Their Job is Turd Polishing

Our Brand is Crisis is a documentary film by Rachel Boynton that was released in 2005.  The film chronicled the American political campaign-consulting firm Greenburg Carville Shrum (GCS), as they help Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (Goni) get elected president of Bolivia.  The film shows, basically, the end of neoliberalism in Bolivia.  The chapter from Chasteen’s Born in Blood and Fire discusses the rise and fall of neoliberalism in Latin America as a whole, while the reading by James Cypher discusses Latin America’s neoliberal ties in Washington, D.C. 

“For better or worse, neoliberalism- with a familiar emphasis on free trade, export production, and the doctrine of comparative advantage- reigned supreme in Latin America at the turn of the third millennium.” (Chasteen 311)  Goni was most assuredly a neoliberal, which worked well for him when he was the president of Bolivia the first time.  However, in the 2002 election covered in the film, it seemed that Bolivia was ready for something new, or maybe something a little older.  The few Bolivians that are actually heard in the film seem to want to return to a time before the neoliberals, such as Goni, “sold off, or privatized, the state-run corporations and public services that nationalists had created… as declarations of ‘economic independence.’” (312)  At least it seemed that the indigenous population wanted to try their hand at nationalism.  So the fact that the GCS was still trying to sell the Bolivian people a neoliberal is somewhat baffling.  Except for the fact that he hired them. 

The 1980s saw a shift in the way that the U.S. government made economic policies in relation to Latin America, which was known as the “Washington Consensus”. (Cypher 47)  This shift was towards a more neoliberal approach to the economy, and to trade with Latin America.  So after about a decade, neoliberalism is common in almost every Latin American country, including Bolivia, and with it came:

 Increasing poverty, stagnant or falling real wages, and a further and steady widening of the distribution of income in virtually every nation has also become the omnipresent and largely ignored social context of the neoliberal era.  (47)

Neoliberalism would have worked out fine for Bolivia if it’s leaders had actually done any of the things that they said it would do, and that they would do.  Neoliberalism’s greatest fault:

 was the implicit assumption that all capital inflows are equally good and that importing what cannot be made best within a Latin American nation is always and everywhere the epitome of economic rationality.  (49)

This was not even kind of what Bolivians wanted at the time of the 2002 presidential election, but they bought it anyway because it came in a somewhat shiny, slightly warn package.  Cypher claims that “the death-rattle of neoliberalism is the sweetest sound

to be heard from Washington in a long time,” and many Bolivians would probably strongly agree with that sentiment.

Sure the Bolivian people bought the politician that was best advertised in 2002, but they returned him for store credit as soon as they got the chance.  

Comrade JD says, "It's about time, for summertime!"

This Monster Feeds Off Itself

Our Lady of the Assassins is a 2000 film by French director Barbet Schroeder that follows a Colombian writer’s return to Medellin after being gone for 30 years.  He (Fernando) meets and falls for a homosexual teenager (Alexis) who also happens to be an assassin for one of the many gangs in Medellin.  As their relationship grows, a rival gang soon kills Alexis, and Fernando is left alone.  Fernando then comes across yet another homosexual assassin named Wilmar.  They become close, but Fernando discovers that Wilmar is the one who killed Alexis, and vows to kill him.  However, in the end he was unable to, and some other gang kills Wilmar too.  By the end of the film at least twenty people have been killed on-screen, including Fernando’s two gay, teenage lovers and one injured dog.  That is not very surprising considering that Colombia had been controlled by drug cartels and paramilitary groups for about the past fifty years.  According to the readings by Forrest Hylton and Ricardo Vargas, Colombia has known nothing but violence for the past century.

Colombia had no government.  There was basically constant civil war on the country between guerillas and paramilitary groups.  One would gain control for a time, and then the other group would take over.  Then came the third faction, the cartels and “the rise of the ‘informal sector’ – in which more than half the Colombian proletariat would be toiling by 1985.” (Hylton 62)  The Colombia of the 1980s was ruled by the cocaine trafficking cartels. (64)  More violence came to Colombia when the cartels entered into the politics of the country.  “Political and criminal violence fed into one another, and homicide became the leading cause of death among males,” and since the cartels were the government, there was nothing present in the country to stop the violence. (65) 

Pablo Escobar, one of the cartel leaders, funded thousands of assassins that would later become the gangs that are seen terrorizing Medellin in the film, because “private violence [was] used as a mechanism of social control and the exercise of power.” (Vargas 107)  His cartel was able to gain control because, “it did not require a mediating role with the state; on the contrary, it strengthened its territorial control based on an illegal and globalized market… Private power [was] thus being used to create a new public order.” (109)  When Escobar was killed and the “new public order” that he helped create collapsed, a new one took its place, and it consisted of gangs of his former assassins constantly warring for control for territory in Medellin and other parts of Colombia, which is introduced to the viewer in the film.  This was also caused by:

The lack of legitimate institutions to resolve conflicts and the fact that many of those involved in the drug trade came from lower-class sectors previously denied access to the region’s sources of wealth led to an unprecedented wave of violence. (113)

That wave of violence was depicted in the film, and started a cycle of violence that may never truly come to an end.  

Comrades, break the cycle.  OR BE JUDGED!

They Pounded 7 Gram Rocks! That's How They Rolled!

Cocaine Cowboys is a 2006 documentary directed by Billy Corben that chronicles the rise of the cocaine drug trade in the 1970s and 80s.  The filmmakers focus on the parts that Jon Roberts, Mickey Munday, and Jorge “Rivi” Ayala played in the cocaine business that completely dominated Miami for almost an entire decade.  It boosted Miami’s economy and allowed it to survive a nation wide recession.  That was until the law enforcement in Miami finally had the resources to shut the cocaine trade down.  And Miami suffered for it.  How did it get to that point?  Paul Gootenberg discusses it in his article.  How did the United States make it worse trying to combat the cocaine trade?  Coletta Youngers discusses it in her article.

The drug trade has been a part of Latin America for most of the 20^th century, according to Gootenberg.  The center of production of the drugs shift from country to country as the century wore on.  For example: “Peruvian prospects dampened by the 1920s, when it sold a mere 500-1,000 kilos per annum, at plummeted prices, mainly to Germany or France.” (138)  By the 1970s the cocaine center of Latin America turned to Colombia:

By the late 1960s, airport arrests show opportunistic Argentines tapping drug flights to Miami and Europe. Argentina's post-1966 military regimes dampened this trade, and, like other South American mules, their role was taken up by Colombians after 1970.   (156)

When that happened the southern coast of Florida was flooded with cocaine, and Miami’s economy became driven by it: “This much is known though: fed by spiraling crises, cocaine was to be the Andean boom industry of the late twentieth century.” (176)

According to Youngers: “Drug trafficking in the Andes breeds criminality, exacerbates political violence, and hence greatly increases problems of citizen security.” (126)  Once the traffickers reached the shores of the U.S., and it became a nationwide problem, the U.S. government decided to declare war on drugs.  So naturally the U.S. took the war to the source: “The U.S. government’s war on drugs clearly hinders efforts to put civilian-military relations on a new footing and as such constitutes an obstacle to the strengthening and deepening of democratic governance in the Andes.”  (127)  This pretty much halted advancement of democracy in the region:

In Colombia, billions of dollars in U.S. counterdrug assistance are fueling the region’s only significant counterinsurgency war, hence exacerbating the most serious human rights crisis in the hemisphere.  (145)

This quickly back lashed against the trade in Miami, and the local and federal law enforcement almost entirely shut it down.  Except for Mickey Munday, who was a fugitive for six years.  BAMF.

BI-WINNING!!!!!

Don't Forget to Cock Your Guns.

Bus 174 is a 2002 Brazilian documentary film, directed by Jose Padilha, that tells of the life of Sandro do Nascimento, and his robbery turned bus hijacking in Rio de Janeiro.  The documentary tries to discover what brought Sandro to commit the crime, and why events played out the way they did.  The film presents an interesting dynamic that exists in Rio de Janeiro, and (according to the readings by Mark D. Szuchman and Alberto Ramos) other major cities across Latin America.  The dynamic being the apathy that the authorities have toward the poor of the cities, and the fact that crime, in some cases, is treated as a matter of fact in the cities.

Crime stems from extreme poverty and the apathy of those in power.  Both of these factors have been present in Brazil since it began to urbanize in the eighteenth century, and according to Szuchman:

The growth of the population meant an increasingly complicated set of decisions for municipal authorities.  Economic growth failed to eradicate poverty, and this was illustrated by the opulence that marked homes and public buildings while a floating population of indigents languished in public areas.  (12)

Little has changed since then.  Sandro was a part of Brazil’s current floating population of street children.  Even though at the beginning of Brazil’s urbanization the government tried to end poverty with some projects, they eventually gave up because they believed that “the poor were victims of their own moral shortcomings.” (18)  Szuchman also mentions the diary of a poor Brazilian woman that chronicled “instances of violence, alcoholism, disease, and hunger that characterized the lives of thousands of people.” (23)  Sandro, as seen in the documentary, witnessed all of these things, including the death of some of his friends.  They died at the hands of police during the Candelaria Church Massacre.  Szuchman concludes that: “Police have given up on many barrios in … Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere, where their own safety is not guarunteed.” (25)  That sad reality is seen clearly in the documentary, especially in the conditions of the prisons.

The seemingly true story by Alberto Ramos depicts a robbery similar to the one that Sandro committed, except it involved a taxi instead of a bus.  It illustrates the matter-of-factness of crime in Latin America.  The situation is so similar to Sandro’s that the person being robbed formed a kind of camaraderie with his robbers. (137)  The thieves even have a similar motive to Sandro, in that they mention a friend that was hurt before. (137)  The author of the story, like some of the hostages on the bus, comes to feel like they could trust their aggressors more than the authorities: “And I thought that we are so screwed in this country that the only option left to us in the end is thanking the thieves.” (137)

On a side note there was something else of interest, something Sandro’s adopted mother said.  She said at one point that he said he wanted to be an artist.  After she said that it was hard to view the footage as anything but a performance art piece.  A terrifying and deadly one to be sure, but one none the less. Just a thought.  

Comrade Judging Dog Finds You Guilty. And Ambiguous.