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Latin American Activism and Culture
Venezuela Rising – Revolution Will Not Be Televised – Motorcycle Diaries – Hermanazos

Guatemala and Venezuela remain deadlocked in their attempt to secure a non-permanent U.N. Security Council seat. Neither country has been able to claim the necessary two-thirds of the 192 member General Assembly vote to secure the seat. In the 22nd round of voting, Guatemala garnered 102 votes to Venezuela’s 77 held yesterday at the United Nations. The battle of the Security Council seat has become a political contest between the United States, which is fully backing Guatemala’s bid, and Venezuela. Referring to the United States, Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN, Francisco Arias Cardenas, said that his country is “not competing with a brother [Latin American] country. We are competing with the biggest power on the planet.” U.S. diplomats, enraged by President Hugo Chavez’s speech to the UN General Assembly last month, in which he referred to President Bush as ‘the devil,’ want to block Venezuela’s bid as they fear Chavez would become an adversarial force to US interests. Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky, whose book ‘Hegemony or Survival,’ jumped in sales due to plug made by President Chavez in that same September speech, commented on the Security Council race. In Chile, Chomsky said that anyone who supports Guatemala’s bid supports the “genocide, tortures and deaths that have occurred in that country.” Since neither Guatemala nor Venezuela has been able to emerge victorious, a comprise candidate might emerge. However, Venezuela has indicated that it will not withdraw from the race.

Venezuela Rising is a new documentary that documents the 2004 referendum on Chavez which he won with a resounding victory. The referendum is seen through the eyes of grandmother and community organizer Gladys Bolivar and addresses the nature of politics, elections, and democracy. It focuses on the incredible social programs funded by Venezuela’s oil wealth that benefit the poor. For more information, visit www.nuamerica.org

The Revolution Will Not be Televised is the dramatic story of the coup up front and center by two film makers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’ Briain who happened to be filming a profile of Hugo Chavez at the time of the coup. The film was first broadcast in Europe in February 2003 and since then has aired on a variety of international TV stations including the BBC, ZDF (Germany), Arte (France), and NPS (Holland) as well as at numerous international film festivals. In Venezuela the film had its first airing on national TV in April 2003. The film has notably not been shown on US television. It was screened in a small handful of US theaters. For more information, visit www.chavezthefilm.com.

Based on true life story, The Motorcycle Diaries is the cinematic interpretation of the travel diaries of a young Ernesto Guevara before he became known to the world as “Che.” The film takes viewers along Ernesto Guevara’s life-changing journey around South America when he was a youthful medical student in Argentina during the early 1950’s. The Motorcyle Diaries was directed by the acclaimed Brazilian director Walter Salles and stars Gael Garcia Bernal as Ernesto and Rodrigo de la Serna as his travel companion Alberto Granado. The Motorcycle Diaries has received many awards and nominations, including two Oscar and four Cannes Film Festival nominations, since its release. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said of the “Motorcycle Diaries,” that, “though it’s not in the film, one of Guevara’s most often quoted sentiments is that “the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” It is the triumph of “The Motorcycle Diaries” that it movingly presents the person who believed that sentiment and shows us just how and why he came to feel that way.”

Thank you Gifts:

$75 -“Venezuela Rising” – DVD

$100 – “Revolution Will Not Be Televised” – DVD

$120 – “Revolution at the UN” Pack (Revolution Will not be Televised DVD plus Chavez Speech at UN on CD)

$80 – Motorcycle Diaries – DVD

$35 – “Segundo Aire” by Hermanazos – CD