Why Oliver Stone's 'South of the Border' Flopped South of the Border

Just like Oliver Stone I have recently returned from a trip to Venezuela.

I have been a journalist in some pretty unusual places that have more than a few security issues. I have investigated some unsavory people in places such as Romania, Uzbekistan,Cambodia and Uganda. I went undercover in Indonesia and ended up ensuring that one particularly cruel and crooked mother and daughter team received lengthy jail sentences in the other Jakarta Hilton.

But out of all these places and scenarios I can honestly say that Caracas is the scariest place I have ever been.

It feels and is lawless. The people have the despair of those who know their lives should be better but are beaten down by the everyday misery of watching their savings and futures disappear. Murders and kidnappings are endemic. There is a small area of Caracas that is safe for foreigners during the day. At night you have to be careful everywhere. Poverty and high prices seem to increase along with the oil revenues that are kept or misspent by the government.

Whilst I was there Hugo Chavez, the country’s president, did one of his regular Sunday broadcasts. These 4 hour homages to himself are a feature of life in Venezuela, that and shortages of things like milk, bottled water and toilet paper. During the broadcast Chavez is seen walking through an old part of Caracas with the local mayor. His red-shirted entourage surround him. He points to a jewelry shop and asks what it is. When he is told he immediately shouts, Expropriate! Expropriate! He goes on to repeat this action on a number of other small jewelry shops in the area before moving on and reminding his audience of how great he is.

The only TV channel in the country that questions the president was also the only TV channel to interview the devastated owners of the jewelry shops that had just been seized by the government. Shell-shocked, the owners told how they had been operating for 30 and 40 years and now had nothing. Last week the owner of this TV station had to flee the country because an arrest warrant was issued claiming that a car dealership he ran was “hoarding cars.”

We went to a wedding whilst in Venezuela. At our beach hotel we woke up one morning to find the army/police had taken up positions and were talking to the owner. His crime was to complain that government-backed squatters had taken over buildings he had set up so that locals could sell their produces and crafts to tourists. After he complained to the local judge the police arrived demanding to see his papers.

In Hollywood ownership is a really big deal. Stealing other people’s ideas or films or scripts or songs is not appreciated, people do try but it’s not legal. How strange then that artists such as Sean Penn and Oliver Stone love Hugo Chavez. Indeed Stone has just directed a documentary South of the Border which opens in the U.S. this week. According to the advance publicity it examines 5 “progressive” governments in South America.

According to Stone “Hugo Chávez is an extremely dynamic and charismatic figure. He’s open and warmhearted and big, and a fascinating character. But as Mr. Stone notes, his view is not widely held in the US:‪ “When I go back to the States I keep hearing these horror stories about ‘dictator,’ ‘bad guy,’ ‘menace to American society.'” Well Mr. Stone you don’t have to go to America to find unfavorable opinions of Hugo Chavez. He is no dictator – he was elected and even lost a recent referendum, but he is a bad guy who is a major menace for the poor of Venezuela.

If Mr. Stone had taken his camera on to the streets of Caracas he would very quickly have found lots of people who think Chavez is a menace whos seizes property on a whim and gives it to his cronies. He arrests people for “committing acts of journalism” – you know Mr. Stone, like you are pretending to do in your documentary.

‬There would be an interesting documentary about how a country with so many natural resources could be so poor. There could also be an interesting documentary made about how democratic elected leaders in the region drift towards tyranny with no respect for the rule of law. These documentaries could also look at why elites from the U.S. and Europe seem to suspend their morals and believe that the people of these countries don’t deserve democracy or basic human rights. These would all be interesting documentaries but they are unlikely to be made Mr. Stone anytime soon.

[Ed. Note: According to Variety, Stone’s South of the Border “sunk like a rock at the Venezuelan box office.”]