Che Guevara died in Southern Bolivia
40 years ago while trying to ignite the sparks of revolution
throughout South America. His death at the hands of Bolivian
Rangers trained and financed by the US Government, marked the
beginning of the cocaine era in Bolivia.
Pressed by the masses
who gave him a massive mandate, the first indigenous President
Evo Morales an ex-coca leaf farmer, has nationalised the oil
industry and passed laws on the Agrarian reform. All the election
speeches, which resulted in his landslide victory, sounded
quite revolutionary, the iconography too, but looking harder
into it, it emerges that the old system is pretty much alive
inside the new one.
Corruption, nepotism and old-fashioned
populism are at the core of this movement. The more Evo does
to create employment, the more the landowners conspire against
him and paralyse Bolivia’s economy. As a result, no jobs
are created and the poor press Evo even harder. Thus a cycle
of tension threatens to crush the country and the indigenous
revolution as well. Looking for the Revolution is about the
inner workings of that tension as witnessed by the characters
of the film.
The landowners and the indigenous movement are
still wrestling for power and neither has claimed victory yet.
Ultimately, the search for the revolution that Che Guevara
tried to start in Bolivia is now in Morales’ hands. |