new film: OPPOSITE LAND - Why the United States lost America

For over a century of invasions, interventions, destabilizations, violence and chicanery U.S. planners have counted on near monopolistic access to the resources of Latin America. That`s not true any longer. If there is a core reason behind the `pink tide` that has swept one left-leaning government after another into office in the region, it is the resentment against the forced economics of the `Washington Consensus` that has left 4 out of 5 people here living in poverty. There are over 50 million street children in Latin America. Some six million Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred or become refugees. Privatization in Bolivia had reached such extremes that at one point even the collection of rain water had been criminalized. Reagan Sleaze Factor: In Guatemala, U.S. and Israeli-backed military and civilian regimes exterminated 5% of that country`s population, primarily Mayan natives. In 1994, Clinton launched Operation Gatekeeper and militarized the Mexican border that had been rather porous political fiction since its establishment in 1848. Not coincidentally in 1994 something else happened: NAFTA was implemented, and there`s a connection: it was clearly anticipated that NAFTA would undermine Mexican business and agriculture and cause substantial landflight into cities that could not provide the jobs needed and so hundreds of thousands of peasants and workers would head for the rich neighbor to the North. As part of his own version of a good neighbor policy, G.W. Bush signed into law the "Secure Fence Act of 2006" authorizing construction of new walls along parts of the 2,000-mile-long border from California to Texas. Since 2008 Mexico has a 2 billion dollar agricultural trade deficit with the U.S. and remittances now rank along with oil and tourism as Mexico's third biggest foreign currency earner. Instead of exporting goods, it is exporting impoverished peasants driven to bankruptcy by the free market. Each and every day migrant workers send home 200 million dollars to their families in Latin America, by far exceeding the combined total of all direct foreign investment and aid. Poverty, racism and war are not defining characteristics of the human condition. They are all products of certain circumstances which could be altered. OPPOSITE LAND takes us deep behind the wall and back. From treacherous Tijuana through a devastated Central America to the exploding highlands of Bolivia, helping us understand with poignant imagery why the United States lost America. NEW DOCUMENTARY 61 minutes, Engl.-Spanish, subtitled Mexico, Bolivia, USA 2008 www.oppositeland.com


# # #

International Documentary Film Production Company specializing in Latin American issues for U.S. audiences, Universities and Thinkng Media outlets

Name*:
E-mail*:
Captcha*:
Text*: