A new leftist documentary called SOUTH OF THE BORDER portrays socialist dictator Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in a positive manner and neglects to interview those who oppose the Venezuelan president.
According to the Associated Pres on May 28, 2010, the documentary’s director, Oliver Stone, the socialist director of the 1987 movie WALL STREET bashing the Reagan Era, praises Chavez’s efforts to bring about “social transformation” in Latin America. According to Stone, his movie is “an introduction to an entire movement in South America that the Americans do not know anything about.”
Stone greatly admires Chavez and says the leader has been unjustly denounced as a “strongman, as a buffoon, as a clown.” Due to his belief that Chavez has already received a plethora of criticisms from the American and European media, Mr. Stone chose not to interview those who oppose the controversial leader. He said people already know about those opinions.
MOVIEGUIDE® asks Mr. Stone to prove this last assertion. We have seen few reports in the national news media, even on the Fox News Channel, revealing any details whatsoever of what Chavez actually is doing in Venezuela. You have to go to other sources and to background information on the Internet to find out the real story behind this neo-fascist, Anti-Semitic socialist dictator’s dismantling of Venezuelan democracy. See this article by Actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who was raised in Venezuela, which explores the fascist tendencies of Chavez’s unique, narcissistic brand of socialist liberation theology, with him, Chavez, as the Socialist Messiah of Venezuela, if not Latin America, of course.
Since Mr. Stone can’t even get this detail about what Americans know about Chavez right, we doubt if there will be much true information in his propagandistic puff piece on Chavez.
Venezuela doesn’t need more socialism (the country had already nationalized its oil industry and helped to found the government-run OPEC oil cartel when Chavez took power in 1998).
What it needs is free-market reforms, truly free elections, limited government, respect for the traditional role of the family, and, last but certainly not least, a revival of Christian commitment consistent with the traditional, conservative values and truths of the Bible.