Campbell and Davis render chavismo
banal, reducing it to the recklessness of Chavez’s charisma and people’s adoration
of a now dead leader.
The ABC’s Foreign
Correspondent disappoints with ‘Venezuela Undercover’. A good-looking but
trivial piece of ‘investigative journalism’. The 30-minute documentary by reporter
Eric Campbell and producer Mike Davis, begins by asserting that Venezuela is,
today, a ‘disaster’. Though very little in the documentary is offered that
might allow the viewer to understand why ‘Venezuela is a disaster’. The imagery
of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, looks colourful and striking on screen, but
the material accompanies a formulaic narration. Caracas is either manic and
dangerous or a stagnant and politically depressed city. The assumption that
Campbell or Davis are capable of reporting on Venezuela is naïve. That they should report on Venezuela is arrogant. Beyond
Campbell’s statements on ‘populism’, ‘socialism’ and ‘oil wealth’, very little is
said beyond a reference to the collapse in oil prices in recent years and the government
having nationalised private companies.
What the documentary does do very well is
fulfil the tropes of how one should report on a ‘socialist state’. We are either
told or made to think that foreign journalists are banned, that the Venezuelan
government doesn’t want what is happening in the country to be known, and that
little news gets out. Venezuela as some kind of tropical and disorderly North
Korea. Campbell’s closing lines speaks of ‘leaving behind’ 32 million
Venezuelans. Presumably, all people he would save if he could. But the fact is
that journalism on Venezuela abounds, and all manner of writings, footage and
reports on the country can be found.
There is barely any examination of how today’s
Venezuela has come about. Campbell and David interview sociologist Margarita
Lopez Maya, though the grabs are underwhelming. I wish Campbell and David would
contextualise a little. Lopez Maya, a well-regarded Venezuelan academic,
accompanied chavismo up until 2009 or
thereabouts. Many others have supported chavismo
throughout its various phases. The ‘Bolivarian revolution’, Hugo Chavez in the
presidency, related social movements and chavismo
itself, have all had various chapters since 1998. Margarita Lopez Maya, but also Edgardo Lander,
to mention another well-known Venezuelan sociologist, have both analysed,
questioned or supported chavismo in its
different periods. Today, both have distanced themselves from Maduro’s
government, but others remain. Nevertheless, Campbell and Eric’s postcard from
Venezuela chooses to present a rather trite analysis from Lopez Maya in which
she warns Australian viewers of Trump’s populism, ‘because Chavez in 1998 is
like Trump today’.
Several opposition politicians are referred to
on screen and María Corina Machado
is given some weight. For a presidential candidate who ran against Chavez in
2012 by promoting ‘popular capitalism’, it might be surprising to hear her
speak of ‘solidarity’. Though here coupled with talk of ‘innovation, prosperity
and freedom’. This was the only occasion in which talk of solidarity was
presented throughout the documentary. Once, and by a pro-market politician.
That this was so, should have led Campbell and Davis to seek other voices and
to ask better questions.
Still, what is truly striking is that there
are no government voices. The assumption here is that given the undercover
nature of the filming, no government representatives could be approached. Are
we supposed to absolve Australian journalists when overseas in ‘troubled spots’
from the basics of journalism? The documentary could have presented any number
of voices from supporters or leftist analysts speaking about Venezuela’s
current situation. The well-known and very vocal members of Marea Socialista, a faction recently
expelled from the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), come to
mind.
Despite the lack of analysis chavismo is, nevertheless, brought into
the documentary in a significant way. As a series of threats experienced by
Campbell and Eric themselves, if the
government finds out…, if we are
kidnapped by this gang… and by Venezuelans who are ‘watched over’ by
Chavez’s ghost. Chavismo is also
emptied of any reason in the documentary through its discursive absence. At
some moment, we are told that Hugo Chavez, four years after his death, still
counts with a strong following, and that the government itself has loyal
supporters. And yet no socialists, no Venezuelan left, no articulate analysts detailing
the difficulties of the Venezuelan ‘petro-state’ or governing from the left in Latin
America are brought into the frame. In its place, we see Campbell visiting malandros in a Caracas slum (no need for
the Trump coinage ‘bad hombres’). Chavismo
is a threat, a ghostly presence or simply nonsensical.
The documentary trivialises what has been a
significant experience in Venezuela, for its people, and the left. There are no
interviews with members of the government-backed ‘community councils’, the vast
popular and community run media or from the numerous social movements. These organisations
and forms of political engagement, reinvigorated by chavismo since the early 2000s, and often engaged in complex
negotiations with state power, are simply erased from Venezuelan reality.
I, for one, would have been interested in
seeing an ABC-funded piece of journalism following the various state-backed
food distribution networks, at the heart of the current food shortages while
also a measure to address the crisis. But Campbell and Davis render chavismo banal, reducing it to the
recklessness of Chavez’s charisma and people’s adoration of a now dead leader.
