Oliver Stone Does Venezuela

By Humberto Fontova

Saturday, March 08, 2014

Famous foe of imperialism Oliver Stone just premiered his documentary “Mi Amigo Hugo” (“My Friend Hugo”) in the Cuban colony of Venezuela. As the title suggests, the film honors Hugo Chavez, Cuba’s late Venezuelan viceroy. The film was released amidst lavish celebrations on the first anniversary of Chavez’ death and broadcast on the Cuba-run TV channel of the Cuban viceroyalty of Venezuela. For the occasion, Raul Castro himself graced his South American dominion with a visit.

“Venezuela today is a country that is practically occupied by the henchmen of two international criminals, Cuba's Castro brothers,” recently declared Luis Miquilena who served as Hugo Chavez’ Minister of Justice for three years before finally resigning in disgust. “They (the Cubans) have introduced in Venezuela a true army of occupation. The Cubans run the maritime ports, airports, communications, the most essential issues in Venezuela. We are in the hands of a foreign country. This is the darkest period in our history.”

The Chavez documentary comes twelve years after the premiere at the Sundance Film Festival of Oliver Stone’s documentary “Comandante,” which honored Venezuela’s foreign emperor himself: Fidel Castro.

''I am like a prisoner,'' Castro laments to Stone near the beginning of “Comandante.” The Stalinist dictator was referring to the travails that accompany his selfless vocation of running Cuba. “This is my cell,'' he sighs while pointing around. At this declaration from the jailer of more political prisoner per-capita than Stalin, the famously “edgy” Oliver Stone reveals no hint of a smirk. And no snarkiness tinged his follow-up questions, most of which hovered right over home plate. When a few questions strayed from the banal talking points and Castro answered evasively, Stone twinkled that, “his elusiveness is always charming.''

''Fidel is magnetic and charismatic,'' Stone concluded. “He is a movie star.''

Alas, he’s getting a little long in the tooth for close-ups. So Stone has since shifted the focus of his camera lenses over to the more camera-friendly subject of Castro’s colony Venezuela.

Nowadays the Cuba-enthroned emperor of Venezuela more or less reigns while his baby brother Raul rules. The actual nuts and bolts of running the empire, which include stealing 100,000 barrels of oil daily from their Venezuelan viceroyalty as priority, comes courtesy of the 50,000 Cubans who infest Venezuela and run the colony’s vital police and intelligence functions, among many others. It took the Castros some doing, but they finally got Venezuela in the bag. To wit:

Fidel Castro’s very first trip abroad as head of state was to Venezuela where on January 25, 1959 he implored Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt to “join” his “master plan against the gringos.” The newly elected Venezuelan president soon learned that his “joining” would consist of massive loans, financial aid, and shipments of free oil to Castro from Venezuela. So Betancourt brusquely declined the “invitation.” It took Hugo Chavez for Venezuela to finally “join” Castro’s master plan.

Please note the date and the aggressive anti-U.S. policy Castro proposed to Venezuela. That was only two weeks after Fidel Castro (with U.S. help) entered Havana. And yet you’ll be hard-pressed to find a U.S. “academic expert” who doesn’t swear up and down that in 1959-61 the U.S. arrogantly, selfishly and stupidly snubbed a friendly Fidel Castro and pushed him—kicking and screaming, no less-- into the arms of the Russians.

As the title of Stone’s new film suggests, the filmmaker does not hide his veneration for Cuban satrap Hugo Chavez any more than he did for his mass-murdering, war-mongering colonial master Fidel Castro. This makes Stone’s propaganda films for Latin American communists less effective than those of his fellow filmmaker Robert Redford, who with his Motorcycle Diaries performed services for the image of Che Guevara that no Madison Avenue agency could hope to match for a client. To compare Stone to Redford simply compare Julius Streicher to Leni Riefensthal.

Oliver Stone claims that the massive protests currently rocking Venezuela are simply the CIA’s handiwork, with a few Venezuelans in the role of local patsies. Given all the hidden hands and plotters and “patsies” in Stone’s movie JFK, we can barely wait to see what a tangled web Stone will eventually weave regarding the current Venezuelan crisis.

Three weeks before departing for Venezuela to premier his communist infomercial Oliver Stone was among the honored speakers at the recent “2014 International Students for Liberty Conference.” The crowd at this Libertarian-Palooza, according to some accounts, was absolutely mitten with a man who devotes much of his time and fortune to glorifying dictators who abolish private property and murder entrepreneurs. Apparently these aren’t your father’s libertarians.

The only fuddy-duddy scoffers were a handful of Latin American students with first-hand experience of the handiwork by the communists Stone exalts in speech, print and film. Funny how that works.

Stone’s advocacy and infomercials for Castroism and Chavismo have brought him under fire recently in social media. But he’s been quick to fire back. “You (critics) remind me of crazy Tea Partiers!” he recently snarled on his Facebook page. More horribly still his critics are: “Similar to the right-wing Florida Cuban exiles who’ve helped keep the US in a dungeon of ignorance.”

Speaking of dungeons, ignorance and Cuban exiles. Among these latter Stone can find the most and the longest suffering political prisoners in the modern history of the human race. This suffering came in torture-chambers and dungeons designed by his Stalinist idol and his KGB-mentors. Let’s hope Oliver Stone is merely ignorant of that.