Venezuela: The Cost of Challenging an Empire
By Rodrigo Acuña and Nicholas Ford
Released September 2024
Recently released documentary Venezuela: The Cost of Challenging an Empire is “profoundly moving” and “shows the real costs of the greed and blockade imposed on Venezuela by the US government”, wrote Pilar Aguilera, chairperson of Melbourne’s 3CR Community Radio.
“It also reminds us that the Chavista legacy lives on. It made me fall in love with Venezuela’s Bolivarian project all over again.”
Film maker Rodrigo Acuña has been writing about Latin American politics for more than two decades. “Having travelled to Venezuela on numerous occasions, I’ve witnessed its people live through the presidencies of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. In the last few years though I’ve seen the devastating impact of harsh US economic sanctions that are affecting everyday Venezuelans.”
Acuña made the film with documentary journalist Nicholas Ford to bring to audiences “the political process in Venezuela, the cost of the sanctions, and the people that it has affected most. Through a series of interviews with academics, journalists, members of the government and opposition, this film also looks at political violence in the country and how Venezuelans who identify themselves as part of the Bolivarian revolution have continued to resist.”
Ever since the popular Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, led by President Chávez, began in 1998, the US government has sought to destroy it — first through a failed military coup in 2002, and then through a series of moves to undermine the revolution by internal and external subversion. Notably, after Chávez died and was replaced by Maduro, US President Barack Obama declared an “emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” allegedly posed by Venezuela.
Since then, a series of worsening economic and political sanctions have been imposed. Donald Trump, during his first term as US president, tightened the sanctions considerably. President Joe Biden refused to relax the sanctions in any significant way.
Now, approaching his second term, and with extreme-right Marco Rubio as his proposed new secretary of state, Trump is capable of any action to attack Venezuela.
In the film, Acuña and Ford interview the mother of one young Chavista leader, Roberto Serra, who was assassinated by right-wing opposition forces. They also report on the murder by anti-government gangs of Orlando Figuera, who was “burnt alive because he was Black and Chavista”.
They also describe the 2020 failed incursion by a group of US mercenaries, organised by the CIA-linked Silvercorp company, which was halted by a combination of local police and fishers.
The film also highlights some of the social gains of the Bolivarian revolution, such as the almost 4 million public and social homes that have been built over a decade, with many more in the pipeline.
The film was completed before the recent controversy over the results of the 2024 presidential elections, and so does not directly discuss issues arising from these events. But Acuña notes that Venezuelans’ resistance to US pressure is “remarkable in extreme circumstances”.
“After 25 years of the Bolivarian movement, the resilience and humanity of the Venezuelan people impressed us enormously. The US has historically shown it is incapable of coexisting with a progressive government in Latin America.
“We can only hope that under these difficult conditions, the sovereignty of Venezuela will survive,” Acuña said.
[For more information on the film, contact: rodrigo.indepj@gmail.com]