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‘CHAVISMO: The Plague of the 21st Century’, a documentary about how fragile democracy is and what happens when it is lost....
Review by @chris-chris92 · 697d · of Chavismo: The Plague of the 21st Century
Every cinephile knows that film genres were created, not only to give the audiovisual productions that the human mind is capable of carrying out; but they are also a tool to classify the intention of each filmmaker, producer, scriptwriter or director in each film or documentary... This very brief parenthesis serves to provide a logical but also chronological explanation of a social, human, economic disaster; a drama that touches the lives of millions of people in an American country; one that has not ceased to be in the news for decades?
Yes, I am referring to Venzuela and how it was transformed from a prosperous, peaceful and stable land in almost every conceivable way to this.... Nothingness itself, a bleak place where you know when you leave home but you are not sure when you will arrive... And apart from the facts you refer to that are (oh, surprise...) headlines all over the world; my intention is also to give a personal look, and a decent review on the impact of this documentary. Chavismo: The Plague of the 21st Century, which was made entirely with material produced by Venezuelan TV archive media... It's ironic, you know? A piece of cinema made by elements of television about politicians who despise the art of cinema and the information of journalism and television?
But that's the way it is... Life is full of such stories. Look at Ukraine... They participated in 2 world wars, survived Stalin's famine, defeated the Nazis and the Soviets, and now they struggle day by day in a devastated country against an invading country, with a cruel and ruthless government that has no empathy or human value for a brotherly people... Venezuela, is a textbook example of how delicate and fragile a democracy can be... In the 20th century, the whole of America was plagued by wars everywhere. Coups d'état, disappearances, dictatorships, drug traffickers and civil wars; but Venezuela was the bastion of civic-mindedness, peaceful tolerance and political alternation...
All of this is detailed to perfection in the more than one hour and thirty minutes of the documentary..... Where one can appreciate an air of sadness and disappointment. It is impossible not to feel your throat go dry and suddenly the emotion invades your eyes with small tears.... ‘How did we go from 40 years of full freedom, peace, calm and plurality; to tyranny, dictatorship, socialism and staunch militarism?’, so begins this documentary made by a filmmaker who is persecuted (unjustly, I might add) in Venezuela and who, like almost 8 million Venezuelans, is one more migrant scattered somewhere on Earth?
Chronologically, we can witness all the stages of Chavismo as a political force in Venezuela. How a man with charisma, talent and who knew how to address a certain group of citizens in a country that no one denies had mistakes and errors, but which by no means was the disaster it is today, began his wanderings. From the coup d'état that he tried to give to democracy in the 90's to the creation of a socialist, militarist, corrupt and heartless dynasty of politicians (and yes, I include Nicolás Maduro as well) within a delicate balance that we did not know how to defend or protect at the time...
Our model democracy was not perfect. As I mentioned before, it was flawed. Corruption and the lack of social relevance were just some of the blemishes and debts that were not addressed in time, and that found the way for populism and a caudillo who knew how to use his charisma, his false promises as a democrat, and sold a discourse of democratisation of power and of creating a new republic, as if he were a Liberator....25 years later, we are not even the shadow of what we once were ... And we lead all the negative statistics in the region.
Are we to blame for what happened to us? In part, yes... But by no means all the guilt lies with the people, with the citizenry.... In fact, they destroyed every shred of legality and democracy by using the very tools that brought them to power. That is also part of the documentary. Where we see step by step how systematically everything was coldly calculated, nothing was taken at random and that the objective was not the transformation of a more just, prosperous, free and equitable country than the one we had, but rather a plan to enrich and destroy what existed in order to implement a regime of domination, suffocation and elitist suffering?
Is it too much to call a political system a plague? From my perspective, no. Because I am 32 years old and I have never known any other way of making a country than chavismo... And if you think about it, you can't say it's been too successful... The DEA does not publish rewards in millions of dollars for honest politicians and defenders of freedom, right? I'm not asking you to pity us Venezuelans, but if you want to understand why we fled en masse from this patent or how we got to where we have and why it has cost us blood, tears and suffering to try to reverse it; I recommend you should watch this unique documentary gem. There is not much material on the whys and wherefores I raise in this Review.... If you want to and if you can, ‘enjoy’ and learn what NOT to do with democracy...
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