Toussaint Louverture who led the only successful slave revolution in Haiti. February 7 has been declared an international day of solidarity with the first independent black nation which declared a republic in 1804.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.
by Rory Carroll
the Guardian/UK
CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela is to give the American actor Danny Glover almost $18m (£9m) to make a film about a slave uprising in Haiti, with President Hugo Chávez hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression.
The Venezuelan congress said it would use the proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Glover’s biopic of Toussaint Louverture, an iconic figure in the Caribbean who led an 18th-century revolt in Haiti.
It will also give seed money for a film version of The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel García Márquez’s novel about the last days of Simón Bolívar, who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonialism.
Glover, 60, who starred with Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, and more recently with Eddie Murphy in the film DreamGirls, is a civil rights activist and supporter of Mr Chávez’s radical leftwing policies.
A document from the congress’s finance commission said the culture ministry would be a partner with Glover and give $17.8m for “scripts, production costs, wardrobe, lighting, transport, makeup and the creation of the whole creative and administrative platform”.
The project could mark a breakthrough for Villa del Cine, a new government-funded studio outside the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, which is part of Mr Chávez’s effort to combat what he sees as American cultural hegemony.
Glover, who visited Caracas at the weekend, told the Guardian that he would direct the film, titled Toussaint. “It’s so advanced that you can taste it. We’ve scouted locations within 75km [45 miles] of Caracas. I can do everything I need to do with this film from here.” He said he had been in talks with the government, but was unaware that a decision had been made until journalists tipped him off about the congress’s announcement. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” he said.
He suggested that there was still some uncertainty over whether the venture would go ahead. “One of the major axioms in theatre is never talk about anything until the deal is signed. There’s a lot of deliberation that goes on before something actually happens.”
It appeared that the congress timed the announcement to coincide with a media conference in Caracas hosted by the television network Telesur, a Venezuela-funded regional answer to CNN. Glover is on the board.
It would not be the first declaration to run ahead of reality. Mr Chávez once said the director Oliver Stone planned to make a film about him, but it came to nothing.
However at the president’s request, Villa del Cine, which was inaugurated last year, is making a film about Francisco Miranda, who lit the fuse of South America’s liberation. A lavish production with hundreds of extras and battle scenes, its costumes and sets could work for the Haiti film.
Toussaint Louverture is a towering figure in the region’s history. A freed slave of African descent, he led thousands of slaves in successful campaigns against British, Spanish and French troops before being betrayed, captured and exiled. He died in 1803, just before his followers succeeded in establishing the island’s independence. William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet about him.
Glover said he wanted to educate the US about the story. “It’s been essentially wiped out of our historic memory, it’s been wiped clean.”
The actor is chairman of the TransAfrica Forum, an advocacy group for African Americans and other members of Africa’s diaspora, and a vocal critic of the Bush administration. Along with the singer Harry Belafonte, Glover is the best known celebrity supporter of Mr Chávez, whom he considers “remarkable”. He is a regular visitor to Venezuela.
Venezuela’s congress, which consists entirely of Chávez supporters, also said it would give $1.8m to develop a screen treatment of The General in His Labyrinth, by a Venezuela-born director, Alberto Arvelo. Some rate Gabriel García Márquez’s account of the final days of Bolívar along with the Colombian writer’s better known novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.
To build consciousness of what Mr Chávez calls “21st-century socialism”, the government has funded nationwide screenings of Charlie Chaplin’s classic film Modern Times, about the exploitation of US factory workers during the depression.
Controversy over evangelization
Chavez demands Pope apologize to native Americans for
“denying aboriginal holocaust”
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=9419
Caracas, May 21, 2007 / 10:29 am (CNA).- The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is demanding that Pope Benedict XVI apologize to the indigenous peoples of Latin America for having “denied” the “aboriginal holocaust” during his discourse inaugurating the 5th General Conference of the Latin American Bishops’ Conference.
“Something much more serious occurred here than during the holocaust of World War II, and nobody can deny that this is true, and neither can his Holiness come here, to our own land, and deny the aboriginal holocaust,” Chavez said over the weekend on Venezuelan radio and television.
“So, as a head of State, but clad in the humility of a Venezuelan farmworker, I implore his Holiness to apologize to the peoples of our America,” Chavez demanded.
Chavez said he paid close attention to everything the Pope said in Brazil, and that after hearing him say that the gospel was not imposed upon the natives, he called Venezuela’s Minister for the Indigenous Peoples, Nizia Maldonado, who said she did not share the Pope’s opinion and that it was “difficult to support, for God’s sake!”
“Is that why the Catholic Church is losing more believers every day?” Chavez said. “I think it’s because of this.”
Chavez said that the Pope’s comments that the evangelization of Latin America was not the imposition of a foreign culture, seemed to be intended to strengthen the Catholic Church, but “these statements only weaken the Catholic Church more.”
“How can the Pope say here, in this land, where the bones of the native martyrs who were massacred by the rule of the European empires are still warm, how can he say, because that’s practically what he said, that there was no imposition,” Chavez said.
The Venezuelan president said he would call the Vatican “right away,” because, he said, “tomorrow we will wake up to the headlines saying ‘Chavez attacks the Pope’.”
“I don’t care, they can say what they want, in speaking the truth I am not offending anyone nor do I have any fear.” “I don’t care what they say in their 60 second sound bites on the news,” Chavez stated.
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