THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY (Part I)
THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY
A film by John Pilger (2007: 94 minutes)
RICHARD NIXON: Guatemala is going to enter a new era in which there will be prosperity for the people together with liberty for the people.
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH SNR: The question is why are we supporting El Salvador?
WOMAN IN CROWD: No the question is why are we killing Priests in El Salvador?
BUSH SNR: The answer is we’re not. Now you be quiet. President Cristiani is trying to do a job for democracy and the left wing gorillas must not take over El Salvador.
GEORGE BUSH JNR: America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice … [and] attain their own freedom and make their own way.
JOHN: This film is about the struggle of people to free themselves from a modern form of slavery. Richard Nixon president of the United States once said of Latin America “ People don’t give a shit about the place” . He was wrong. The grand design of the United States as a modern Empire was drawn on the hopes of an entire continent known contemptuously as “the backyard”. The extraordinary witnesses in this film describe a world not as American presidents like to see it as useful or expendable. They describe the power of courage and humanity among people with next to nothing. They reclaim noble words like democracy, freedom, liberation, justice, and in doing so they are defending the most basic human rights of all of us in a war being waged against all of us.
COMM Pt1/1: This is Caracas, capital of Venezuela, one of the richest countries in Latin America thanks to huge deposits of oil. The rich in Venezuela live in leafy suburbs with names like ‘Country Club’. Their spiritual homes are Miami and Washington. The majority live in what are known as barrios on hillsides in breeze block houses that defy gravity. In the past, these people have been invisible - excluded from their own society. Today, they display the confidence of those who know an extraordinary change has come to their lives. This is Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, the voice of the barrios. Chavez and his supporters have won ten elections in eight years. He’s the symbol of an awakening of people power, driven by great popular movements that are unique to Latin America.
CHAVEZ AT RALLY [SUBTITLED]: The days of the old bosses and barons are over. That false, elite democracy is over in Venezuela
JOHN V/O: It’s no surprise that Chavez, with the help of an aggressive media coverage has become a hate figure in the United States, because what he represents is another way and a threat to American domination.
PRESENTER: Alright, Now Hugo Chavez, The criminal - I mean criminal - government of Venezuela- offering.
GUEST: The criminal?
PRESENTER: The criminal. It’s a criminal government.
DOUGLAS: In my opinion and in the opinion of a lot of people in our government Hugo Chavez represents an extreme threat not only to our nation but to our hemisphere.
GUEST: He should have been killed a long time ago….
INTV QU V/O: By whom?
GUEST: And anyone who blames… by anyone…
CHAVEZ (in English): Do you want a cup of coffee?
JOHN: Yeah
CHAVEZ (SUBTITLED TRANSLATION): This was one of my English lessons in secondary school. (in ENGLISH): Do you wanna cup of coffee? Do you wanna glass of milk? Do you wanna glass of water?” (Laughs) English lesson 1… (Laughs).
JOHN: Let me ask about you personally I’ve been travelling with you over the last couple of days. I’ve seen a man who is clearly deeply committed to what you want for the Venezuelan people. Could you describe where that came from?
CHAVEZ: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: I was born in a very poor home, a peasant home. And so I experienced poverty. I was a poor child, barefoot; my father was a teacher of a rural school, and my mother too. I had a beautiful grandmother, she was Indian, and she filled me with love. My grandmother taught me a lot, and I learnt from her about solidarity with other people, about sharing the bread, even when there’s little to eat. Later I went into the army, the military academy, and I became a soldier. And there I found out about Bolivar and started to realise what the truth was.
JOHN V/O: Simon Bolivar is venerated in Latin America as the liberator from Spanish colonialism. Bolivar believed that freedom only came when people united against all invaders, no matter their disguise.
JOHN V/O Pt1/3: Today the people of Latin America are again rising up; against an empire built on an extreme form of capitalism known as the Washington consensus. Whole countries have been privatised, put up for sale, their natural wealth sold to foreign companies for peanuts. In Venezuela, they’ve said, No more.
JOHN V/O: This is La Vega, a barrio of a million people, Mariella Machado has lived here most of her life. She knows what it’s like to be excluded in her own country.
MARIELA: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: I can give you a very specific example: on the maps all these hills and houses did not figure, they were shown as green spaces. That was before Chavez’s government. Before Chavez we did not feel a part of this society.
JOHN VO Pt1/5: This is called a mission. It’s a kind of parallel government designed to bypass the old bureaucracy and deliver real benefits to ordinary people. This is raw democracy, a triumph of the grass roots. Today, they’re discussing the dream of owning their own homes for the first time.
MARIELA [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: We do not want the deeds just for their own sake. More important than the deeds themselves is that we own the property, in order to develop our own cities and obtain the rights that have been denied us for so long. That is the most important thing. This is not a matter of getting the deeds and saying “I’m sorted now, I can go” and stopping coming to the parish assemblies because after the deeds there are better things to come like the development of our barrios.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/6: Soon after Chavez was elected in 1999 Venezuelans voted on a constitution and this little blue book has been a best seller ever since.
JOHN V/O: This is one of a chain of supermarkets set up in the barrios, funded by the proceeds of oil. Here, prices are kept low, and on the back of every packet of rice and soap powder packet are printed the people’s rights under the constitution.
JOHN: Does it really mean something to you to see it there?
NORA: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Of course, because I didn’t know we had rights like everyone else, but this one – article 23 tells us about national politics, and this makes us feel included.
CHAVEZ: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Democracy, as I said recently, before our people as Lincoln said, has a simple definition – the difficulty is making it a reality. We are making it a reality – the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. A society where people are included and are equal, where there is no exclusion there is no poverty, where human values reign.
JP- V/O Pt1/7: For some of his supporters, Chavez has not gone far enough. Familiar obstacles remain from the past - a stifling bureaucracy and widespread corruption. And although poverty has fallen dramatically in recent years, it’s far from eradicated.
JOHN: When you drive in from the airport at Caracas the one thing that shocks a first time visitor are the barrios. The numbers of poor people. Why is it in Venezuela, which earns so many billions of dollars in oil money, that there still is this poverty in spite of all the changes you have made?
CHAVEZ: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: The poor of Venezuela carry on being poor, yes. I always say that we don’t want to be rich, our aim is not material wealth. It is to live with dignity, of course to come out of extreme poverty, above all. And to live, to live with dignity, this is the objective. Not to become millionaires, live the American way of life, no, that would be stupid. I am telling you this because the issue of poverty affects us deeply. Its most of our daily struggle.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/8: The daily struggle is made easier here. Ten years ago, this clinic would not have been dreamed of. Now, all over Venezuela, ordinary people have free health care, many seeing a doctor for the first time in their lives.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/9: For the first time, children of the poorest have a full day at school and at least one hot meal a day. (pause) They’re learning history and music and dance, often for the first time; and all of this is free.
JOHN VO Pt1/9: Under the constitution, the poorest housewives are now paid as workers. There is now close to full literacy, thanks to classes like this, catering to those like Mavis Mendez, aged 95, now reading and writing for the first time.
OLDER WOMAN WITH WHITE HEAD BAND [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: ‘This means an enormous amount to us. The only thing I wish is that I was younger, so that I could keep learning more.
YOUNG WOMAN IN RED T-SHIRT [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: I think it’s never too late to better yourself.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/10: This is East Caracas, home to some of the wealthiest people on earth and what they call here the middle class. I dropped in on John Wink who agreed to show me around his grand house.
JOHN P: Wow this is such a striking house!
JOHN V: Thank you.
JOHN P: My goodness.. yes.. You’ve been here long have you? This is the family home?
JOHN W: Yes.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/10A: John Wink has travelled the world, collecting object d'art.
JOHN P: Have you collected all the silver and silverware - the chandelier?
JOHN W: Yes that one I bought from Spain. This is a collection of DOVE blue. This is why I have it over there so it doesn’t break. This is from Peru. It’s silver.
JOHN P: But you are thinking of leaving?
JOHN W: Well it’s the situation of the country, it’s getting day by day worse.
JOHN P: In what way?
JOHN W: In a political way. We thought that the gentleman that is now in power, that he would change the situation because it was a mess, but now it’s a bigger mess.
JOHN V/O Pt1/11: John Wink’s view is echoed by Venezuela’s powerful media. Mostly privately owned, it combines banality with hardline politics.
TV PRESENTER: [SUBITITLED TRANSLATION]: Coming up, more dangers in the latest official decisions.
JOHN V/O Pt1/11: John Eink’s view is echoed by Venezuela’s powerful media. Mostly privately owned, it combines banality with hardline politics.
TV PRESENTER: [SUBITITLED TRANSLATION] Coming up, more dangers in the latest official decisions.
MARIA LAVAUD: : [SUBITITLED TRANSLATION] Venezuela is moving towards a ver similar regime to that which prevails in cuba.
TV PRESENTER : [SUBITITLED TRANSLATION] For the government, what 21st century Socialism means is simple the control of society by the state.
JOHN: A number of journalists erm now say.. “Well, there is censorship they have been censored”…
ANDRES IZARRA: How can that be they speak out every morning they have their shows every day they speak out you know.. constantly against the government every day I mean how can they say this..
MARGARITA: I don’t know if you have seen the programmes that I have! Oh well! Anybody that comes to Venezuela and spends two days looking at these Channels, knows that there’s no censorship in Venezuela! You just have to sit down and see those ah opinion programmes between six o’clock and eight o’clock in the morning.
PRESENTER: [SUBITILED TRANSLATION]: Hugo is evolving from a Facist to Nazi. What the difference between and Nazi and a Facist? Basically, Nazi’s murder people.
MARGARITA: I mean, I don’t think in any part of the world you hear the things that they say about President Chávez, about his Cabinet, his Ministers, the Governors, the Policies, whatever. I mean it’s, even obscene sometimes in some ways.
JOHN P: It seems to me that everything including the weather is being blamed on Mr Chavez.
DR MARTIN SCHOFFEL: Nobody blames Mr Chavez for the weather because it’s the only thing that’s left which still works. All the other things fell apart entirely. You’re talking here 1914 Bolshevik revolution, Russia. This is what’s taken place here. And if you go…
JOHN P: Wait a minute, look we’re sitting here in your wonderful apartment over looking Caracas.MARTIN: Thank you. In Venezuela you say ‘esho gaza’.
JOHN P: And if you’re comparing this with the Bolshevik revolution, there are no revolutionaries banging on your door and none of your companies have been invaded. Your good life hasn’t really changed, it hasn’t changed has it?
MARTIN: Yes but as I said before, it is now on a wait and see position. If I had come today on a 2 year contract as I did in 1976 I would fulfil my contract, pack my luggage and go. Because I don’t see any more future.
JOHN VO: His critics accuse Chavez of building another Cuba; Of being another Castro. And although he recently announced temporary presidential powers that bypass parliament, he maintains that his motives are solely to speed up reform. The irony is that unlike Cuba capitalism has never had it better here.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/12: At the Caracas motor show, Ferrari’s and other luxury cars are sold. Smart restaurants and private golf courses and weekends in Miami are booming. What this class has lost is political power, over a huge oil economy.
MARGARITA VO: I think Venezuela because it is an oil economy.
IN VISION: Its middle and upper classes are very much biased towards the US and the American way of life. In a way they think they are cosmopolitan, they don’t feel that they are part of this country or that country. They belong to the world - they belong to this kind of privileged people of the world…
JOHN: Miami?
MARGARITA: Miami, New York, Paris.
JOHN WINK: We adore Miami. Miami is our second home. We discovered Miami, because Miami formerly was a village and we were so rich, we went to Miami, we bought houses, apartments, bungalows, boats, cars, everything. We were the owners of Miami. And so we are very US minded.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/13: In the old Venezuela, the United States played the part of a Mafia godfather. The deal was simple. For supplying endless cheap oil, the Venezuelan rich kept a large slice of the profits. The election of Hugo Chavez ended the deal.
GEORGE TENET: Obviously Venezuela is important because they are the third largest supplier of petroleum. I would say that Mr Chavez, and the state department may say this, probably doesn’t have the interest of the United States at heart…
COLIN POWELL: We have been concerned with some of the actions of Venezuelan President Chavez and his understanding of what a democratic system is all about.
CHAVEZ – [SUBITITLED TRANSLATION]: I assure you that we tried to avoid the clash with the empire, but it was inevitable. I went to the White House, I shook hands with Clinton. Even over the phone “how are you Mr Clinton? How are you Mr Chavez?” We were trying to do the impossible. To have a revolution without crashing against the empire – it’s impossible.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/14: In Washington and Miami and the country clubs of Caracas, getting rid of Chavez became an obsession. In early 2002, secret plans were laid by the Venezuelan opposition, and the media led the attack.
MAN: [SUBITITLED TRANSLATION]: Do you think the president is mad?
WOMAN: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: It's time for all of us to start discussing the transition, without Chavez, needless to say.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/15: Anti-Chavez protestors took to the streets, their anger inflamed by the media.
OLD WOMAN TALKING TO CAMERA [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: There has never been someone so ugly and bad as this!
MAN – [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Hugo Satan Chavez is the Anti- Christ, is the Demon, the Devil, the Dragon, Lucifer.
WOMAN:[SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: He should leave immediately!
JOHN (VO) Pt1/16: The campaign to overthrow Chavez came to a head on April 11th, 2002. An anti-Chavez protest march was called in the centre of Caracas.
DEMONSTRATOR: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Chavez, the die has been cast.
JP VO Pt1/16: What they didn’t know was that there were two marches that day. The other one was led by Chavez supporters outside the presidential palace, known as Miraflores. The two rallies were supposed to be kept apart, but then an extraordinary series of events unfolded. Without warning, the opposition marchers were re-directed to the presidential palace, by one of the organisers.
WENDY: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: He announced that the march would be diverting towards the Miraflores Palace.
JOHN V/o Pt1/16A: People tried to stop the march from changing course, but the organiser was having none of it.
WENDY: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: He responded: “I am in charge here, so you can mind your own business. This had already been planned and were are going to Miraflores.”
JOHN (VO) Pt1/17: The opposition marchers were suddenly herded towards government supporters. As they approached the palace, shots rang out. They were being fired upon by snipers, who shot them one by one, many with a bullet in the head.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/18: They were being fired upon by snipers, who shot them one by one, many with a bullet in the head.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/18: Soon afterwards, these pictures began appearing on anti government TV, blaming the shooting on Chavez supporters on a city bridge.
V/O ARCHIVE: SUBTITLED TRANSLATION: They kept shooting. Aiming and unloading their automatic weapons. This will go down in history. Thank God there’s this evidence. They’re shooting at the people marching below. This is unspeakable savagery. Is this what they call a revolution?
JOHN P Pt1/18: However, as this camera angle reveals, there were no opposition marchers on the street below the bridge.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/19: What the TV pictures did not show was this- the people on the bridge are clearly trying to protect themselves, crouching down to avoid the bullets of unknown snipers above them and anti Chavez police units below them.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/20: The people on the bridge were actually defending themselves.
WENDY OLIVO: It was like a war zone that they had planned and were controlling.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/21: Within hours, these military chiefs appeared on television. They, too, blamed Chavez and his supporters for the killings.
MILTARY CHIEF IN WHITE UNIFORM [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Venezuelans, the President of the republic has betrayed the trust of his people. He’s massacring innocent people with snipers. So far…six people were killed and dozens wounded in Caracas. This is intolerable. We cannot accept a tyrant in the Republic of Venezuela.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/23: It was all a set-up. The CNN correspondent in Caracas, Otto Neustald, later revealed that the generals had recorded their statement before the shooting.
OTTO NEUSTALD [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: On the evening of the 10th they phoned me and said: “The march that will go towards Miraflores. There will be deaths and twenty high ranking officials will appear speaking against the Chavez Government and demand the President’s resignation”.
OTTO NEUSTALD [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: This proves that they were talking about deaths when there hadn’t been one single death yet. It was all planned.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/24: Soon the Presidential Palace was surrounded by renegade army officers. Inside Hugo Chavez was delivered an ultimatum. Resign or be bombed. One of his Cabinet ministers broke the news.
CABINIR MINISTER: [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Its finally clear this is a coup. The president has refused to resign. He is being taken prisoner – this is a coup. Let the world know. It’s a coup… A coup against the people who love him!
JOHN (VO) Pt1/25: The plotters announced that Chavez had resigned. He hadn’t. He was kidnapped.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/26: The following morning, an unelected dictator was sworn in. He was a leading businessman called Pedro Carmona.
MARIELA [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION] V/O: They were all celebrating.
IN-VISION: I watched the whole program when they were on television. You cannot imagine how much I cried as if my children and my mother had died. And they are what I hold most sacred in the world. Just seeing how they said, `”A new dawn has risen in Venezuela”
JP VO Pt1/27: In one amazing proclamation, democracy was demolished, piece by piece.
NEW CABINET MINISTER [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: We suspend the members of the national assembly. We suspend the President and all the members of the Supreme Court, and also the attorney general and the head of the Central Bank and the Ombudsman and the members of the National Electoral Board.
CROWD CHANT: Democracy! democracy!
MARIELA [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: You can’t possibly imagine what the decree did to us. It was such a terrible situation because we saw the past, the repression, coming back, the need to struggle for everything.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/29: In the United States the broadcast media carried the same pictures and the same story used to justify the coup.
AMERICAN ANCHORMAN: The Bush administration made it clear it is happy with the change in leadership in the country responsible for 15% of America’s oil imports. Anthony Mason has our report.
ANTHONY MASON (VO): In the end this is what triggered the over throw of Hugo Chavez. Armed gangs, loyal to the Venezuelan President firing on 1000’s of anti Government protestors. After 16 people were killed and hundreds wounded, last night soldiers surrounded the Presidential Palace.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/30: At The White House the spokesman of President Bush rubber-stamped the story.
ARI FLEISHER: Let me share with you the administrations thoughts about what’s taken place in Venezuela. We know that the action encouraged taken by the Chavez Government provoked this crisis. The Chavez Government suppressed peaceful demonstrations, fired on unarmed peaceful protestors resulting in 10 killed and 100 wounded. That is what took place and a transitional civilian Government has been installed.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/31: Back in Venezuela, three years of modest, democratic reform had been overturned.
ADMIRAL PEREZ [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Fortunately, we have a great weapon, which is the media. As you and the people saw today, neither the Army now the Armed Forces fired one single shot. Our weapon was the media.
JOHN VO Pt1/32: The plotters and their friends had everything to celebrate, or so they thought
JOHN (VO) Pt1/32: The next morning, distraught people began phoning one of the independent radio stations still broadcasting.
WOMAN SPEAKING ON RADIO [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: My soul aches for my son and daughter and all the young ones who will be adrift, at the mercy of all these corrupt people who have thrown this country into total chaos. It’s immoral.
MAN SPEAKING ON RADIO [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: The hope of a people has gone. The constitution is gone. Democracy’s gone. The hope of the children has gone.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/32: But hope had not gone. The truth began to emerge that the resignation of Hugo Chavez had been faked.
JOHN V/O: His wife Maria confirmed this in a call to the radio station
CHAVEZ’S WIFE (VO) [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: He told me, “Let a handwriting expert check that alleged signature if it even exists - because I never signed.”
JOHN (VO) Pt1/32: And the people in the barrios started to fight back. Down from the shanties they came to rescue their president.
FEATURED MUSIC: SOMETHING INSIDE SO STRONG
DEMONSTRATOR [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: This is a dictatorship. Chavez is the rightful President. The people love him and they will defend him.
FEATURED MUSIC: SOMETHING INSIDE SO STRONG .
JOHN (VO) Pt1/33: Now hundreds of thousands surrounded the Palace, demanding the return of Chavez.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/33: Faced by such people power the army turned.
WILLIAM LARA (VO) [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: 98 % of this country’s armed forces have resworn their pledge of allegiance to the Constitution and the Bolivian Republic of Venezuela.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/34: Roared on by huge crowds, the Presidential Guard who had gone into hiding re-took the Palace. And the plotters fled.
MARIELA [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: The young men, the military police who were inside the Palace started to hoist the flag. That made us feel stronger, as we realised we are not alone.
MARIELA [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: We stayed there until we saw a helicopter it arrived in Miraflores at midnight.
MARIELA [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Then we all knew Chavez was on board. It was a glorious moment, seeing him arrive.
JP V/O Pt1/35: Just 48 hours after being kidnapped, Chavez was back in power.
CHAVEZ [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: I think the supreme test was the military coup d’etat in 2002. I was made a prisoner, they took me away and I thought I was going to die.
CHAVEZ [SUBTITLED TRANSLATION]: Now the Venezuelan people, the poor without weapons, went in. Hundreds and thousands went onto the streets to ask for my life, asking for Chavez to return. And so I have nothing left to do, especially after that, but to dedicate all my life I have left to those people, and above all the most deprived, the poorest.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/36: As ordinary Venezuelans celebrated the defence of their democracy, some of the leading plotters fled to Miami and within days, it was clear that Washington had cast its shadow over the failed coup.
JOHN (VO) Pt1/37: The Bush administration had gone along with the lies of the plotters.
ARI FISHER: We know that the action occurred by the Chavez government provoked this crisis
JOHN V/O: As these CIA documents show, it was fully warned and knew about their conspiracy.
JP VO Pt1/38: Washington claims that it warned Chavez about the coup. This is denied by the Venezuelan government.
JOHN VO Pt1/39: Washington not only knew what was going on, it was backing and funding the coup indirectly. Documents recently released show that the Bush administration channelled millions of dollars to the Venezuelan opposition in the months leading up to the coup. The money was handed out by its principal aid agency, US AID, and an organisation called the National Endowment for Democracy.
EVA GOLINGER: During the 6 month period prior to the coup in April 2002, the US Government invested more than 2 million dollars into financing these organisations that they knew at least 6 months before were planning to overthrow the Government.
ROGER NORIEGA: What you’re essentially saying is, POST HOC ERGO PROCTER HOC, because…
JOHN PILGER: What was that again?
ROGER NORIEGA: Post hoc ergo proctor hoc…
JOHN PILGER: I doubt whether viewers will understand that – could you translate that?
ROGER NORIEGA: Just because it happened after we provided support to these groups doesn’t mean that it happened because we supported these groups - it is.. a logical imbalance - we didn’t - it would be very open and transparent about what kind of support we provided through the National Endowment for Democracy and other institutions..
JP VO Pt1/40: In fact, the National Endowment for Democracy handed out money to groups whose leaders were given cabinet positions in the short-lived, illegal regime. An official in Washington explained that this was merely “part of President Bush’s Freedom Agenda.”
RODGER NORIEGA: I want to just be very explicit about this because, I think it’s very important in the interests of fairness to understand that the United States did not support that coup.
END PART ONE (38:16)
Go on to Parts II & III
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