The Real Thing: Coca, Democracy and Rebellion in Bolivia
A guerrilla-styled documentary that explores the US directed “War on Drugs” and the impact it has had on the people of Bolivia.
Friday Night Docs by Cinema Politica Fredericton
Friday April 17, 2009
Screening begins 19h00
Venue: Conserver House, 180 St. John St.
Jim Sanders / Bolivia / 2004 / 92 min./ Canada
The coca leaf is indigenous to Bolivia and a sacred leaf revered and used by the majority of Bolivians. It is also the source ingredient for cocaine and the target of billions of dollars worth of militarized coca eradication, alternative development and narcotic interdiction efforts.
Fifteen years since George Bush Sr. declared a war on drugs in his inaugural presidential address, cocaine is still a thriving business and the impact of American drug policy on the people of Bolivia has brought the country to the brink of a total social upheaval.
The drug war might be old news but its legacy has produced one of the most significant social movements to emerge in the last five hundred years. The indigenous coca farmers of el Chapare, building on a 500 year tradition of resistance to imperial powers, have resisted the eradication of the coca leaf, and the attack on their way of life by organizing themselves into a political party, the Movement Towards Socialism, the MAS, which in the 2002 elections won 27 deputies and 8 senators. The leader of the MAS, Evo Morales, almost won the presidency.
The Real Thing is a film that peels away the layers of rhetoric used to justify the “War on Drugs” and now the “War on Terrorism” revealing a war between two world’s, one global and modern, the other local and indigenous.
It is a film that provides critical insight by shedding light on a tragic situation in which people, who want no more than to live their life as they always have, are targeted and criminalized as drug traffickers, and now as terrorists.
Director: Jim Sanders
Producer: Andre Clement
Production Company: Dada World Data Productions
Audio/Visual: Benwah, Jim Sanders
