Last Tuesday I went to see the documentary The Revolution will not be Televised.

It deals with the frustrated coup d'état that took place in Venezuela on April 11th 2002. The following day the headlines worldwide claimed that Hugo Chávez had been "removed" from office and an interim government had taken power... It was implied that that was the victory of democracy. Yet the Venezuelan people did not think the same. Although the forces of the new regime were doing their best at being dissuasive, taking Caracas and even shooting, the poorest of the poor took to the streets and surrounded the Presidential Palace where Pedro Carmona and his allies were. They, the Venezuelan people, undertook not to cease their siege until Hugo Chávez was liberated and the legitimate democratic government re-established. They said that Chávez had taught them to read. They had learned what the constitution was. All in all, Chávez had given them hope.

What is so special about this documentary is not Chávez’s popular support or how the economic elite intends to manipulate Venezuela, but how the average (or even less than average) citizen stood for her/his rights and convictions with the only weapon they possess, the belief in a better world. In a planet that appears to be dominated by supra-national corporations to which the individual can only submit or else abide to the consequences, it is so refreshing and encouraging to see such a thing happening! As it is so easy to forget about the problems of the “other,” the non-westerners nowadays while we live in reasonably safe and financially prosperous places. I was certainly moved. It was a lesson on human dignity we should never forget.

Yet this also raises another distressful question. In the (post-)postmodern society we live in, we may think that information and everything else are decentralised and fragmented, that we can accede all the different perspectives on world affairs just with a single click on the mouse, and then discern what to think. Unfortunately, most of the actual information we do get is filtered through the four or five most powerful multinational communication companies. We are more easily manipulated than we would like to believe.