Municipal Police were an extremely right-wing force that took part in the 2002 coup against Chavez, in which they killed scores of Chavez supporters calling for his return. (In 2008, policing in Caracas was taken over by the national government, but AFAIK there hasn't been a thorough purge of the force yet.)