According
to any economist to the left of J.M. Keynes, Venezuela should be an economic
powerhouse. It has vast oil reserves and has strictly implemented socialism. Instead,
it is a nightmare of privation, where the people face overwhelming shortages of
basic foodstuffs and medicine. Anyone who challenges the government’s denials
is likely to face arrest and torture, if not worse. Yet, even silent suffering will
not guarantee the government’s OLP storm troopers will not come crashing through
your door. Several mothers who this lesson the hard way give their devastating
testimony in Margarita Cardenas’s exceptional documentary, Women of the Venezuelan Chaos (trailer here), which screens
during this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.
Kim
is a pediatric nurse who is about to immigrate with her immediate family,
hoping to find a more stable life elsewhere. She leaves behind her patients,
but frankly there is very little she can do for them. Medical shortages are
currently so severe, prospective patients are expected to bring their own bed
linens, saline solution, and even basic medicines with them when they check in.
Viewers watch as she scrambles from ward to ward in search of a working syringe
for a young patient.
In
all honesty, the apparently connected María José is the least interesting of
the film’s five subjects, but she too is increasingly concerned about rationing
and the surge in street crime (we learn in the post-script her father-in-law
was recently kidnapped). In contrast, Eva is technically unemployed, but she is
too busy standing in food queues to hold down a job. The state harshly punishes
any outlet that disseminates images of rationing lines, but it is a bitter fact
of life for Eva. Unfortunately, it also puts her harms way, by forcing her to
be on the streets before sunrise.
The
experiences of Kim and Eva are certainly damning, but they pale in comparison
to what Luisa and Olga have gone through. Luisa and her husband raised their
grandson as their own son, but on the eve of his graduation he was arrested
without charge and held for several years. It is a bitter irony for the elderly
woman, because as a retired police officer, she understands better than anyone how
egregiously the government has violated due process.
At
least her grand/son is still alive. Olga had to watch helplessly as OLP thugs
executed her son Mafia-style in front of her eyes, only to realize after the
fact they were in the wrong apartment. The impunity enjoyed by his murderers is
especially galling to her, because she was a former Chavist, who once bought
into the regime’s propaganda.
Wisely,
Cardenas does not let anything stand between the viewer and the power of the
women’s indictments. She is sensitive in her treatment of her subjects, but her
unsparing journalistic eye never blinks. However, in between she includes long,
immersive tracking shots that capture Venezuela’s squalid housing, crumbling
infrastructure, and ever-present queues in vivid, visceral terms.
