Michael Palin has recounted his disturbing encounter with military police while filming a documentary in Venezuela.
The filmmaker visited the South America country to record Michael Palin in Venezuela and has released a book to accompany the series.
On The Pat Kenny Show, Palin described it as the “most beautiful country” with “dramatic scenery” of astonishing variety.
However, economically the country lies in ruins.
Once the economic powerhouse of South America, there used to be multiple concorde flights between New York City and Caracas, ferrying oil workers to and fro.
Now, it is viewed with pity by its neighbours.
“There was a time when it was a real model of capitalist success,” he argued.
“Then Chavez came in and turned it the other way; turned it leftwards.
“The socialist country worked for a while and then everything sort of fell apart.”
View this post on Instagram
Not long after Chavez came to power, oil prices collapsed and the main source of revenue for his expensive welfare policies collapsed.
In the years since, the country has suffered from hyperinflation and mass emigration.
“[Chavez] is still seen as a great hero but we went to the place where he was born to film a statue of his and in the end we were prohibited from filming by military intelligence people,” he recalled.
“They were all armed with night vision goggles and all that sort of stuff just to stop us filming.”
Hugo Chavez in 1999. Picture by: Alamy.com. Now under the Maduro regime, the country’s freedoms have been dramatically chipped away.
It is widely believed in the west that he stole last year’s presidential election and dissent is severely punished.
While there, Palin got a taste of just how much the country’s young students have come to fear their own government.
“They were wary on the street but when we talked to them back home, they were very happy to talk about what they saw as they saw as the culture of oppression there,” he said.
“The suppression of ideas; as students, they said if we write something and someone informs on us, that gets back to the Government, we could be taken in quite arbitrarily and imprisoned.
“So, it’s quite brave of them to talk like that but they were the future, I felt, of Venezuela.”
Main image: Michael Palin. Picture by: Alamy.com.
