A grassroots study of political and social change

Venezuela from the Inside Out (2007) is Clif Ross's sympathetic but balanced update on the Bolivarian revolution led by Hugo Chavez Frías, seen as a grassroots movement from the bottom up. Ross is a poet and translator and long-time Berkeley leftist who has traveled extensively in Latin America and has made use of today's readily accessible, affordable digital filming and editing tools to produce a vivid, exciting documentary about Venezuela today, the "revolution from the inside out." Ross did on the spot interviews in Venezuela's schools, rural lending banks, and cooperatives and talked to campesinos, leaders, and American scholars to provide an in-depth study of the movement. This film, which I learned about from Ross himself, whom I've known for a decade, has rarely been shown in theaters but is available from Amazon on DVD or for rental from Netflix. It's provided with both Spanish and English subtitles, as needed. Most of it is in Spanish, but there's an excellent perspective provided through interviews in English with a number of American and other experts, advisers, and scholars. These include Dr. Steve Ellner of Universidad de Oriente, Puerto La Cruz; José Sant Roz of Universidad Socialista del Pueblo, Mérida; Jutta Schmitt of Universidad de los Andes, Mèrida; Roger Burbach, Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas, Berkeley, CA, and Christene DeJong, of the Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Revolution from the Inside Out is valuable addition to the documentary film literature on Latin America and deserves to be seen along with the recent political documentaries about Argentina by Fernando E. Solanas, The Dignity of the Nobodies (2006) and Latent Argentina (2007) and Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain's 2003 Chavez: Inside the Coup.

Clif's particular focus is the cooperatives, which the film depicts as the flawed but essential institution of the Bolivarian revolution. On one level they help eradicate poverty--one of Chavez's major aims--by giving people work. On another, they are training programs providing job skills. On still another, they reshape the culture by developing a sense of cooperation, of the nation and the people as sharing a common, altruistic endeavor based consciously on socialist ideals. "We are here for a purpose," Humberto Morales, a worker in a farm cooperative out in the country, tells Ross's camera. "How do you feel working in the cooperative?" the filmmaker asks. "Happy. Delighted with life," the young man answers. "Producing for the people. When these potatoes are produced, they'll be sold all over the country. We're all family here. A family working together."

But another smiling young man, this time in the city of Mérida, talks frankly about the lingering bad habits that Venezuelan society has to overcome before it can move decisively forward. And the film points out with commentary and examples that the Venezuelan cooperatives aren't utopias. Some succeed, but many fail. Some of them don't work so well because of trouble finding trainees and organizing the work. And some organizers are unwilling to share; they become bosses and the cooperative destroys itself, or turns into a capitalistic enterprise like any other, when it is designed to be socialistic. John Curl, in Berkeley, and Steve Ellner, who lives and works in Venezuela--both Americans who know the country--comment on the problems. Cooperatives are like small businesses, and and two-thirds of them fail in the early stages, as small businesses do. An additional factor is the persistence of cultures from the time of the ruling oligarchy of the rich: the laziness, indifference, cynicism, and corruption the young man in Mérida refers to.

But importantly, some cooperatives have developed revolutionary socialist structures, says George Ciccariella-Maher, and have transformed institutions and people in the process. The film gives comments about the Frente Nacional Campesino and ends with the Zamora Vive cooperative, a particularly rigorous and idealistic one. We have heard from Javier Bolanos, its president about his with that Venezuela should achieve "food sovereignty." An older man with bright eyes and missing teeth--the unforgettable final closeup--says now "the old darkness disappears," and now, thank God, "even children see clearly." Ross has put together a rich 85 minutes. He leaves you wishing for more.

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Laura Flanders plugs the film on Grit TV. It is available on DVD from Amazon or for rental from Netflix.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.