Educational Media Reviews Online

Ultimately, a film about Hugo Chávez current president of Venezuela since 1998, Crossing Our Borders begins with a synopsis and opinion about dictators in Latin America, a very complicated subject. The documentary fails to mention how they attained power and who supported them. It is not mentioned that the U.S. backed those dictatorships, and trained the military at the School of the Americas, commonly known as the School of Assassins. The film also fails to mention transnationals, corporate control, or electoral corruption.

The film then moves on to Venezuela and Hugo Chávez. It is stated that Latin America is getting poorer and poorer including Venezuela. It implies that the poverty in Venezuela is due to the leadership of Chávez. Venezuela is one of the richest countries in Latin America with an amazing abundance of natural resources, and at the same time the people are very poor. Venezuela had high levels of poverty long before Chávez was born. Some of the reasons for this poverty have been corporate control, oil companies owned by transnationals, and corruption.

The documentary is biased, mentioning only the negative aspects of Chávez’ government. The filmmaker fails to mention such improvements as land reform, health services, education, communal councils, and nationalization of oil companies. Some “poor countries” including Venezuela have better access to health services (in part to Chávez reforms) than “rich countries” like the U.S. All governments have good and bad.

Most of the interviewees in the film are people from the U.S. and very few who are living in Venezuela. The interviews are brief and not shown in context, and again only when the speakers are mentioning something negative. A strong right-wing flavor emerges. Rather than including facts and statistics, the filmmaker presents her personal bias on the subject matter. Unfortunately, the film degrades into a personal crusade. After reading about the political interests of the non-Venezuelan filmmaker, it makes one wonder about the direction and perhaps motives of this film.

This film is not recommended because of its strong bias and lack of objectivity and historical background. See instead 5 Factories: Worker Control in Venezuela (2006) distributed by California Newsreel or Hugo Chavez (2005) distributed by Films for the Humanities & Sciences.