Tommy Goes Caracas
Directed and produced by Aimara Reques
Co-produced by Cassandra McGowan
For upcoming screening, contact your local activist centre as listed on page 2, or visit <http://www.resistance.org.au>.
REVIEW BY STUART MUNCKTON
Late last year, Tommy Sheridan, a leader of the Scottish Socialist Party and the most popular politician in Scotland, travelled to Venezuela to see first-hand "the first revolution of the 21st Century" and to bring solidarity greetings to it from the SSP. His short trip was captured by two film-makers who produced a 25-minute documentary Tommy Goes Caracas.
The documentary captures the mass radicalisation underway in that country, filming Sheridan attending and getting the opportunity to address one of the weekly mass meetings of Chavistas to discuss issues facing the revolution. These meetings regularly attract up to 1500 people.
Sheridan tells the camera during his visit that Venezuela is "at the eye" of the hurricane of anti-neoliberal revolt sweeping Latin America. "What is happening is a revolution, a change throughout the whole of Venezuela", he adds.
He speaks to Guillerno Garcia Ponce, a former leader of the Venezuelan Communist Party and veteran guerrilla fighter who was a leading member of Chavez's Political Command and currently in charge of the revolutionary newspaper Vea. We are informed that the media consider Garcia the "most dangerous man" in Venezuela.
Garcia tells Sheridan that key to Chavez's revolutionary leadership is his ability to speak "a language that Venezuelans relate to". He insists: "The most Marxist thing to do, the most Leninist thing to do in Venezuela is to be a Bolivarian and to support President Chavez."
Sheridan visits a community radio station that reaches 2 million working-class people. The corporate-owned media in Venezuela has been viciously attacking Chavez, and campaigning for his overthrow, and community and public media has a vital job in countering that.
The documentary lists many of the achievements of the Chavez government in re-distributing wealth and building grassroots democracy. Sheridan dismisses accusations that Chavez is a dictator, commenting that "this is a democratic revolution, a constitutional revolution".
Sheridan comments at one point that while the process in Venezuela "is not described as socialist, to associate yourself with [Chavez's] policies is to associate yourself with socialist policies". He gives a list of the anti-imperialist and pro-people stance of the Chavez government that he explains make up "the kernel of socialism".
The documentary ends with Sheridan addressing a mass meeting of thousands of Chavistas, standing in front of a banner bearing the image of Che Guevara and the Cuban and Venezuelan flags. Sheridan shows he has learnt a little Spanish during his brief trip by leading the crowd in a chant of "Uh ah, Chavez no se va!" ("Chavez will not go"). He tells the crowd, which erupts with cheers, applause and revolutionary slogans, "You are at the heart of building a new world — one based on solidarity and love!"
From Green Left Weekly, December 1, 2004.
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