Dir. Chris Martin/John Pilger, UK/Australia, 2007, 98 mins
Cast: John Pilger
Review by Carol Allen
In his second inauguration address President Bush pledged to “bring democracy to the world” in a speech lasting 23 minutes, where he mentioned the words ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’ 21 times. Left wing journalist John Pilger’s first documentary for the cinema sets out demonstrate that not only has Bush failed to fulfill that promise but that in fact the brutal reality is that America is actually conducting a war on the concept of democratic government and has been doing so through many administrations.
Bush’s speech was significant, he argues, because it finally emptied noble concepts like ‘democracy’ of their true meaning – government, for, by and of the people. “Never before have people in the west shown such disenchantment with the democracy they vote for and the version they get”, he says. “Never before has most of humanity registered such alarm at the ambitions of a great power.”
While America’s alleged war on democracy is also being conducted in other parts of the world, Pilger concentrates on the country’s activities in Latin America, described contemptuously by the CIA as “the backyard” and the basis of the “American Empire”. He starts with a round up of the United States’ recent historical activities and political manipulations there, then goes first to Venezuela, in his view one of the few true democracies in the world. It is though hated by the American authorities, who regard Chavez’s government as being communist rather than democratic, a view which is enthusiastically endorsed by the American media. In an interview with Pilger, Chavez outlines his policies and achievements in using the country’s oil riches for the benefit of the people in terms of better health care, education and the subsidy of basic food stuffs. And although Pilger also talks to the wealthy middle class, who are fearful of losing their power and privileges and to the privately owned media with their claims of being censored, it is a bit of a perfunctory gesture, in that he obviously doesn’t think much of their arguments. He also goes into the failed coup attempt to oust Chavez in 2002, encouraged he claims by America.
Pilger then spreads his net to cover American activities in other parts of Central and South America – a litany of interference in Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador and others, embracing chilling interviews with torture victims including an American nun, footage of American based training camps for interrogators and a mind boggling encounter with Duane Clarridge, former head of CIA operations in South America, who brazenly admits the interference and celebrates America’s right to do whatever it likes anywhere in the world.
Pilger makes his case powerfully in what is admittedly a partisan film. But his evidence is convincing and the film is also valuable in terms of clarifying for a European audience not traditionally familiar with the area the recent social and political history of Latin America. And even if only half of it were true, it still gives a hollow ring to Bush’s promise that “America will not impose our style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom and make their own way”.
