Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Hugo Chavez: Banned in Venezuela

Nicolás Maduro apparently has solved all of Venezuela’s problems, so now he’s watching soap operas, and he’s not amused (video in Spanish):

Hugo Chávez TV series faces backlash from family and President Maduro. El Comandante, which Maduro called imperialist ‘trash’, retells the Venezuelan leader’s rise to power, claiming his policies contributed to current economic crisis

Produced by Sony Pictures Television, El Comandante premieres this week throughout Latin America and in the spring will be broadcast in the US by the Telemundo network.

Conceived by a staunch Chávez critic, the 60-episode series aims to retell the leftist leader’s improbable rise to power from his roots in poor, rural Venezuelawhile showing how the former tank commander’s authoritarianism laid the groundwork for the country’s current economic mess.

Former Venezuelan trade minister Moisés Naim said he came up with the idea after spending years trying to explain Chávez’s hold over Venezuelans to friends in Washington, where he now lives.

Sixty episodes. Yikes. Andrés Parra, who played Pablo Escobar, is cornering the villain market.

Hardly surprising, the new series is banned:

. . . in Venezuela, the National Telecommunications Commission banned the series and launched a campaign Tuesday urging Venezuelans to “report any cable channel that insults Hugo Chavez’s legacy by broadcasting the series ‘El Comandante.'”

Adán, Hugo’s real-life brother and Maduro’s Minister for Culture, announced not only new propaganda shows documentaries on Hugo but also

that two new Venezuelan productions would faithfully retell Chavez’s story: a film called “Chavez, El Comandante” and a series called “Chavez de Verdad” (The True Chavez).

It makes you wonder how they’ll be paying for all this.

In other Venezuela news from Prof. Hanke,

No matter what, El Comandante Will Not Be Televised.

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Jorge Ramos’s “racial war” rhetoric

Jorge Bonilla reports that Univision’s open borders advocate is kicking it up a notch,

Ramos, the journalist that Trump booted from a press conference nearly a year ago, claims that the hatred, racism and intolerance that were the hallmarks of the Republican’s campaign have already caused a racial war.

“It’s war. We are in a pitched battle between those who defend immigrants and the anti-immigrant. Since all these immigrants are without protection, the mayors of big cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Denver, and several universities, just to name a few, have decided to take charge of immigrant defense”, he says.

…

“The country is totally divided, full of hatreds, resentments, a very dangerous desire for vengeance, and with very little tolerance. What is being discussed here is how to resist Trump”, he added.

“Racial war” may not be a good idea to promote by the whiter-than-white Ramos.

But then we’re talking about the guy who wanted to convince his audience that Jeb! is Latino.

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Mexico: Flat screen TVs for the needy

Case study in thinly-disguised opportunity for corruption (emphasis added): The Mexican government’s

a $1.3 billion program to hand out close to 10.5 million flat-screen television sets to the country’s poor.

The government touted the program, aimed at low-income mothers, senior citizens and other welfare recipients, as a model of social inclusion and the best way to push the country forward from analog signals into the digital age. The number of televisions given away was equal to twice the sets Mexicans normally buy in a single year.

The TVs were given out last December, in time for the government to act as Santa Claus.

Where government billions go, corruption follows: no-bid contracts, import-duty exceptions,  kickbacks, and loans from Mexico’s foreign trade development bank Bancomext.

Read the whole thing here.

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Mexico: Say no to dubbing

I have hated dubbed movies from a very early age. The poor translations and the inadequate voices kill many a TV show or film.

Imagine Sean Connery without his lishp. Leonard Nimoy with a high voice. Humphrey Bogart with a Mexican accent. Ava Gardner sounding chirpie.

You get the idea.

However, all across LatAm struggling actors got passably-paying dubbing gigs. The luckier ones latched on to dubbing the same actor through the length of the actor’s career. I expect many of the dubbers supported whole families. I believe Mexico started it in our hemisphere, and Argentina, Puerto Rico and Venezuela quickly followed.

A secondary industry lived on.

Until now:

Mexican ‘Big Bang Theory’ fans furious over new dubbed shows. Viewers take to social networks to complain after Warner Channel drops subtitles

Perhaps what pains fans the most is hearing how character Sheldon Cooper’s famous catchphrase “Bazinga” now sounds in Spanish.

Listen for yourselves to the Mexican-voiced bazinga,

Adding insult to injury (emphasis added),

The Big Bang Theory is not the only popular show to lose its original voices. Warner has also thrown out the subtitles in favor of dubbing on the sitcoms Friends and Two and a Half Men.

Fans are also upset that the Warner Channel has cut off access to the language-choice option, which means viewers are no longer able to switch to the original version of the broadcast on their television sets.

Yet another instance of what happens when you have a monopoly.



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