Racism and TV in Venezuela

by Richard Gott

"RCTV was a
white supremacist channel."

This article originally appeared in The Guardian (UK).

After 10 days of rival protests in the streets of Caracas,
memories have been revived of earlier attempts to overthrow the Bolivarian
revolution of Hugo Chávez, now in its ninth year. Street demonstrations,
culminating in an attempted coup in 2002 and a prolonged lock-out at the
national oil industry, once seemed the last resort of an opposition unable to
make headway at the polls. Yet the current unrest is a feeble echo of those
tumultuous events, and the political struggle takes place on a smaller canvas.
Today's battle is for the hearts and minds of a younger generation confused by
the upheavals of an uncharted revolutionary process.

University students from privileged backgrounds have been
pitched against newly enfranchised young people from the impoverished
shantytowns, beneficiaries of the increased oil royalties spent on higher
education projects for the poor. These separate groups never meet, but both
sides occupy their familiar battleground within the city, one in the leafy
squares of eastern Caracas, the other in the narrow and teeming streets in the
west. This symbolic battle will become ever more familiar in Latin America in
the years ahead: rich against poor, white against brown and black, immigrant
settlers against indigenous peoples, privileged minorities against the great
mass of the population. History may have come to an end in other parts of the
world, but in this continent historical processes are in full flood.

Ostensibly the argument is about the media, and the
government's decision not to renew the broadcasting license of a prominent
station, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), and to hand its frequencies to a
newly established state channel. What are the rights of commercial television
channels? What are the responsibilities of those funded by the state? Where
should the balance between them lie? Academic questions in Europe and the US,
the debate in Latin America is loud and impassioned. Here there is little
tradition of public broadcasting, and commercial stations often received their
license in the days of military rule.

"Those most in view on the screen were long-haired and
pulchritudinous young blonds."

The debate in Venezuela has less to do with the alleged
absence of freedom of expression than with a perennially tricky issue locally
referred to as "exclusion", a shorthand term for "race" and
"racism". RCTV was not just a politically reactionary organization
which supported the 2002 coup attempt against a democratically elected
government - it was also a white supremacist channel. Its staff and presenters,
in a country largely of black and indigenous descent, were uniformly white, as
were the protagonists of its soap operas and the advertisements it carried. It
was "colonial" television, reflecting the desires and ambitions of an
external power.

At the final, close-down party of RCTV last month, those
most in view on the screen were long-haired and pulchritudinous young blondes.
Such images make for excellent television watching by European and North
American males, and these languorous blondes are indeed familiar figures from
the Miss World and Miss Universe competitions in which the children of recent
immigrants from Europe are invariably Venezuela's chief contenders. Yet their
ubiquity on the screen prevented the channel from presenting a mirror to the
society that it sought to serve or to entertain. To watch a Venezuelan
commercial station (and several still survive) is to imagine that you have been
transported to the US. Everything is based on a modern, urban and
industrialized society, remote from the experience of most Venezuelans. Their
programs, argues Aristóbulo Istúriz, until recently Chávez's minister of
education (and an Afro-Venezuelan), encourage racism, discrimination and
exclusion.

The new state-funded channels (and there are several of them
too, plus innumerable community radio stations) are doing something completely
different, and unusual in the competitive world of commercial television. Their
programs look as though they are taking place in Venezuela, and they display
the cross-section of the population to be seen on cross-country buses or on the
Caracas metro. As in every country in the world, not everyone in Venezuela is a
natural beauty. Many are old, ugly and fat. Today they are given a voice and a
face on the television channels of the state. Many are deaf or hard of hearing.
Now they have sign language interpretation on every prograe. Many are
inarticulate peasants. They too have their moment on the screen. Their
immediate and dangerous struggle for land is not just being observed by a
documentary film-maker from the city. They are being taught to make the films
themselves.

"Venezuelan state TV will become a useful space for
rescuing those values that other models of television always ignore, especially
our Afro-heritage."

Blanca Eekhout, the head of Vive TV, the government's cultural
channel, launched two years ago, coined the slogan "Don't watch
television, make it". Classes in film-making have been set up all over the
country. Lil Rodríguez, an Afro-Venezuelan journalist and the boss of TVES, the
channel that replaces RCTV, claims that it will become "a useful space for
rescuing those values that other models of television always ignore, especially
our Afro-heritage". With time, the excluded will find a voice within the
mainstream.

Little of this is under discussion in the dialogue of the
deaf on the streets of Caracas. For the protesting university students, the
argument about the media is just one more stick with which to hit out against
the ever-popular Chávez. Yet as they mourn the loss of their favourite soap
operas, they are already aware that their eventual loss may be more
substantial. As children of the oligarchy, they might have expected soon to run
the country. Now fresh faces are emerging from the shantytowns to challenge
them, a new class educating itself at speed and planning to seize their
birthright.

Just a few weeks ago, Chávez outlined his plans
for university reform, encouraging wider access and the development of a
different curriculum. New colleges and technical institutes across the country
will dilute the prestige of the older establishments, still the preserve of the
wealthy, and the battle over the media will soon be submerged in a wider
struggle for educational reform. Chávez takes no notice of the complaints and
simply soldiers on, with the characteristics of an evangelical preacher: he
urges people to lead moral lives, live simply and resist the lure of
consumerism. He is embarked on a challenge to the established order that has
long prevailed in Venezuela and throughout the rest of Latin America, hoping
that the message of his cultural revolution will soon echo across the
continent.

Richard Gott is the author of Hugo Chávez and
the Bolivarian Revolution. He can be contacted at rwgott@aol.com

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