I am Venezuelan, and did not vote for Chavez. Although I do admit that Chavez has done a few good things during his presidency, he has done A LOT of other backwards things that this documentary fails to mention. When I saw this "documentary" (If you can call it that) I kept waiting to hear about more important issues to balance Chavez’ actions in power. Some of the key issues that the director/producer fails to mention are:

1) the $4 BILLION in arms that Chavez has purchased over the last 2 years, which puts Venezuela among the World's top in arm buying spending, and while Chavez does not build any new infrastructure and fails to maintain the old one. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/world/americas/25venez.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
2) Before Chavez , there was an abundance of basic food staples in the grocery stores. Now if you go to a grocery store you have to buy whatever they have, there is no choice. Milk is almost always gone, most of the time there is no meat, chicken cheese or eggs; and there are shortages of almost every basic good that normal people need. This was unthinkable a few years ago.
3) There is a black market for dollars that allows government officials with access to dollars by the government to get rich while the people suffer and cant get any imports
4) Venezuela was highly regarded by immigrants from Colombia, Europe, and Asia. A lot of people are moving away from Venezuela to start their lives somewhere else.
5) Most people are afraid of walking in the anywhere in the streets due to the high delinquency and violence rate.
6) Money being given away to the "poor" in US by Citgo, while it could be directed to the poor people in Venezuela. I could expand on this but you draw your own conclusions

I can keep going mentioning some of the things that this film could have talked about, but the director/producer clearly missed the big picture and was not fair to the reality that we live in Venezuela. In the future, Chavez' family and friend will be the new high class, and soon people will start hating them for it and all will change again.

Acepilot. Granted Hugo Chavez is far from perfect. I speak Spanish and I can tell you he sounds the exact reflection to W. Bush, except on the other extreme. However as angry as I am at the incredible waste of a great opportunity for Venezuela, the bottom line is this:
Chavez is doing something new and positive for his country and especially for Latinoamerica, notwithstanding the corruption all the money coming in is creating amongst his ministries (what's new? the US is so corrupt as well!!)
The US elections have been qualified by the EU and other independent observers, as poor in transparency, while the Venezuelan elections enjoy a greater grade of trust.

One big difference between him and Bush is that Chavez is REALLY being voted in strongly by voters. The fact Chavez accepted his defeat barely hours after the polls closed in the last referendum is ample proof his critics are wrong when accuse him of being a dictator. It's the first time he has lost in many years.
On the other hand Bush has relied in a wide gamma of dirty tricks to force his way into power and then go on a rampage of destruction from the US constitution, the domestic individual liberties he's supposed to defend, to the streets of Baghdad. If you can't see this at this late time of the game, then you are part of that very small group of US voters who still support him. You're in a tiny minority.
The film you criticize so much is showing some of what the mainstream media in the US is NOT telling.

The way it portrays the "invisible" poor who have emerged with Chavez as the masses of disenfranchised by the old regimes, but now are empowered by having their homes legally recognized, medical services provided with oil money by Cuban doctors who venture into poor areas where Venezuelan doctors (mostly middle and high class members)are not willing to go and never have gone in the past, is what has given the votes to Chavez to win over and over again, until last referendum.
70% of Venezuelans are classified as poor, and if you "service" them as a politician you'll get the rewards in votes. It's a concept anyone in business can relate to, so why can't you?

For you to understand better how the US and the world really work, I suggest you to read the John Perkins book CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN. In here you'll see how much of a fantasy the US citizens have been given regarding its history and the reasons why latinoamerica and the so-called Third World has stayed poor for so long.

Chavez is fighting a difficult battle and he makes it even more so by behaving in reckless ways, as when in the Hispanic summit in Chile, he kept interrupting the Spanish Prime Minister (Zapatero who also happens to be of the left) with accusations against the former Spanish Prime Minister Asnar for having supported the Coup against him in 2002. The Spanish King had to tell him exasperated "why don't you shut up.....!!!

Regarding the NON RENEWAL of the telecommunications TV license to that network you so much protest, I have a different take. The airwaves are owned by the PEOPLE in Venezuela, not by any government or corporation. This particular network incited its viewers to revolt against the government in an unlawfully fashion. It openly supported the elimination of democratic processes when it advocated a coup d'etat. In case you don't know it, the man who usurped the president's post was Carmona and his first move was to dissolve ALL democratic institutions. He only lasted a couple of days because the masses of poor came down and forced the few military to give up.

In fact I would suggest here in the US we need a president with the guts to do the same to any and all those networks which do not support the US citizens right to being properly informed. I would put on notice to FOX network especially but not only them, to refrain from continuing to spread lies unrelentingly regarding for instance, who attacked us truly in 9/11 2001. A great percentage of Fox viewers still today think Saddam Hussein did it. The airwaves are not a "free" resource for rich corporations to become richer, they are to serve the public and the country. The US has lost a trillion dollars in the Iraq war precisely because ALL the networks DID NOT do their critical job and instead became merely a mouth piece for the liars in the White House and the Pentagon.

It's hard to know what the outcome of all this will be, but ultimately Chavez regime has been very positive in garnering a union of latinoamericans to oppose US hegemony over the region, notwithstanding his undiplomatic tirades and verbal skirmishes with presidents from Mexico, Peru, Colombia etc.
More than 9 countries, from Chile to Bolivia, to Nicaragua have true democracies sporting governments who represent their peoples, not corporations. Mexico is the exception with the last elections rigged (again!)

Chavez has courage, has a sense of direction, ideas and willingness to take risks in the pursuit of a real solution to poverty, but his drawbacks are his infantile bursts of anger, his intent to "micromanage" while displaying a typical latinoamerican disability to do it which results in a lot of waste and disruptions to his programs. He comes from a situation with animosities towards the middle and high classes and is lost into his own shortcomings as to how to include them, entice them, to benefit from the high oil prices and the new masses of customers with money to spend.

The best hope is for him to come down from his high horse of portraying himself as the "Simon Bolivar" of today, and to really get to the business of pushing the agenda of independence from the prevailing, disastrous status quo (the IMF and WB directives) in a more serious fashion.

The greatest threat to any south American government, by far, is the USA, not Chavez. He is their greatest friend. It is largely Venezuelan oil money making possible loans from the new Southern Bank, freeing governments from having to sell their souls and resources to get loans from the IMF. Chavez is a hero to poor and oppressed people the world over. As for Columbia, if you watch the documentary Plan Columbia, you'll find out it is largely the right-wing paramilitary groups that control the drug trade there. And anyone who knows anything about south american history knows how deeply the CIA has been involved in the drug trade.

@commonsense:

Crack a history book, my friend -- it was the conservatives who wanted to keep the US out of WW2. The liberals/left wanted to go after Hitler sooner; the right-wingers thought he had a good idea. Go do some research about Prescott Bush (the patriarch of *those* Bushes) and see what you turn up.

Hope that helps. Have a nice day.

Man had liberal blind sheep like you been around during WW2 we would all be speaking German and there would not be a single Jew alive on earth. Maybe thats what you all secretly hopew for?

acepilot needs to learn something about the media in Venezuela.

Had Fox News helped stage a coup against George Bush IN THEIR STUDIOS, they'd not only be off the air, they'd be in Gitmo.

The media in Venezuela is largely owned by the oligarchy and they are rabidly anti-Chavez.

As far as the marches, the media in general conflated the anti-Chavez marches with the pro-Chavez marches. Go back and see for yourself. There was a propaganda tsunami before the referendum -- and we probably paid for some of it with our taxes.

Just a thought or two -- maybe someone will find what I say relevant.

What I don't understand about some of the current criticism of Chavez is the absence of even an occasional concession of the rightness of some of his policies, especially on issues where there is a lot of agreement even amongst ostensibly opposite political groups.

Example? Well, the first one that comes to mind is Chavez's dislike and even contempt of the World Bank and IMF. The World Bank and IMF policies are those that have earned strong condemnation for years by conservatives like the late Jesse Helms, the John Birch Society, the Cato Institute, and many others, as well as liberal groups like the NRDC, Greenpeace, Noam Chomsky, Saul Landau etc. etc. In addition, these disparate individuals and groups often have criticized the Bank (and the IMF) for the same reasons, or at least very similar ones, such as making loans to dictatorships, and/or to countries that have been very destructive to the environment.

So . . . is there not even one critic of Chavez online that ever even once bothers to at least give grudging praise to his desire to not only free Venezuela from IMF and World Bank influence, but perhaps all of Central and South America? I have yet to find one amongst his critics.

The second item isn't really an obvious one, and hasn't been mentioned by either Chavez or his supporters or detractors, and I am not completely sure of his attitude or policies myself. And that issue is drugs. While I don't think he is probably a libertarian in that respect, at the same time I doubt his policies are anywhere as draconian as the United States, or that he locks as many people per capita up for non-violent drug offenses as we do.

So . . . since the drug war has many critics here in the USA, from Tom Hayden to Ron Paul, from Walter Cronkite to former California Republican Senator, Tom Cambell (just to mention a very few), is there not at least some acknowledgment that Chavez at least isn't following our extreme policies?

It would be interesting to examine other policies -- the kind that rarely get the kind of mention in the press that they probably should, even if they are still peripheral ones, and see if Chavez is really the scary radical that his opponents want to depict him as (and which I think he obviously relishes to some degree).

I totally agree with you Acepilot. Chavez documentary didn't look to me as an INDEPENDENT interview or program at all!. And I would add something else: What about the threats Chavez is making to his neighbor countries? for instance Colombia? This BBC man did not mention how Chavez is helping narco-guerrillas in Colombia to gain himself power in the region... and there is much more that this propagandistic documentary did not bother to show!

Ah! Phil Donuhue! Now that's someone who is truely AMERICAN!An intelligent man who thinks of the Nation and tells it as it is!Which usually echoes the voice of MANY other Americans,whose voices are stifled,as if they didn't matter!
Maybe LinkTV should give him a show?

Listen, Phil Donahue's show got cancelled because he had folks on his show before the war, who opposed the invasion of Iraq as well as those who supported it. Chavez was democratically elected in Venezuela by a large majority as opposed to Bush literally stealing the election here in 2000. The television station that was shut down supported the 2002 coup d'etat against Chavez's democratically elected government. If we weren't even able to see people asking tough questions about the invasion of Iraq, do you think our government would have put up with a tv station that supported storming the White House to remove Bush in a coup d'etat? This is perhaps outside the realm of "freedom of the press." Look how Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were punished by government officials simply for telling the truth.

Hello Everyone,

I was shocked and horrified at the one-sided coverage given Hugo Chavez in your program. How can it be that a leader who shuts down television stations and denies freedom of the press is lauded with such praise and given such accolades? If this is suppossed to be a "documentary" containing news, where were the hard hitting questions? Where was the other side of the story? Where was the real journalism and search for the truth? I just sat through one hour of propaganda, and now I feel absolutely sick. How can you call yourselves independent, authentic, newsworthy, realistic, or serious if you promote this kind of programming? I am used to news with a slant, every network leans one way or another, but this? This was not a slant, this program was a deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the producers. Oh wait, thats the definition of propaganda (check wikipedia) word for word. Gee, no coincidence there.

Answer me this, if the slowly forming dictatorship in Venezuela is so good, how come news organizations such as Al Jazera ran this:

"Tens of thousands of people have marched in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, to protest against government plans to take Radio Caracas de Television (RCTV), a network critical of Hugo Chavez, the president, off-air.

Chavez's government has been criticised for its decision by press freedom groups, Amnesty International, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States and the Roman Catholic Church.

Chile's senate also condemned Venezuela's move in a nonbinding resolution last month."

Yet, LINK seems to think that things are just great in Venezuela. Despite what AI or the OAS seems to think... Call this alternative programming? Think Propaganda. Someone is trying to change your mind, I wonder who had a hand in paying for the "documentary"...