For those on the left in Canada, Latin America has been both an inspiration and a cautionary tale of democracy denied. In the Canadian premiere of Oliver Stone’s “South of the Border”, the Bolivia Solidarity Network has put on another excellent, large-scale educational and mobilizing event for which they are becoming known, connecting Latin American political struggles to the movement in Toronto.
This event felt like not just another movie screening, but a gathering of people tied together by a feeling of solidarity with Latin America. It is sometimes rare that events on Latin American themes bring both Latino and non-Latino crowds, but this event served both, drawing close to 700 people from a broad demographic. Judy Rebick’s introduction speech was upstaged by young rap artist Spin, a Guatemalan spoken word artist. Spin and his partner who riled up the crowd with revolutionary rap in a mix of English and Spanish before the show.
Oliver Stone’s movie functioned on several different levels. It seems to be intended for a general American audience who have only heard CNN propaganda on Chavez, Morales and other left presidents in Latin America. (Stone also interviews both Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the late Néstor Kirchner of Argentina, Lugo of Paraguay and Lula of Brazil and Raul Castro of Cuba and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.) While it certainly functions quite well on that introductory level, viewers who knew more about the Latin American political scene could appreciate the long personal interviews and incisive media criticism of CNN, Fox News and the New York Times, who are shown repeatedly calling elected leaders dictators and horribly distorting footage and facts to support the unsuccessful 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez.
The energy from the rap performance carried on during the screening, as people cheered loudly for Chavez, laughed when Morales passed on his coca leaf expertise to Oliver Stone (whose altitude sickness was visibly alleviated as he chewed coca with Morales), and somewhat tentatively booed the appearance of Obama, who Stone presents as a possible ally of the Latin American social movements. There was a diversity of political opinion in the crowd, some cheered Lula’s call for a Latin American monetary union, while others cheered Chavez’s statement “our movement is peaceful, but armed.” Everyone cheered when Raul Castro indicated the heritage of liberation movements and included Toussaint L’Ouverture, the victorious leader of the slave rebellion in Haiti, in his revolutionary geneology. Chants also went up for the freedom of Honduras, a country where a democratic leftist was recently overthrown in a military coup- a fact that went unmentioned in Stone’s film.
The film mainly focuses on Presidents, and clearly the filmmaker had the most intimate access to Hugo Chavez. Although it is clear that Stone’s film exists mainly to counter the demonization of these leaders in the North American media, the film’s focus on presidents does contribute to tendencies towards political cults of personality as well as the distilling of social movements down to a presidential head. Social movements are certainly not absent, and footage of street demonstrations is prominently featured . Stone’s own analysis is a bit weak, and the scene in which he talks about capitalism is the weakest in the film, but is reflective of the confusion that many face when learning about the reality of North American imperialism.
After the film, a large crowd of people continued to mill around in the front of the Bloor Cinema, inspired to talk about the movie, about Latin American politics, about possibilities for political change in Canada.
