"Guatemala is going to enter a new era in which there will be prosperity for the people, together with liberty for the people." "The question is, why are we supporting El Salvador?" "No, the question was, why are we killing priests in El Salvador?" "The answer is, we're not." "Now, you be quiet." "President Christiani is trying to do a job for democracy and the left-wing guerrillas must not take over El Salvador." "(George W Bush) America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling." "Our goal instead is to help others to find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way." "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 back yard"." "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're defending the most basic human rights of all of us in a war being waged against all of us." "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 had 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 Chávez, president of Venezuela, the voice of the barrios." "Chávez 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." "The days of the old bosses and barons are over." "That false, elite democracy is over in Venezuela." "It's no surprise that Chávez, 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." "All right, now, Hugo Chávez, the criminal - speaking of criminal - government of Venezuela..." " The criminal?" " It's a criminal government." "My opinion and that of a lot of people in our government," "Hugo Chávez represents an extreme threat not only to our nation, but to our hemisphere." " He should've been killed long ago." " By whom?" " Anyone who blames other..." " By whom?" "By anyone." "You want a cup of coffee?" "Yes." "Yes." "That was one of my English lessons in secondary school." "Do you want a cup of coffee?" "Do you want a glass of milk?" "Do you want a glass of water?" "English lesson one!" "Let me ask about you... personally." "I mean, travelling with you for the last couple of days," "I've seen a man who's clearly deeply committed to what you want for the Venezuelan people." "Could you describe where that came from?" "I was born in a very poor home, a peasant home, so I experienced poverty." "I was a poor child, barefoot." "My father was a teacher at a rural school, and my mother too." "I had a beautiful grandmother." "She was Indian." "She filled me with love." "My grandmother taught me a lot, and I learned 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 Bolívar and started to realise what the truth was." "Simón Bolívar is venerated in Latin America as the liberator from Spanish colonialism." "Bolívar believed that freedom only came when people united against all invaders, no matter their disguise." "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 said, "No more."" "This is La Vega, a barrio of a million people." "Mariela Machado has lived here most of her life." "She knows what it's like to be excluded in her own country." "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 Chávez's government." "Before Chávez, we did not feel a part of this society." "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." "We don't 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 cities, and obtain the rights that have been denied us for so long." "This is the most important thing." "This is not a matter of getting the deeds and saying, "I'm sorted now, I can go,"" "and stop coming to the parish assemblies, because after the deeds, there are better things to come, like the development of our barrios." "Soon after Chávez was elected in 1999, Venezuelans voted on a constitution, and this little blue book has become a bestseller ever since." "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 rice and soap powder packet, are printed people's rights under the constitution." "Does it really mean something to you to see it there?" "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." "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 - government of the people, by the people and for the people." "A society where people are included and equal, where there is no exclusion, there is no poverty, where human values reign." "For some of his supporters, Chávez 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." "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've made?" "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 poverty, and to come out of extreme poverty above all." "And to live, to live with dignity, this is the objective." "Not to become millionaires, the American way of life." "No, that is stupid." "I'm telling you this because the issue of poverty affects us deeply." "It's most of our daily struggle." "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." "For the first time, children of the poorest have a full day at school, and at least one hot meal a day." "They're learning history and music and dance, often for the first time, and all of this is free." "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." "This means an enormous amount to us." "The only thing I wish is that I was younger so that I could keep learning more." "We never had a government that looked after the poor before, or taught us to read and write." "There was none of that before." "I think it's never too late to better yourself." "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 Vink, who agreed to show me around his grand house." "Wow, this is such a striking house." " Thank you." " My goodness." " Thank you." " Yes." "You've been here long, have you?" "This is the family home?" "My family home." "We grew up here." "John Vink has travelled the world collecting objets d'art." "Have you collected all the silverware?" " The chandelier, is that..." " Yes." "That one I brought from Spain." "Wow." "This is a collection of Delft Blue." "I have them over there so they don't break." "This is from Peru, this silver." "Mm." " But you're thinking of leaving." " Yes." "Why is that?" "Well, the situation of the country." "It's getting day by day worse, so, um..." " In what way?" " In a political way." "We thought that this gentleman that's now in power, that he would change the whole situation," " because it was a mess." " Yeah." "But now it's a whole mess." "John Vink's view is echoed by Venezuela's powerful media." "Mostly privately owned, it combines banality with hardline anti-Chávez politics." "Coming up, more dangers in the latest official decisions." "Venezuela is moving towards a very similar regime to that which prevails in Cuba." "For the government, what 21 st-century socialism means is simple - the total control of society by the state." "A number of journalists now say, "Well, there is censorship,"" "they have been censored." "How can that be?" "They speak out every morning." "They have their shows every day." "They speak out constantly against the government every day." "How can they say this?" "I don't know if you have seen the programmes that they have." "Anybody that comes to Venezuela and spends two days looking at these channels, knows there is no censorship in Venezuela." "You just have to sit down and see those opinion programmes between six and eight in the morning." "Hugo is evolving from a fascist to a Nazi." "What's the difference between a Nazi and a fascist?" "Basically, Nazis murder people." "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." "It's even obscene in some ways." "It seems to me that everything, including the weather, is being blamed on Mr Chávez." "Nobody blames Mr Chávez for the weather because it's the only thing left which still works." "OK?" "All the other things fell apart entirely." "We're talking here 1914, Bolshevik revolution, Russia - this is what's taking place here." " If you go out..." " Eh..." "Eh..." "Wait a minute." "Look, we're sitting here in your wonderful apartment..." " Thank you very much." "...overlooking Caracas..." "In Venezuela they say "es su casa", this is your home." "...and 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?" "Yeah, but as I said before it is now on a wait and see position." "If I had come today on a two-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." "His critics accuse Chávez of building another Cuba, of being another Castro." "And although he recently announced temporary presidential powers that bypass parliament, he maintains that his aim is solely to speed up reform." "The irony is that, unlike Cuba, capitalism has never had it better here." "At the Caracas motor show, Ferraris 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." "I think Venezuela, because it is an oil economy, 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 from this country or that country, they belong to the world." "They belong to this kind of privileged people of the world." " Miami?" " Miami, New York, Paris." "We adore Miami." "Miami is our second home." "We discovered Miami, because Miami formerly was, you know, it was a village." "And we were so rich, you know, we went to Miami and we bought houses, apartments, bungalows, boats, cars - everything we got in Miami." "We were the owners of Miami." "And so we are very US-minded." "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 Chávez ended the deal." "Obviously Venezuela is important because they're the third-largest supplier of petroleum." "I would say that Mr Chávez, and the State Department may say this, probably doesn't have the interests of the United States at heart." "We have been concerned with some of the actions of Venezuelan President Chávez and his understanding of what a democratic system is all about." "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 on the phone, "How are you, Mr Clinton?" "How are you Mr Chávez?"" "We were trying to do the impossible." "To have a revolution without crashing against the empire - it's impossible." "In Washington and Miami and the country clubs of Caracas, getting rid of Chávez became an obsession." "In early 2002, secret plans were laid by the Venezuelan opposition with the media leading the attack." "Do you think the president is mad?" "It's time for all of us to start discussing the transition without Chávez, needless to say." "Anti-Chávez protesters took to the streets, their anger inflamed by the media." "There has never been someone so ugly and bad as this." "Hugo Satan Chávez is the Antichrist." "Is the demon, the devil, the dragon, Lucifer." "He should leave immediately." "The campaign to overthrow Chávez came to a head on April 11th 2002." "An anti-Chávez protest march was called in the centre of Caracas." "Out!" "Out!" "Chávez, the die has been cast." "What they didn't know, was that there were two marches that day- the other one was led by Chávez 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 redirected to the presidential palace by one of the organisers." "He announced that the march would be diverting towards the Miraflores Palace." "People tried to stop the march from changing course, but the organiser was having none of it." "He responded "I'm in charge here, so you can mind your own business."" ""This has already been planned and we are going to Miraflores."" "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 to the head." "Soon afterwards, these pictures began appearing on anti-government TV, blaming the shooting on Chávez supporters on a city bridge." "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 an unspeakable act of savagery." "Is this what they call revolution?" "However, as this camera angle reveals - there were no opposition marchers on the street below the bridge." "What the TVpictures 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-Chávez police units below them." "The people on the bridge were actually defending themselves." "It was like a war zone that they had planned and were controlling." "Within hours, these military chiefs appeared on television." "They too blamed Chávez and his supporters for the killings." "Venezuelans, the President of the Republic has betrayed the trust of his people." "He is massacring innocent people with snipers." "So far... six people have been killed and dozens wounded in Caracas." "This is intolerable." "We cannot accept a tyrant in the Republic of Venezuela." "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." "On the evening of the 10th, they phoned me and said..." ""The march will go towards Miraflores Palace." "There will be deaths" ""and 20 high-ranking officers will appear speaking against the Chávez government," ""and demanding the president's resignation."" "This proves that they were talking about deaths when there hadn't been a single death yet." "It was all planned." "Soon, the presidential palace was surrounded by renegade army officers." "Inside, Hugo Chávez was delivered an ultimatum - resign or be bombed." "One of his cabinet ministers broke the news." "It is 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." "The plotters announced that Chávez had resigned." "He hadn't." "He was kidnapped." "The following morning, an unelected dictator was sworn in." "He was a leading businessman called Pedro Carmona." "They were all celebrating." "I watched the whole programme when they were on television." "You can't 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."" "In one amazing proclamation, democracy was demolished piece by piece." "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." "Democracy!" "Democracy!" "You can't possibly imagine what that 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." "In the United States, the broadcast media carried the same pictures and the same story used to justify the coup." "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." "In the end, this is what triggered the overthrow of Hugo Chávez." "Armed gangs loyal to the Venezuelan president, firing on thousands of anti-government protesters." "After 16 people were killed and hundreds wounded, last night soldiers surrounded the presidential palace." "At the White House, the spokesman of President Bush rubber-stamped the story." "Let me share with you the administration's thoughts about what's taking place in Venezuela." "We know the action encouraged by the Chávez government provoked this crisis." "The Chávez government suppressed peaceful demonstrations, fired on unarmed peaceful protesters, resulting in ten killed and 100 wounded." "That is what took place and a transitional civilian government has been installed." "Back in Venezuela, three years of modest democratic reform had been overturned." "Fortunately, we have a great weapon which is the media." "As you and the people saw today, neither the army nor the armed forces fired a single shot." "Our weapon was the media." "The plotters and their friends had everything to celebrate, or so they thought." "The next morning, distraught people began phoning one of the independent radio stations still broadcasting." "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." "The hope of a people is gone." "The constitution's gone." "Democracy's gone." "The hope of the children is gone." "But hope had not gone." "The truth began to emerge that the resignation of Hugo Chávez had been faked." "His wife Maria confirmed this in a call to the radio station." "He told me, "Let a handwriting expert check that alleged signature " ""if it exists, because I never signed."" "And the people in the barrios started to fight back." "Down from the shanties they came to rescue their president." "# The farther you take my rights away" "# The faster I will run" "Chávez, Chávez, Chávez." "# You can't deny me" "# You can decide to turn your face away..." "This is a dictatorship." "Chávez is the rightful president." "The people love him and they will defend him." "# No matter, cos there's something inside so strong" "# I know that I can make it" "# Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong" "# You thought that my pride was gone Oh, no!" "# There's something inside so strong... #" "Hundreds of thousands surrounded the palace, demanding the return of Chávez." "Faced by such people power, the army turned." "98% of this country's armed forces have re-sworn their pledge of allegiance to the constitution and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela." "Roared on by huge crowds, the presidential guard, who'd gone into hiding, retook the palace, and the plotters fled." "The young men, the military police who were inside the palace, started to hoist the flag." "That made us feel stronger as we realised that we were not alone." "We stayed there until we saw a helicopter - it arrived in Miraflores at midnight." "Then we all knew Chávez was on board." "It was a glorious moment, seeing him arrive." "Just 48 hours after being kidnapped, Chávez was back in power." "I think the supreme test was the coup d'état of 2002." "I was made a prisoner." "They took me away and I thought I was going to die." "Now, the Venezuelan people, the poor without weapons, went in." "Hundreds and thousands went onto the street to ask for my life, asking for Chávez to return." "And so, I have nothing left to do, especially after that, but dedicate all the life I have left to those people, and above all the most deprived, the poorest." "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." "The Bush administration had gone along with the lies of the plotters." "We know the action encouraged by the Chávez government provoked this crisis." "As these CIA documents show, it was fully warned and knew all about their conspiracy." "Washington claims that it warned Chávez about the coup." "This is denied by the Venezuelan government." "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 USAID, and an organisation called the National Endowment For Democracy." "During the six-month period prior to the coup in April 2002, the US government invested more than $2 million into financing these organisations that they knew, at least six months before, were planning to overthrow the government." "You're essentially saying post hoc ergo propter hoc." " Because..." " What was that again?" " Post hoc ergo propter hoc." " I don't think our viewers will understand that." "Because..." "Just because it happened after we provided support to these groups doesn't mean it happened because we supported these groups." "Of course." " It is a logical fallacy." " Right." "We..." "We would be very open and transparent about what kind of support we provided through the National Endowment For Democracy and other institutions." "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."" "But I wanna just be very explicit about this because there is..." "I think it's very important, in the interest of fairness, to understand that the United States did not support that coup." "President Bush has promised to rid the world of evil and to lead the great mission to build free societies on every continent." "To understand such an epic lie is to understand history - hidden history, suppressed history, history that explains why we in the West know a lot about the crimes of others, but almost nothing about our own." "The missing word is empire." "The existence of an American empire is rarely acknowledged, or it's smothered in displays of jingoism that celebrate war and an arrogance that says no country has a right to go its own way, unless that way coincides with the interests of the United States." "For empires have nothing to do with freedom." "They're vicious, they're about conquest and theft and control and secrets." "Since 1945, the United States has attempted to overthrow 50 governments, many of them democracies." "In the process, 30 countries have been attacked and bombed, causing the loss of countless lives." "In my lifetime, the following countries in Latin America have been assaulted by the United States, directly and indirectly, their governments replaced by dictators and other pro-Washington leaders." "One of the first to be attacked was Guatemala, one of the small countries of Central America known dismissively as banana republics." "This is Guatemala City as seen from the air." "People who live in the city dress very much like the people in our own southern states." "There are many churches, and people go to church regularly." "They speak Spanish, of course, as most of them are of Spanish descent." "In fact, most of the people of Guatemala are not of Spanish descent- they're indigenous Mayan people, and very poor." "In the 1950s, two per cent of the population of Guatemala controlled the natural wealth in collusion with giant US corporations, like the United Fruit Company which dominated banana growing." "On the board of United Fruit was John Foster Dulles, who happened to be US Secretary of State." "His brother Alan happened to run the CIA." "Both were Christian fundamentalists who regarded any opposition as the work of communism and the devil." "In 1950, this man, Jacobo Arbenz, became the first Guatemalan leader to be democratically elected by a majority of his people, who saw in him the hope of social justice." "He was the Hugo Chávez of his day." "What was going on in Guatemala is that there was a democratically elected president in 1950, Jacobo Arbenz, who sought to institute a series of New Deal style reforms in which the state had a greater role in both developing the economy and redistributing wealth." "The centrepiece of that was a land reform." "Arbenz was far from radical." "His land reform policies were modest." "But Washington was having none of it." "Howard Hunt was then working for Alan Dulles's CIA." "So they said, "A decision has been made at the highest levels of our government" ""to rid Guatemala of the Arbenz regime," ""and we would like you to participate in it." ""You'll be the chief of propaganda and political action."" "In Guatemala, what the CIA did was mobilise every facet of American power." "It didn't just isolate Guatemala militarily and diplomatically, but it used the techniques of social psychology in a nearly year-long campaign which created a sense of crisis in Guatemala." "What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign, uh, to terrify Arbenz particularly, terrify his troops, much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the populations of Holland, Belgium and Poland at the onset of World War Two." "And that's what they did, so that the United States could control the economy of Guatemala, destroying the dreams of its people." "We sowed confusion through the countryside and of course by this time we had aircraft flying over dropping leaflets and doing a little... harmless bombing." "A little harmless bombing and a CIA terror campaign cost thousands of lives." "Arbenz, the democrat, now branded a communist, was humiliated, stripped naked and photographed before being forced into exile." "Richard Nixon, then Vice-President of the United States, flew in to congratulate the new dictators." "(Nixon) Guatemala is going to enter a new era in which there will be prosperity for the people together with liberty for the people." "General Ríos Montt was to be one of Washington's faces of liberty." "During his time as president in the 1980s, thousands of people were murdered by death squads, most of them indigenous men, women and children." "His guns and helicopters came from the United States." "President Reagan flew in to warmly endorse the general, whom he described as a man of great personal integrity." "In the CIA, we didn't give a hoot about democracy." "I mean, it was fine if a government was elected and would cooperate with us, but, if it didn't, then democracy didn't mean a thing to us, and I don't think it means a thing today." "The crushing of Guatemala was Washington's blueprint." "Four years later, Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida, threw down the first direct challenge, ending Cuba's humiliation as a North American colony- a playpen for drug barons and the mafia." "They now know that the Cuban revolution knows how to fight and win battles." "Washington would never forgive Fidel Castro." "Under the government aegis we had the task forces that were striking at Cuba constantly." "We were attempting to blow up power plants, we were attempting to ruin sugar mills, we were attempting to do all kinds of things during this period." "This was a matter of American government policy." "This wasn't the CIA." "Cuba's achievements in health care and education are widely respected." "However, for not bowing to the greatest power on earth, the Cuban revolution has paid a high price " "a 45-year economic war waged by the United States and the loss of vital democratic freedoms." "How dare you, 90 miles from my country, last 45 years with a different form of government." "How dare you haven't allowed American corporations to buy you out." "How dare you continue this arrogance that says you will never succumb to us." "Don't you know who we are?" "Don't you know who these corporations are?" "Don't you know your life would be better if you could drink Coca-Cola every day?" "What justified the attacks on Cuba and other Latin American countries was the so-called red menace." "We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous." "Since it may be used against us, we must get ready for it." "First, you duck and then you cover." "And very tightly you cover the back of your neck and your face." "Propaganda like this excused every American invasion, every toppling of a government, every assassination, every act of terrorism." "The real threat was an orchestrated paranoia in the United States that became a supercult called anti-communism." "The true goal of the United States government is control." "They feel that if the United States did not control the governments of Latin America, then somebody else would, and the principle of government by the people, for the people, of the people, that is, uh, just... that's just silly." "This is Santiago, the capital of Chile." "In 1973, the National Stadium was turned into a concentration camp as a military coup, backed by the United States, overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende." "The leader of the coup was a fascist, General Augusto Pinochet, who rounded up Allende's supporters and brought them here." "A young medical student, Roberto Navarrete, was one of them." "These changing rooms were used as what when you were imprisoned here?" "They were used as places where people were kept inside here, 50 or more." "You can see that there was actually no room to move around here." "Even all these places were full of people sleeping here and there were no blankets or anything." "Even some people actually slept here." "There was very little room." "When they started to torture you all..." " Yeah." "...what did they do to you then?" "The techniques they used were beating you, especially in sort of places where it could become very painful, with a rubber truncheon." "Especially the genitals and the soles of the feet, and, you know, the arms and various places." "Over 2,000 people were confined here, many of them never to be seen again." "Victor Jara was Chile's greatest balladeer." "His songs had celebrated the popular democracy of the government of Salvador Allende." "He was taken to the stadium, where he was a source of strength for his fellow prisoners, singing for them until soldiers beat him to the ground and smashed his hands." "In his last poem smuggled out of the stadium, he wrote..." ""What horror the face of fascism creates" ""They carry out their plans with knife-like precision" ""For them, blood equals medals" ""How hard it is to sing" ""When I must sing of horror" ""In which silence and screams" ""Are the end of my song"" "After two days, they killed him." "How old were you?" "I was 18." " 18?" " Yeah." "The fear that you experienced then, is that something that imprints itself on the rest of your life?" "Yes, but we felt it was part of..." "what we were trying to build in this country." "What they were trying to build was a just, equitable democracy, that took control of Chile's economy from the United States and its proxies." "For the invisible people of Latin America," "Chile under Allende became an inspiration." "In Washington, President Nixon secretly plotted to destroy the Chilean economy." ""We're gonna make the economy scream," said Nixon." "In Santiago, General Pinochet, America's man, sent in his British-made bombers against the presidential palace." "It was September 11th, 1973 - a date that held an infamy and irony 28 years later." "My wife and our children were at the house and they had a marvellous view of these planes winging over and then dipping down and sending their bombs into the Moneda." "From inside the palace, Allende refused to leave - true to his promise not to surrender the government for which the ordinary people of Chile had voted." "He broadcast this last message, then he shot himself." "With General Pinochet in power," "Washington again denied it had destroyed another democracy." "We had no contact with any of the people that carried out the military coup and therefore the coup that overthrew Allende was done... uh, without conduct... contact with the United States." "A very different story is told by these secret documents." "In October 1970, the CIA cabled its man in Chile," ""It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup."" "When that happened three years later, a US official cabled back to Washington," ""Chile's coup d"état was close to perfect."" "Fascism is a word that's often misused... but you've experienced it, the real thing." "Yeah, I think so." "When..." "When did you realise that you were... ensnarled by fascism?" "When did it manifest itself?" "I think it was evident from the very beginning." "Just the ferocity, the sheer brute force that they used." "The disregard for any kind of human dignity." "I mean, their aim was really to make you into a thing," "I think, in order to protect themselves because if they made you into a thing, then they didn't have to have human feelings towards you." "They dehumanised you, from the very beginning." "Once again, a Latin American elite was delighted to be rescued by fascism." "A country has to be well set, has to be well run, well worked, and see that everyone does the work, cos if they don't, then that country goes to the dogs." "This is the one man that's been able to hold them." "I don't believe there's any torturing done in this country." "Because, you understand one thing, why torture somebody when you can shoot them?" "This is where they tortured and killed them." "Villa Grimaldi was once a palatial home in a suburb of Santiago." "Under Pinochet, it became a place of horror." "Today, it's a memorial to its many victims." "Sara De Witt, then a student activist, was a survivor." "What was the date that you were arrested?" "Do you remember?" "Oh, yes." "I was picked up on 3rd April, 1975, seven o'clock... on the dot." "So, the junta had been in power for about 18 months?" "Yes." "So when I realise, you know, someone had put what I imagine was a gun in my back and saying... and said to me, "Don't make any noise, don't try to run, because we will shoot you." ""You are coming with us."" "In a strange wooden tower like this, in spaces the size of a dog's kennel, people were tortured to death." "They took me to this room, you know, they were punching me, hitting me, grabbing my nipples, telling me that I was a whore." "So, they asked me to take off my clothes and they tied... they tied me up." "And then they started giving me electricity." "Now, the electricity was all the time inside my vagina, in my breasts, and then it was going round, you know, round my body, my legs, my arms." "And when they did that, they would stop, asking me questions, you know, and then touching me everywhere and shouting, abusing." "And then they would go - they continue with electricity." "Duane Clarridge was head of the CIA's Latin American division in the early 1980s." "Chile, the only reason it exists, is because of Pinochet." "At a huge human price." "What human price?" "Gimme a break!" "The thousands who were disappeared and murdered." "Thousands?" "You count 'em." "What thousands?" "And don't talk to me about Truth Commissions." "I've seen their names in the cemetery in Santiago." " You're saying they're fakes?" " There aren't thousands." " Well..." " There aren't thousands, sir." "There are thousands, each name documented by human rights organisations, some of them remembered here on the memorial wall at Villa Grimaldi." " You have a couple of friends there?" " Yes, yes." "I have friends." "Mainly people from my training." "I got..." "There is a girl there, Jacqueline Rigi." "Another one Cecilia Larraín." "She was pregnant, Cecilia, three months pregnant, when they took her." "They took another woman, Elizabeth Recas who was seven months pregnant." "She went missing as well." "Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?" "No, because, erm... sometimes, you know," "I think about... what were they feeling, you know, when they were being killed?" "And why, you know, and whether they..." "Sometimes, I think too much, and I start feeling, you know, like the pain." "What do you feel when you are being killed?" "And in such a way that I find it..." " Well, I find frightened, really." " Yeah." "Because you wish, you know, that you could have done something for them." "Such..." "The isolation." "You must feel totally..." "I don't know, I don't know." "What do you think?" " Alone." " Very, very much alone." "It was a period in which almost everybody in the present situation regards as a dark time, in which the CIA played a major role." "That's right." "They played a major role in overthrowing whatshisname." "Whatshisname was Salvador Allende." " Yeah, fine." " He was democratically elected." "Right." "OK." "Is that OK to overthrow a democratically elected government?" "It depends what your national security interests are." "Are you denying that Pinochet caused huge suffering in that country?" "I don't..." "I..." "I..." "Huge, I don't buy." "That he committed crimes, I agree." " But it's worth it?" "Is that what you're saying?" " Yes." " Those crimes are worth it?" " Yeah." "Sometimes, unfortunately, things have to be changed in a rather ugly way." "By the late '70s, most of Latin America was controlled by dictators including those, like Pinochet, who are openly fascist." "All of them were backed directly and indirectly by the United States." "They sent their henchmen to be trained here at the School of the Americas in Georgia." "Officially, it was described as little more than a boy scout camp, teaching American values such as respect for human rights." "In fact, from these manuals were taught interrogation and torture techniques." "Major Joseph Blair taught at the School of the Americas in the early 1980s." "The doctrine that was taught was that if you want information, you use physical abuse, you use false imprisonment, you use threats to family members, you use virtually any method necessary to get what you want." " Torture?" " And killing." " Killing?" " Killing." "If there's someone you don't want, you kill them." "If you can't get the information you want, if you can't get that person to shut up or stop what they're doing, you simply assassinate 'em, and you assassinate 'em with one of your death squads." "This is a death squad in action in El Salvador." "Actually, it's the national police, many of whom were trained at the School of the Americas." "Here on the steps of San Salvador cathedral, they're gunning down mourners attending the funeral of Archbishop Romero who was murdered as he said Mass on March 23rd, 1980." "This man, Robert D'Aubuisson, gave the order to kill the archbishop." "Major D'Aubuisson was Washington's dirty secret in El Salvador." "He was trained at the School of the Americas." "According to the Truth Commission..." " Oh, please!" "...and a whole swathe of..." "Come on, John!" "If this is where we're going, you're wasting my time." "That's all bullshit." "Those people all had agendas." "So, it was bullshit that the Salvadorian military were murdering tens of thousands of people..." "No, I bet you can't count more than 200 in the whole ten or twelve years." "We can count 200 in this one village alone." "They were mostly women and children, systematically murdered in just one day and night in December 1981, in the village of El Mozote." "The killers belonged to a special battalion of the El Salvador army, trained by the United States." "There were few survivors." "I saw the women clinging to each other, crying and screaming at them not to kill them." "I fought for my children." "I didn't want to let them go." "I said I would die with them, but they wrenched them from my arms." "We heard them killing the children." "They killed them at night." "You could hear their screams for their mothers and fathers." "You're taking the stuff from these propaganda mills, and I'm not interested..." "What are the propaganda mills?" "All this Truth thing and all of that - they're nothing but propaganda mills." " Do you really think..." " I know so." "You..." "Are they all conning us, lying to us - Amnesty International?" "Amnesty International's right in the middle of it." "During the 1980s, the years of Ronald Reagan in the White House, a trail of carnage and grief was blazed across Central America." "I reported America's war against Nicaragua, which had the temerity to overthrow a Washington-backed dictator, Somoza." "The CIA attacked Nicaragua with death squads known as the Contra." "Why did Washington attack such tiny countries?" "Because the weaker they are, the greater the threat." "People who can free themselves against all the odds are sure to inspire others." "What right have you, and I mean you, the CIA, the United States government or any foreign power, what right do you have to do what you do in other countries?" "National security interests." "But that's a divine right, isn't it?" "Because the people that you do it to have no say." "Well, that's just tough." "We're gonna protect ourselves and we're gonna go on protecting ourselves, cos we end up protecting all of you, and let's not forget that." "Right." "Right, no, I won't." "We'll intervene whenever we decide it's in our national security interests to intervene, and if you don't like it, lump it." "Get used to it, world - we're not gonna put up with nonsense." "If our interests are threatened, we're gonna do it." "In Guatemala, the United Nations described the Washington-backed campaign against the Mayan people as genocide." "An American Roman-Catholic nun, Sister Dianna Ortiz, experienced this at first hand as a missionary." "In 1989, after speaking out about the brutal treatment of the indigenous people, she was kidnapped." "In... 1989, November 2nd," "I..." "OK." "I was abducted and I was put in a police car blindfolded and taken to a military installation in Guatemala City known as the Politécnica, which still exists today." "I was taken to a basement, and..." "I still remember to this day upon entering the building, the clandestine prison hearing the screams of people being tortured." "Can we stop?" "For 24 hours, she was tortured and gang-raped." "During her ordeal, she identified the leader of the gang as a fellow citizen of the United States." "I came out a totally, um different person but also with new eyes... and... more attuned to the hurting, the brokenness, the oppression, the deceit of my government." "I've heard people say that what happened in Abu Ghraib is an isolated incident, and I have to just shake my head and say, "Are we on the same planet?"" "You know, "Aren't you aware of our history?"" "You know, "Isn't history taught in the classroom," ""about the role of the US government in human rights violations?"" "By the late 1980s, Washington's policy changed." "Dictators like Pinochet are seen as an unnecessary embarrassment." "A new and innovative way of controlling nations was launched." "Good morning and welcome." "It's good to have you all here to help celebrate the launching of a programme with a vision and a noble purpose." "The National Endowment For Democracy is, just as we've been told, more than bipartisan." "The establishment of the national endowment goes right to the heart of America's faith in democratic ideals and institutions." "It offers hope to people everywhere." "Like any new brand, it had a snappy name - democracy." "It was largely fake, an illusion of marketing and spin." "This brand of democracy meant that whoever you voted for, the policies would be broadly the same, and your country's economy would be in step with the United States." "Washington would be your closest friend..." "or else." "In the 1990s, these democracies in name replaced dictatorships in Latin America with Chile providing the model." "This is the commercial centre of Santiago, Chile." "On the surface today, everything seems normal, modern, prosperous." "To the Bush administration, Chile is the very model of economic success," ""a laboratory experiment" according to the magazine Business Week." "Much of life has been privatised." "There are now billionaires, and the rich are getting richer." "Pinochet fixed the country." " Who says?" " He..." "Oh!" " The United States says?" " No!" "The World Bank says." "The Inter-American bank says." "Everybody says it." "He brought about an economic miracle in Chile." "I'm not saying he had the brains for it, but he had the brains to hire all these people," "Chileans, who had studied at the University of Chicago, who knew something about real economics." "Real economics were advocated by Milton Friedman, an extreme right-wing economist at the University of Chicago." "Friedman was invited to perform his "laboratory experiment"" "on the economic life of Chile." "The families of the tortured and disappeared were silent witnesses." "Without irony, he called his experiment "shock treatment"." "Please be seated." "Thank you all very much." "It's, uh... an honour for me to be here to, um..." "pay tribute to a hero of freedom " "Milton Friedman." "He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision." "We have seen Milton Friedman's ideas at work in Chile, where a group of economists called the Chicago Boys brought inflation under control and laid the groundwork for economic success." "This is the other side of the economic miracle." "Chile today is a deeply unequal society." "This shanty town is just minutes from Santiago's smart hotels." "There are so many unemployed." "There are thousands of unemployed." "And those who work, their money isn't enough." "So how can they pay for electricity?" "How can they pay for water?" "They have to buy gas - everything must be paid for." "Every day a mother asks, "How am I going to feed the children?"" "How can I afford it?" "We found this couple living and freezing in the shanty town." "They're homeless and have a week-old baby." "What's it like to live in these conditions?" "The cold at night is hardest for the baby." "Do many people live like this in Chile?" "There are plenty, and worse off than we are." "They don't get any help from anyone." "Where will you go?" "Back to the streets." "We've slept rough before." "Abroad, in Europe and the USA, it's said that life in Chile is rich and comfortable - is that so?" "It's true for the well off, but not for us." "Chile is a democracy now, in theory." "A complicated voting system splits the vote and discourages real reform." "It's a product of General Pinochet, based on a constitution that's also a product of Pinochet." "The general may be dead but the power of the military remains." "It's all very modern, the media is safe, and many believe it's wise to be silent, like the graves of their forgotten compatriots." "It's Washington's ideal democracy." "The dictatorship was a great success in Chile in that it established the political, economic and social model that prevails to this day." "Basically, the constitution imposed in 1980 has not been changed." "We don't belong to a democracy because that word has been so badly used." "It's not understood." "Here there is a persecution against the poor, and not just in Chile, but this is happening all over Latin America." "I think educated people realise that this is reaching a breaking point." "I believe the people will wake up and say, "That's enough."" "This is Bolivia, another laboratory experiment." "The majority of the population of this spectacular brutalised country high in the Andes, have also been invisible until recently." "The indigenous people, the Aymara and Quechua, carry memories of a culture and civilisation and wealth long before the Spanish arrived 500 years ago." "They remember how a single hill of silver underwrote the entire Spanish empire while they became the poorest." "This is the National Congress of Bolivia." "Until recently, the faces here were almost all white, the descendants of a tiny Spanish elite which plundered the nation's riches and reduced the indigenous majority to serfdom." "It was a pattern of control repeated all over Latin America." "The pattern has been broken in Bolivia with the rise of social justice movements of a kind never seen before, and whose democratic home is not Westminster or Washington, or any other so-called model, but in the streets, the minds, the barrios, the fields." "Governments that defy this popular power, this true democracy, do so at their own peril." "This is El Alto, the highest city on earth and perhaps the poorest." "The occupants of this cemetery on the roof of the world are mainly children." "Protected, they say, by the sacred mountain, Illimani," "El Alto overlooks Bolivia's capital La Paz." "Juan Delfín, a priest and a taxi driver, has lived here for most of his life." "This is Villa Ingenio." "It's the cemetery of northern El Alto." "There is a sorrowful bitterness here." "Our brothers, our children, our grandparents are dead and buried here." "There was one family that poisoned themselves, the whole family, because of lack of work and lack of money." "First the husband poisoned his wife and children, and then he poisoned himself." "We have seen cases like this." "When I first came to Bolivia in the 1960s, El Alto barely existed." "The million people living here are peasants run off their land, and miners made redundant by policies similar to those imposed in Chile." "Infrastructure that didn't make a quick buck was privatised." "The message was clear- sell it, strip it or scrap it." "The indigenous people were scrapped." "We wonder why." "If I am Bolivian, born rich, why am I begging?" "We had the sea, silver and gold." "We had everything." "Why are we still suffering?" "And yet the people here have held together their sense of identity, their community." "In the year 2000, the people of Bolivia's second city Cochabamba fought an epic struggle to win back their most basic resource, water, from a foreign consortium dominated by the American corporation Bechtel, and they won." "Three years later, in 2003," "Bolivia's power brokers were about to get another shock." "This is Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada." "Known as Goni, he was brought up in Washington." "His English is better than his Spanish." "They knew him here as El Gringo." "I saw him as a fat man sitting on a golden chair." "Arrogant." "Perhaps he was arrogant because of the power he had, which was his wealth." "When Goni was elected president of Bolivia in 2003, he backed a law that amounted to a fire sale of the country's resources." "Almost everything was up for grabs, including Latin America's second-biggest gas reserves." "We know we have gas and it's being sold abroad to the almighty US, yet still I use wood for cooking." "This is why the war starts." "We will block, strike and demonstrate until we get a response." "The people of El Alto fought back, blocking the roads leading into La Paz." "There were calls to start blockades." "Not even a fly would move." "We stopped traffic and so on, but it gradually..." "What's the word?" "It gradually intensified." "Goni's response was the traditional Latin American way." "He sent in the army to crush dissent." "Scores were shot dead." "Many were brought to Juan Delfín's church." "The tables were here." "The bodies were here." "They removed the bullets with nails even." "It was sad to see this." "The place was full, There were doctors everywhere." "The smell of death was intense." "All the orphans were crying and shouting, "Daddy!" "Daddy!" "Daddy!" "Tens of thousands of people poured down into La Paz." "Like the people of Venezuela's barrios, demanding the return of their president, they demanded their country back." "If the rich and powerful of Latin America had a nightmare, this was it." "Suddenly we heard that Goni was about to resign." "With one down, we felt inspired." "It gave us strength." "That was the aim." "To make him resign." "Goni fled to the United States and is today living in a smart suburb of Washington." "In October 2004, the Bolivian Congress ordered his arrest on charges of bloody massacre." "George Bush has said, "Governments that harbour terrorists," ""are as guilty as they are."" "This extraordinary mural was painted by Juan Delfín." "It's a cry of freedom from an entire continent." "They killed us all, but we defend the Aymara people with the pututo horn, with our voice, with our fist, with the flag." "We wave the Whipala against the United States." "This is the United States flag." "We are against this, because they have put us in the situation we are in." "The fist is very important." "That's how we are." "That's us." "In 2005, the people of Bolivia took an historic step." "For the first time ever, an indigenous person was voted president in a landslide." "Like Chávez in Venezuela," "Evo Morales offered a new democracy and a new beginning." "We ask everyone to start working." "The party is over." "The honeymoon is over." "And it's over forever, for a new Bolivia!" "There is no doubt that it is growing." "It is propagating itself, over the whole continent of Latin America, of the Caribbean too, but mainly in South America." "I go around Latin America from Buenos Aires to Brasília and to Montevideo, La Paz." "There is a fervour sparking off everywhere." "There is a fervour." "In Latin America, there's now a host of leaders offering new beginnings." "Of course, history is crowded with heroes who offer new beginnings." "The respectability of great power and its games and deals and plunder always beckon." "If these new leaders succumb, their biggest threat may not be from Washington, but from the people on the hillsides." "# I was born by the river" "# In a little tent" "# Oh, and just like the river" "# I been running ever since" "# It's been a long" "# A long time coming" "# But I know a change gonna come" "# Oh, yes, it will" "# It's been too hard living" "# But I'm afraid to die" "# Cos I don't know what's up there" "# Beyond the sky" "# It's been a long" "# A long time coming" "# But I know" "# A change gonna come" "# Oh, yes, it will..." "The future is for my children, for our young people." "This isn't just Chávez's struggle, it's our struggle." "What Chávez has unleashed is a recognition of this struggle, and we are in it together and we'll carry on fighting." "So the empire's struggle isn't with Chávez, it's with us." "The great awakening has arrived." "And I think Victor Hugo, let's end with him." "I'm with him on this." "Victor Hugo wrote this - "There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come."" "The American empire has reached its end and the world must now be governed by the rule of law, of equality, justice and fraternity." "Muchas gracias, John." "I want to see you again." "What happened here at the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, has a special place in the struggle for freedom and democracy throughout Latin America and the world." "The vow is - never again." "And yet it has happened again at Guantánamo Bay and all the other secret places where imperial power, regardless of its democratic pretensions, hides and tortures its perceived enemies." "The questions raised in this film are urgent." "Are the lives and dreams of the ordinary people of Chile, like the people of Venezuela, like the people of Bolivia, like the people of Nicaragua, like the people of Vietnam, and Iraq, and Iran, and Palestine," "expendable - worth only a few seconds on the news if they're lucky?" "The answer is no, and those who see the world through the eyes of the powerful, should be warned." "People are rising from the tyranny and oblivion to which we in the West have consigned them." "Indeed, their resistance is well under way as this film has shown." "I would say it never stopped and is unbeatable." "# I go to the movie" "# And I go downtown" "# Somebody keep telling me don't hang around" "# It's been a long" "# A long time coming" "# But I know a change gonna come" "# Oh, yes, it will" "# Then I go to my brother" "# And I say, "Brother, help me, please"" "# But he winds up" "# Knocking me" "# Back down on my knees" "# Ohhh" "# There been times that I thought I couldn't last for long" "# But now I think I'm able to carry on" "# It's been a long" "# A long time coming" "# But I know" "# A change gonna come" "# Oh, yes, it will #"