From The Battle of Chile to Europe in Crisis: Mistakes, Precepts and Hopes
A round table discussion entitled “From The Battle of Chile to Europe in Crisis: Mistakes, Precepts and Hopes” took place on Thursday, 21 March 2013 in the context of the 15th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, as part of the tribute to Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzman. The filmmaker was unable to travel to Thessaloniki due to a recent accident, so he participated via Skype. The other panel participants were Yannis Stavrakakis, Associate Professor at the School of Political Sciences, Aristotle University, documentary director and journalist Yorgos Avgeropoulos, and Fernando Moreno, journalist and academic at the School of Communication, Iberoamericana University, Mexico.
Opening the discussion, moderator Dimitris Kerkinos said: “Patricio Guzman’s work is intimately associated with the political and social events in Chile since the early 1970s. The quintessence of his work is the preservation of memory. As opposed to the official history books of his country, his documentaries preserve historical memory and fight against imposed amnesia”. Since Salvador Allende’s government and the consequences of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship are major themes in Guzman’s documentaries, the discussion focused on the neo-liberal version of capitalism, and the issues of historical memory, economic crisis, democracy and the role of the people.
Patricio Guzman talked about the historical and social context that paved the way to Allende’s coming to power: “In the 1960s and 1970s, Chile was a poor country, with no vibrant agricultural or industrial sector. Allende run on a constitutional platform of reforms as an antidote to poverty. He also called for the nationalization of the country’s resources and the redistribution of land. In the 1972 elections he secured 36% of the vote and set out to implement his modernizing program. Two years later, ruthlessly attacked by the United States government and US State Secretary Kissinger, Chile suffered from raw material shortages, while the bourgeois class boycotted the distribution of food and orchestrated strikes in transports. The people were left without food, heating and transportation. In the 1972 elections, Allende won almost half the vote. His triumph caused panic in the US; Washington was afraid that his peaceful ‘constitutional revolution’ would spread. Allende was not staging a guerrilla war like the ones in Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia. The movement was open to all”, said Guzman, who added that this period had great influence on him: “It was a fascinating moment of popular mobilization; the people were rallying around the popularly elected government, which fought against the common enemy. This happens in a country only once in a hundred years”.
Asked about the importance of historical memory in modern Chilean society, Guzman said: “Historical memory is not an abstract theoretical concept; it is not a fad either - it is a social accomplishment like the ones achieved by the suffrage, Aboriginal and gay movements”. He added that, after so many years, 60% of human rights violation cases remain unresolved: “Why is the justice system moving so slowly? Presumably, there is no political will. This is an open wound in Chile, but everyone pretends nothing is wrong. The people say ‘I know nothing, I saw nothing’. The Chilean people do not take responsibility for their past”.
According to Guzman, the documentary genre can play a crucial role in preserving historical memory: “Documentaries are alternative sources of information. One can freely say things that the powers that be and state television prefer to keep hidden, like the issues of abortion or the Church. I am nor referring to poetic documentary, but to direct cinema, which needs little resources and can go beyond the mass media”.
Commenting on whether there are lessons Greece could learn from the case of Allende, Guzman said: “Allende’s government was a unique experience, and it is very difficult to find imitators. Each country needs to find its own way. Allende tried to build on democracy and consent. He avoided conflicts, he tried to unite forces. He knew that a state revolution needs a funcional government apparatus. On the other hand, the right wing wanted a civil war. Allende’s final weapon was staging a referendum, which brought on the coup”.
Journalist Fernando Moreno said: “When we talk about memory, there is a danger that we repeat the widespread illusion that the past is always better. The older one gets, the more nostalgic one becomes. An ‘antidote’ is to work with young people, and learn from them. It is important to remember that memory is something that changes every day”. He added that, in Mexico’s case, there was no coup, but a single-party rule for 70 years. He illustrated his point about memory and the younger generation with the example of the movement “I am the 132nd student”, which started out as a protest of 131 students against the candidacy of the current Mexican president demanding transparency and equal access to information and became a viral Internet phenomenon.
Journalist and documentarian Yorgos Avgeropoulos remarked that there is an invisible thread connecting Pinochet’s junta and modern Europe called “neoliberalism”. “Everything that Chile had to suffer as a guinea pig of the theories of Friedman and the School of Chicago, Europe is suffering now, three decades later. In 2008, the greedy neoliberal economy shot itself in the foot, but decided that the cure would be even more neoliberalism”, he said. He gave the example of the privatization of water resources, which is based on the neoliberal principle that water is a commodity rather than a public good. In 1981, Pinochet published the infamous “water code”, which made water a private commodity. “This is how private interests became the indefinite owners of rivers and lakes. Any individual can buy a lake, and then wait for prices to rise before drilling”.
Yannis Stavrakakis argued that early capitalism arose as a result of political, rather than economic forces, adding that this was the case with Allende as well, who was seen as a threat to the interests of both the international system and domestic elites. “We do not know for certain that Pinochet embraced neoliberal capitalism, but we do know he used its doctrines to change everything by military means. In Greece, we should start thinking about the connection between democracy and capitalism. What happened in Chile then seems all too familiar to us Greeks today. It is essentially the same policy, only the “Chicago boys” have been replaced by IMF and EU technocrats. Guzman’s documentaries make us wonder whether the guinea pigs of today are the same”, said Mr. Stavrakakis.
In the Q&A session that followed, panel participants were asked whether Greece could fall victim to a Latin American type of dictatorship, as class struggle intensifies and the political system crumbles. Guzman replied that “it is very difficult to imagine a Pinochet-type junta in Europe”. He added, however, that the leadership deficit in the EU is leading to a political and financial disaster. “We should not expect anything from governments. It is we, the citizens, who should fight for a better world. We should not wait with arms crossed for Mrs. Merkel to manage the economy; we should take to the streets”, he said. Mr. Moreno agreed it is highly unlikely to have a junta in Europe, while Mr. Avgeropoulos said: “The system does not need a dictatorship to accomplish its goals. The middle class is already trembling with fear, and those who dare protest are beaten mercilessly. If you dissent and go against the mainstream, you are a traitor”. Mr. Stavrakakis argued that the dictatorship - democracy divide is not always so straightforward. “Not all democracies are the same. We should also examine the quality of democracy and whether it disintegrates to other, more authoritarian types of regime”.
Panel participants were asked if the documentary genre can prompt people to take action instead of simply making revelations that authorities would wish hidden. Mr Guzman said: “There are many documentaries dealing with issues like water or human rights, but they are not any good. They are boring and fail to move the audience. Good intentions are not enough, you need to be able to move the public, to build a narration, to find characters. The subject is not enough; we need to produce poetic, creative and imaginative documentaries. This is our duty”. For Yorgos Avgeropoulos, “the documentary is a genuinely political act. It would be a phantasy to expect people to take to the streets after watching a documentary, but I do believe that the genre can change the world , because it changes people and the way they think”.
A member of the audience asked about the current plight of Cyprus and whether it will lead the way for a Europe released from the chains of bailouts and austerity. Guzman used his documentary to connect Chile with Cyprus, noting that in The Battle of Chile people take action, as they do in Nicosia as well. “When the people take to the streets and act, you need to be also there to capture it on film, leaving space to the viewer to make sense of events himself. I was tempted, but never became a member of any political party. I see the documentary genre as a means of reflection. I don’t mind being subjective, I was never objective. But I did allow the expression of the opposing view. The more subjective a documentary is, the better, more passionate and convincing it is. Otherwise, there would be no difference between a documentary and the footage from bank surveillance cameras”.
The tribute to the work of Patricio Guzman is financed by the European Union’s Regional Development Fund for Central Macedonia, 2007-2013.
