***** VENEZUELA: THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
PRO-CHAVEZ MULTITUDES CHALLENGE MEDIA BLACKOUT
The privately-owned networks ran soap operas and variety shows while thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to demand Hugo Chávez’s return.
By Jon Beasley-Murray
So this is how a modern coup d’etat is overthrown: almost invisibly, at the margins of the media. Venezuela returned to democracy despite a self-imposed media blackout of astonishing proportions. A huge popular revolt against an illegitimate regime took place while the country’s middle class was watching soap operas and game shows; television networks took notice only in the very final moments, and, even then, only once they were absolutely forced to do so. Thereafter television could do no more than bear mute witness to a series of events almost without precedent in Latin America, and perhaps elsewhere, as a repressive regime, result of a pact between the military and business, was brought down less than 48 hours after its initial triumph. These events resist representation and have yet to be turned into narrative or analysis—the day after, the newspapers simply failed to appear—but they inspire thoughts of new forms of Latin American political legitimacy, of which this revolt may be just one particularly startling harbinger.
<http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2093> *****
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Yoshie
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