SURVIVING VENEZUELA: SMUGGLING DREAMS (2078) follows the story of fisherman Jhan López, who struggles to provide for his ailing diabetic father and young daughter in Irapa, a remote fishing village on the Gulf of Paria. Facing dire poverty and starvation, he decides to join the dangerous contraband trade from Trinidad, instead of relying on fishing.
The Rory Peck Trust, was set up to honour Rory Peck, freelance war cameraman, who was killed in crossfire while covering the failed coup against Gorbachev in Moscow in 1993. The Rory Peck Awards celebrate the skill and achievement of freelance cameramen and camerawomen, who, working independently, supply footage to broadcasters like the BBC, Al Jazeera or others, often risking their lives to uncover all important stories that are vital to increase our knowledge and understanding of the world. It is also a great honour for Alexander ‘Lali’ Houghton to be among the three finalists to be nominated for the 2018 FPA Award. The FPA ceremony will take place on Dec 1st 2018 in London.
Corina J Poore met up with Lali Houghton when he came to the Rory Peck Awards Ceremony with his film ‘SURVIVING VENEZUELA: SMUGGLING DREAMS’ in early November 2018. He was up against stiff competition in the "Sony Impact Award for Current Affairs’ category: the agonizing pain illustrated in ‘Yemen’s Catastrophe’ by Mohammed Al- Mekhlar, and the challenging and well-funded ‘Meeting the Enemy’ about the far-right groups in the United States, filmed by the brave Muslim filmmaker Deeyah Khan, who eventually won the award in this section. Out of nine finalists in all categories, three were Latinos which is an impressive proportion.
Houghton chose to film in Venezuela as he had been viewing the growing economic and political crisis that is taking place in Venezuela with concern. He could see it was causing people to die, flee the country or resort to desperate measures just to survive: -
Lali Houghton: -
“We were looking for untypical border stories. There are so many stories from the Colombian- Venezuelan border but it seemed like they were always the same story. There were rumours about fishermen travelling to Trinidad to collect food. So, we reached out to a journalist in the state of Sucre and hired her to conduct a recce for us. She travelled to many different fishing towns and found these potential stories. We feared that the fisherman could get into trouble if he appeared in the film, but he had nothing to lose… he really felt that he had nothing more to lose.
We told him to lay low after the film came out, but nothing really happened. It was more based on corrupt National Guards who were interested as they saw he had some involvement with foreigners and they thought they could tap him for money. He lives in the middle of nowhere, if this had taken place in a city, it would have been very different. He might have got arrested.
He was a bit of a crook himself… he got quite good at it… and that is what he is still doing now. I was in touch for a while, but I had to stop as he was writing to me every day … he was always phoning on Whatsapp, and I noticed that the phones were never his… and suddenly, when he was allowed to finally join the ’Smuggler’s Club’… he posted a new picture and then he could annoy me every day… so, I had to change my own picture to look like a fat Latino, hoping that he would think it was no longer my phone.”
Houghton is always searching for human stories that reveal the challenges faced by those in difficult circumstances, and how the need for survival prevails. He finds that, too often, there is a lack of these elements in the news: -
“Most of the stories that come from Venezuela come from the same ‘misery porn’. It’s always the same story: Look how people are eating rubbish… look at the [terrible] point people have reached … and none of the stories talk about the resilience of the people… that despite those impossible conditions, there is meaning in the decisions that people arrive at, it does not always bring them to their knees, making them seem so horribly desperate. Humanity is still creative even in those situations.”
https://www.facebook.com/AJWitness/videos/10160117512620557/?t=58
See full film
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/news/surviving-venezuela-smuggling-drea…
Lali Houghton arrived at being a director cameraman through various linked disciplines, initially starting out to be a journalist, having done a Masters in Periodical Journalism at the London College of Communications: -
“I was into reportage and documenting reality … fiction still remains a kind of an elusive trade to me. I got into writing… so, it was the mixture of writing and photography that naturally led to making videos… It’s [gradually] become more so, originally it was just a romantic notion of trying to understand the reality around me. I’ve always been a bit of a self- explorer, wanting to know more about myself and understand my own origins, and then it became a way of working on this puzzle. Latin America [itself] is like a large jigsaw puzzle… I thought if I could understand how Peru works, then I might be able to understand Bolivia and Chile. It all seems to flow into making a bigger picture and that is where you find the stories that have not really been challenged and told before. In Peru and Latin America … there was a gold mine of stories… and I felt that I wanted to tap into that… there was a bit of a romantic notion… I thought I would go to the ‘Buenos Aires Herald’ and become a journalist if everything fell through. I really believe that the universe works in your favour when you put your energy towards something. “
The loss of war cameraman Rory Peck is just one of too many examples of how newsmen and women can lose their lives. This is often very dangerous work, but, aside from the actual war conflict situations, Houghton believes that one can mitigate the risks by being well prepared.
“Journalists sometimes play up the dangerous aspects of getting these stories…[especially] If you have done your research and are working with locals… it’s important not to walk into these stories stupidly, you have to go in there knowing what you are doing, but you also remember that you go in there and you are then going to walk out… there is a notion that you have a force-field that is protecting you, which is probably naïve. For instance, in the Venezuela story, I was a bit naïve going in, but then I’m not the one who has to live there… I’m not the journalist who is being threatened by the government, I’m not the one who had to live the reality of having no food… and many journalists who live there have to endure [all these things]…so that is why, even winning this nomination, it seemed like a pat on the back for what I am doing… but I don’t think I should have any merit for bravery when others are living [in those conditions] right now.”
Lali Houghton filming in Chile.
Despite these comments, Lali Houghton admitted that things got dangerous for them in Irapa. They were aware of the ruthless environment created by the various players on both sides of the divide. Eventually they had to go into hiding as they heard that the National Guard was looking for them.
“The making of the film was a lot more terrifying… what was going on behind the scenes. On two occasions we were followed … once, we were sat in a restaurant and we had been followed all the way to the restaurant and we noticed that they were looking at the number plates, and the insides of our car… we thought it was the local secret police, the SEBIM (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional), which is run by the Cubans and is Maduro’s preferred tool of repression. The routes from Venezuela to Trinidad are normally controlled by the drug dealers, who deal in contraband of all sorts. It is a ‘mafia’ that has been there a long time … even from the time of the pirates … [historically] there have always been pirates and they are still there today… only now they are Venezuelan pirates. The ‘mafia’ is heavily equipped with radios and there are pirates out at sea, listening out [for ship’s] motors that are moving in the area and then they attack. They will take the motors off the boats and throw the men overboard… kill them if they do not get paid… palms have to be well greased or “aceitados” if you want to be involved in this business, but what is weird is that it’s no longer drug-dealing any more, it’s food!”
The chronic food shortages in Venezuela have resulted in part because the agricultural industry is not sufficiently developed. The country has relied on oil revenues for too long and with the global drop in value of oil, the country imploded. People have to rely on ‘CLAP’(Government organized local food distribution committees) or food parcels, that were handed out on a monthly basis, but now even these are not arriving, or they are delayed by three or four months: -
“…one of the things in that fishing village (Irapa) which was insane, was how trucks with food no longer arrive there. So now, the people depend entirely on the ocean – so they have fish, but all they eat is fish and yucca, other vegetables are simply not arriving. There is no rice or beans [the normal staple diet]. The trucks that do venture out, have to be patrolled by police so that they are not hijacked on the way. Now, whole towns are living from hijacking along the routes. When they have no access to the sea, they have little choice… everything that can be, is sold or bought- it’s a massive market place- divorced from the political scene. And now food is the most valuable commodity. There is a cold logic… It’s like a parallel reality, in order to go and buy the food, they need something to barter with, be it coal, prawns… wild animals… we have to admit that we don’t know if they were hoodwinking us: was it really coal? It could have been drugs… we had no way of knowing … we were not in a position to investigate the whole contraband trade… we were highlighting one single human story in that mayhem…it could even have been weapons. One year ago, [ when we were filming] it was already a desperate situation, I wonder what it is like now? We kept hearing these stories of hijackers along the roads and whole towns descending on the trucks… you begin to get parallels of ‘Mad Max’… it’s just absolute anarchy.”
It is suspected that food supplies and illegal gold mining is all controlled by the army, with the smuggling of gold, manned by the army, being taken in boats to Curaçao, thus developing a whole shadow economy. However, now, as there is virtually no more independent journalism in the country or money with which to investigate, it would be impossible to report these stories.
Lali Houghton: -
“… I am trying to find stories where you can see the story from a different angle and you no longer see people only as victims but as real actors in their lives… there is a real colonial way of seeing these types of stories and I think as someone recently said to me and it stuck in my mind… like with the victims of Grenfell Tower… it’s not okay to keep showing the victims and that pain that is so deep … like you can be shown Nigerians being shot…all sorts of [horrific] events,… Yemeni children…there is a level of detachment where people are always seen as victims… there is always someone with some kind of criticism. You have to take it with a pinch of salt, they obviously don’t understand what it is like to make a documentary. I genuinely try to be as objective as possible, even though, in the whole field of documentary film making you are, in a sense orchestrating reality.”
Even in the midst of misery, heart-warming stories can be found
Surviving Venezuela: Smuggling Dreams 2017 - 25min
Dir/Cameraman: Lali Houghton
Crew: Nayrobis Rodríguez, Luis del Valle, Poh Si Teng, Fiona Lawson-Baker, and Gino Moreno
Al Jazeera English / Witness programme
