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FILM-VENEZUELA:
Documentary
Revolution
Alejandro
Kirk
MONTEVIDEO, (IPS) - For
Venezuelan documentary maker
Angel Palacios, truth is not
impartial, but it is possible
for the media to be independent,
as long as they do not try to be
”independent of the world.”
A staunch supporter of President
Hugo Chávez who is nevertheless
frequently critical of stances
taken by the government,
Palacios is internationally
known for his documentary
”Puente Llaguno: Claves de una
masacre” (Llaguno Bridge: Keys
to a Massacre), which uses live
footage to unravel the
”conspiracy” that led to the
short-lived April 2002 coup
d'etat.
The film argues that the anti-Chávez
opposition alliance manipulated
coverage -- Venezuela's private
media are overwhelmingly opposed
to the left-leaning president --
to make it look like the
government used gunmen to shoot
and kill opposition
demonstrators on Apr. 11, 2002
at Puente Llaguno in Caracas.
That fabrication, according to
the film, was then used to
justify the coup that removed
the president from office for
two days, before loyal troops
backed by huge pro-Chávez crowds
restored him to power.
The question of truth, of which
there are so many different
versions, lies at the centre of
a global debate on the media in
an era when a pocket-sized
camera, a PC and an Internet
hook-up allow virtually anyone
to become a journalist today.
Palacios, a graduate of Cuba's
San Antonio de los Bańos film
school, says that in the new era
of communication, technique is
not so important.
”Communications must be 'deprofessionalised',
liberated from the dominant
aesthetics,” he said in an
interview with IPS during a
recent visit to Montevideo. He
was in the Uruguayan capital to
take part in an initiative that
he finds especially gratifying:
filmmaking workshops in slum
neighbourhoods.
The answer, he says, are the
community and alternative media.
”I recently saw a documentary
produced by landless campesinos
(peasant farmers), which was the
best on that subject that I have
ever seen. They were fully
responsible for all of the
planning and production, and the
film had a devastating impact.”
His own documentaries rely
heavily on footage from the
community media -- both the one
on the Apr. 11, 2002 shooting of
demonstrators on the streets of
Caracas just before the coup,
and the more recent ”Asedio a
una embajada” (Siege of an
Embassy) on the violent actions
taken by the opposition against
the Cuban Embassy in Caracas
from Apr. 9-13, 2002.
”The important thing today is to
work with the poor,” said
Palacios, in response to the
criticism that some Latin
American intellectuals on the
left aim at Chávez's ”Bolivarian
social revolution” (named after
19th century South American
liberation hero Simón Bolívar).
”In Venezuela the reality is
that 1.4 million people learned
to read and write in the space
of a year,” through a government
literacy drive, he said. ”And it
is the popular markets (subsidised
food markets for the poor opened
by the government) that have
made it possible for people to
afford to eat.”
”An intellectual cannot respond
to me on this with a discussion
on dialectics. In Venezuela
today, everyone on the streets
knows what a transnational
corporation is, who Condoleezza
Rice is, or what a Super Puma
helicopter or endogenous
development is,” he added.
Alternative media outlets have
mushroomed in Venezuela since
2002, while the private and
state-owned media remain caught
up in a war in which the
concepts of objectivity and
impartiality seem to have
yielded to propaganda.
The government has created a
”national prize for alternative,
free and community
communication”, which was added
to the traditional awards for
professional journalists, who in
Venezuela must be university
graduates.
”Impartial no, veracious yes,”
Palacios emphatically stated.
”We are independent producers,
but we are not independent of
the world. Independent from a
source of financing, whether
state or private, that would
enslave us. But we are not
independent from the development
of the poor.”
Alternative media, he says,
represent the ”communication of
resistance,” while his own style
is ”communication of combat,” a
”classic and not overly
innovative communication which
uses the same codes that are
traditionally employed to sell
products and cause superfluous
emotions, aimed at reaching
'their' own audience.”
Using military terms, Palacios
said works ”of resistance
provide encouragement for the
struggle, while works produced
with a 'combat' mindset amount
to a communicational form of
guerrilla warfare that operates
in the adversary's territory.”
Besides ”Puente Llaguno” and
”Asedio a una embajada”,
Palacios and his 15-member
cooperative Panafilms recently
produced ”Espejo haitiano”
(Haitian Mirror).
The documentary denounces the
February 2004 coup against the
democratically elected
government of Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, while showing the high
level of popular support that
the ousted president continues
to enjoy in the slums of
Port-au-Prince.
”Espejo haitiano” takes a
critical look not only at the
part played by the U.S.
government in the coup, but also
the role assumed by Latin
American countries like Brazil,
Chile and Argentina, which sent
troops to the Caribbean nation
to participate in the
peacekeeping mission that is
apparently bogged down in the
rampant violence.
Both ”Asedio a una embajada” and
”Puente Llaguno” document events
surrounding the April 2002 coup.
The former focuses on the five
days immediately before and
during Chávez's removal, when a
group of opposition activists
besieged the Cuban Embassy in
Caracas, even cutting off
supplies of water and power,
while the local Caracas police
just stood by.
Meanwhile, ”Puente Llaguno”
shows how in the hours leading
up to the Apr. 11, 2002
overthrow of Chávez, a massive
crowd of opposition protesters
were egged on by their leaders
to storm the presidential palace
of Miraflores, where thousands
of the president's supporters
had gathered.
In the space of just two hours,
19 demonstrators -- both pro-
and anti-government -- were shot
and killed, mainly the victims
of snipers posted on surrounding
rooftops, whose identity has
never been clarified.
Shortly afterwards, the military
brass seized power and replaced
Chávez with Pedro Carmona, the
head of the country's leading
business association.
Carmona dismissed Congress and
the Supreme Court, abolished the
constitution that had been
rewritten under Chávez and
approved by voters in a 1999
referendum, changed the name of
the country, and revoked
Chávez's economic decrees.
But within 48 hours, the
situation changed radically, and
something unprecedented in the
history of Latin America took
place: a toppled president
returned to power.
Loyal troops brought Chávez back
from the military garrison on a
nearby island where he was being
held under arrest, after the
pressure from the president's
grassroots support base grew
unbearable.
Reporter Luis Alfonso Fernández
of the private,
opposition-aligned channel
Venevisión won Spain's Prince of
Asturias international
journalism award for television
in 2002 for his exclusive
coverage of the sniper killings,
which took place on the Puente
Llaguno in central Caracas, now
an infamous landmark, located
near the Miraflores palace.
The Venevisión footage clearly
shows a group of armed men
opening fire on members of the
crowd. Although it was claimed
that the targets were opposition
demonstrators, this is not
actually seen. Nevertheless, the
graphic images of gunmen who are
supposedly ”Chavistas” continue
to be used today as evidence
that Chávez's followers provoked
the putsch with their illegal
actions.
But Palacios' documentary
suggests exactly the opposite:
that the gunmen formed part of
an opposition conspiracy.
Although the documentaries
produced by Panafilms have never
been aired by Venezuela's
commercial TV stations, they
have made their way around the
world through informal channels
of distribution and sales.
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