Director/Writer: Rachel Boynton
Cinematography: Tom Hurwitz, Michael Anderson, Christine Currill, Jerry Rosner, Gonzalo “Goni” Lozada
Studio Info: Koch Lorber Films, 87 mins.
Bolivia, like most Latin American nations, has been attempting true democracy—not only on paper but also in practice—for several decades. In one of the poorest Latin American nations, the indigenous remain politically and economically marginalized, desperate for education, employment and housing. And the majority campesino class is silenced while presidents like Gonzalo “Goni” Lozada — who held court from 1993 to 1997 — make decisions to capitalize the nation by selling off its natural resources.
When Goni decided to run for president again in 2002, he called in a team of American political consultants to advise his campaign—a team that promotes globalized, market-based and capitalist democracy. Rachel Boynton’s poignant, heartrending ?lm investigates the lives of those trampled in this process of globalization, and the questions that arise are timely, reminding us we should be more actively seeking to understand the unseen ramifications of a homogenized global democracy.