South America Videos - The Documentary Network

The collapse of Venezuela, explained

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 14:05:50 +0000

The collapse of Venezuela and President Maduro's rise to dictatorship. Venezuela was once the richest country in Latin America. It has the largest known oil reserves in the world. And its democratic government was once praised world wide. But today, Venezuela’s democratic institutions and its economy are in shambles. The country has the highest inflation in the world, making food and medicine inaccessible to most Venezuelans. Over the last four years, its GDP has fallen 35%, which is a sharper drop than the one seen during the Great Depression in the US. The country’s murder rate has surpassed that of the most dangerous cities in the world. These conditions have sparked months of protests against the president, Nicolas Maduro. And it’s easy to see why: the country has become measurably worse since his election in 2013.

The Gangs That Inherited Pablo Escobar’s Drug Empire: Cooking with Cocaine

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 07:09:14 +0000

In Colombia, the heirs to Pablo Escobar's drug empire are conducting business as usual — though with a somewhat lower profile. Today's Medellin drug cartels are highly structured and run much like multinational corporations. But violent gangs operating in the city's slums provide the muscle; known as combos, they’ve carved Medellin into fiefdoms, imposing invisible borders between gang territory — borders that, when ignored, often get people killed. VICE News travelled to Medellin to meet gang members — along with top cartel leaders and assassins — who revealed the inner workings of the city's modern-day cocaine industry.

Kite Fight

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 15:50:54 +0000

In the crowded favelas of Rio de Janeiro, flying kites is more than a leisurely escape: It's also a playful form of battle. After futebol, kite fighting is one of Brazil’s most popular sports. In the crowded urban favelas, flying a kite (or pipa) is more than a leisurely escape from harsh living conditions; it’s also a form of battle, with the sky an arena. This Op-Doc video takes us into Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, to meet its young pipa warriors and elder statesman.

The Price of the World Cup

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 17:25:30 +0000

Documentary about the social and human price of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. “The Price of the World Cup” is a documentary showing the negative consequences of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. The film was made over 8 months by journalist Mikkel Keldorf who did all the interviews, filming and editing.

Wiring the Amazon

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 21 May 2014 13:39:15 +0000

This video chronicles the four-year struggle to get a remote Peruvian village connected with the outside world. I began filming the project in 2009, while making a feature-length documentary film about the global spread of information technology. I was following the work of One Laptop per Child (O.L.P.C.), a United States-based nonprofit that has designed inexpensive laptops for primary education. The organization is particularly active in Peru, where the government has purchased and distributed hundreds of thousands of O.L.P.C.'s laptops to its poorest communities. One such village is Palestina, deep in the Amazon rain forest. It has only 65 people. To get there, I took an Air Force cargo flight that departed Lima only every 15 days. The plane dropped me in the regional capital city of Puerto Esperanza, in the middle of pristine jungle. From there, I took a 10-hour boat ride down the Purus River to the small village. Palestina has no electricity, no running water and no roads.

Ayrton’s Wish – A Tribute to Ayrton Senna

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 05 May 2014 18:19:09 +0000

On May 1, 1994, Ayrton Senna - a 3 time Formula One world champion died in a tragic accident leaving his family, fans and nation to morn the loss of the world's greatest race car driver. In the wake of his passing, Ayrton's sister Viviane Senna, set up the Instituto Ayrton Senna (IAS) to fulfill his longing to help his countrymen of Brazil. Ayrton's Wish, explores Senna's dream to give the children of Brazil opportunity to realize their own potential. More important than Senna's success behind the wheel, the film speaks to Ayrton's love for Brazil. Ayrton's Wish is directed by Spy Films director Tamir Moscovici. Film backed by Gran Turismo/Playstation

Amazonia: The price of life

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:24:20 +0000

In this film we will look at the paths followed by biopirates to steal brazilian nature. Follow in the footsteps and latest Fiscalização Department of IBAMA, in their fight against international trafficking of species. We will see several different operations confiscation of specimens by the aforementioned department, risky operations on many occasions, and where our camera has been at the forefront. Finally, whether the impunity with which they move through the world and of course in our country, animal traffickers.

Snake Island

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 17:35:48 +0000

The highest concentration of one of the most venomous snakes in the world is located about 90 miles off the coast of Santos, Brazil, on a small, craggy chunk of otherwise uninhabitable land. It’s known as Ilha da Queimada Grande, or Snake Island, and it’s the only place you will find 2,000 or so of the wholly unique golden lancehead viper, or Bothrops insularis. When you step ashore, with a keen eye you spot one of these snakes roughly every 10 to 15 minutes after clearing the base of the island, and as many as one every six square yards in other parts of the island. This means, as you are walking through the waist-high brush, even with some good boots on, it’s like walking through a minefield that moves and, instead of blowing you into chunks, slowly paralyzes you and liquefies your insides, as the golden lancehead does to the migrating birds it feeds on in the treetops. Well, “liquefying your insides” may be a stretch, but no one knows for sure because no one bitten has lived long enough even to be admitted to a hospital, or at least none of the researchers who accompanied VICE on their journey to Snake Island owned up to that fact. Nor did the Brazilian Navy, who allowed VICE exclusive access to document their annual maintenance inspection of Snake Island’s lighthouse—which has been automated ever since the 1920s, after the old lighthouse keeper ran out of food and disappeared while picking wild bananas in a small grove near the shore. According to legend, he and the members of his rescue party died one by one, all alone and in search of one another after each had been missing for some time. The golden lancehead is so unique and its venom so potent that specimens procured by snake-smuggling “biopirates” can fetch up to $30,000 apiece on the black market (with prices going much higher depending on the location of the rich weirdo snake collector or, some have speculated, the black-market biopharmaceutical chemists attempting to beat Brazil on a patent).

Wrestling Women

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 18:15:52 +0000

Women’s wrestling is hugely popular in Bolivia, with crowds flocking to see women in traditional dress, known as cholitas, fighting it out in the ring. But the sport has also come to represent the fight for equal rights by the poor indigenous women of this south American country. They’ve become stars and celebrate the recognition they’ve received as a result, but say they’re being exploited by promoters, make little money and receive no medical care for their injuries. Wrestling has long been a popular entertainment here but, 10 years ago, local women started getting into the ring and upending the traditional values. The wrestling cholitas have become stars in their own right, but they still have important battles to win outside the ring.

When I win, people, the kids, the younger people, and in particular the old ladies, are all very happy if I’m winning, especially if I’m wrestling a man. If I win against a man, a male wrestler - they’re even happier... They see women don’t just take it. Women can be stronger. Up there in the hall, the wrestling takes place in that grey building. VERALUZ CORTEZ, CHOLITA (Translation)

Video journalist Giovana Vitola reports on their fight both in and out of the ring.

Peruvian Prison Aerobics

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 14:59:22 +0000

Convicted of kidnapping, Alejandro Nuñez del Arco brings together more than one thousand inmates to practice "Full Body" aerobics in the courtyard of one of Peru's most notorious prisons. With armed guards peering from above, Nuñez del Arco attempts to break the world record for the most people simultaneously performing the exercise, whether inside a jail or not. Producers: Ellie Gardner, Oscar Durand Location: Lima, Peru

Colombia’s Hidden Killers

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 17:13:48 +0000

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was founded five decades ago as a Marxist people's army fighting against capitalist imperialism and Colombia's often-brutal government. And they've been fighting a protracted bloody war ever since. In recent years, FARC has devolved into a guerrilla force that threatens the very people it originally sought to protect. Why? Because in order to secure their dwindling territory and lucrative coca fields, FARC has buried thousands of land mines in civilian areas. Since 1990, there have been over 10,000 land mine victims in Colombia, the second-most in the world behind Afghanistan. FARC and the government have been negotiating peace for the past six months, and FARC's potential demobilization could yield a transformative moment in Colombian history. But the scars of 50 years of conflict, and 50 years of land mines, can't be so easily erased. We traveled to Colombia to speak with land mine victims and to see first hand how around 7,000 FARC guerilla have held off over 300,000 Colombian soldiers for so many years.

Colombia’s Coke-Smuggling Submarines

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 17:18:56 +0000

In the never-ending game of cat and mouse that’s spurring the drug trade’s most ridiculous innovations, this has to take the cake: The new generation of Narco submarines, those sneaky, DIY cocaine-smuggling vessels, is now fully submersible. As Brian Anderson explained recently, subs that once promised a low profile amidst the ocean’s waves can now totally disappear under the Caribbean. That means the DEA and Coast Guard just saw their job get a whole lot harder. In 2009, the film team went to Colombia to hang out with Dr. Miguel Angel Montoya, a nautically-minded former trafficker who led one of the Cali cartel’s first narco sub projects. His early designs, based on torpedos, were unmanned. With radio transmitters attached, the drug-filled tubes would be towed behind the cartel’s towboat of choice. Should authorities hail the vessel, the torpedo could be jettisoned and picked up later by a following vessel tracking the radio signal. Because the huge tube was made of fiberglass, it was difficult to detect with sonar or radar. Since then, submarines have become powered, manned, air-conditioned, and now fully submersible. The narco sub’s speedy development is the perfect example of the old “where there’s a will, there’s a way” adage that’s fueled all aspects of the drug war, and stands as proof that no matter how much jail time is threatened or how many armed guards line our borders, people who want Colombia’s finest are going to find traffickers who can get it.

City of God, Guns and Gangs

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:51:29 +0000

Mariana van Zeller investigates Brazil's controversial new plan to wipe out crime, and the criminals themselves, from Rio de Janeiro's favelas before the country hosts the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. We go into the heart of a crack den, embed with special forces soldiers on shoot to kill missions, and even interview the traffickers themselves, who aren't going out without a fight. For decades, Rio de Janeiro's sprawling favelas (slums) have been under the control of heavily armed drug gangs. But now, the government of Brazil wants to take them back, and reform one of the world's most unequal and violent cities. The plan is part of a bold new initiative to give Brazil's most picturesque city a face lift before the world turns its eyes on the country for the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Correspondent Mariana van Zeller finds out that the traditional rulers of Rio's favelas are not ceding control without a fight. The government of Brazil has promised to continue its campaign, and provide a blueprint for one of the most pressing and perplexing questions in our increasingly urban world: how to transform, develop and integrate sprawling, often crime-ridden slums. Rio de Janeiro's sprawling favelas (slums) have been under the control of heavily armed drug gangs. Now before 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, the government wants to take them back.

The Last Ice Merchant (El Último Hielero)

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:59:22 +0000

Twice a week for over half a century, Baltazar Ushca has hiked up the slopes of Mount Chimborazo, the tallest mountain in Ecuador, to harvest glacial ice that covers the highest altitudes of this dormant volcano. In the past, up to forty ice merchants made the journey up the mountain to mine the ice; today, however, Baltazar works alone. Even his brothers, Gregorio and Juan, both raised as ice merchants, have retired from the mountain to find more steady work. The Last Ice Merchant tells a story of cultural change and indigenous lifestyle through the perspectives of three brothers who have dealt with change in different ways. I wanted to portray the characters as the dignified people that they are and to show the very human story of their circumstances — to make a movie that would portray the indigenous community positively for both an outside audience, and also for the community itself.

I was first introduced to Baltazar by my good friend Rodrigo Donoso (who would later produce the movie). As a tour guide and a local, Rodrigo has known Baltazar and his family for over 20 years. I was immediately both captivated and impressed with Baltazar. It was hard to believe that a man 67 years old and no taller than 5 feet trekked up a mountain alone, in rain, sleet, snow and shine, just for the ice. When I met Baltazar’s brothers and talked to his family, I found a depth to the story that I felt could resonate beyond this small community. Sandy Patch, Director

The Setting: Chimborazo, with an elevation of 20,700 feet above sea level, is the tallest mountain in Ecuador and the closest point on Earth to the sun due to its proximity to the equator. The summit is covered with snow-capped glaciers. The indigenous communities of the Chimborazo area are incredibly beautiful and rich in cultural traditions. They are also part of the poorest population in Ecuador, with few new employment opportunities. Many of these communities continue to live off the land and raise animals. In communities closest to the mountain, there is a tradition of harvesting ice from Chimborazo’s glaciers. The ice is transported to Riobamba, the closest city, to sell at markets. Riobamba, set in a lush valley formed by surrounding mountains, was one of the first colonial cities built in Ecuador and attracts vendors from miles around to its markets.

Reshaping Rio

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:24:03 +0000

Preparations for the Olympics and the World Cup are in full swing in Brazil. But for the residents of Rio de Janeiro's infamous favelas, the 'clean-up' of their iconic city has come at a dramatic cost. "We've been living here for 30 years and now we have nowhere to go", says Maria Estele, whose family is being evicted from their home. Behind the grand plans for stadiums, tourist attractions and new transport links lie whole communities being forcefully removed, often with less than 24 hours notice. "They call us invaders. We are workers of this city and we should have land rights", says Altair Guimaraes, who has mobilised mass support with fellow residents. The slum dwellers claim they can't afford to go elsewhere, and the compensation or relocation offered by the government are no replacement for their bulldozed homes. "The mayor, Eduardo Paes, wants to destroy our history". With protests continuing and a legal challenge looming, will Rio be ready for kick off in just over a year's time?