A few days before the incredible greenwash attempt recently launched by Chevron, the expert witness for their multi-billion dollar trial in Ecuador was dealt a serious blow. Not once in 2 decades of work for Texaco and Chevron has John Connor found his clients to be responsible for harm to even a single person. The jury in Jefferson County, Mississippi found otherwise.

In 2002, a U.S.-backed coup against the government of Venezuela collapsed. The failure of the Bush Administration’s effort to overthrow President Chavez sent a powerful new signal about the limits of the ability of the U.S. to thwart popular democracy in the region. After the failure of the coup, a succession of Presidents were elected across South America promising to reverse the disastrous economic policies promoted by Washington in the region through the IMF for the previous twenty years, and to promote instead the economic interests of the majority. The story of this dramatic transformation has been largely untold in the U.S., in part because the freedom narrative of South America is significantly a story of freedom from U.S.-dominated institutions. But on Friday, Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border opens in New York. Because it’s an Oliver Stone movie, because it’s being commercially distributed, many Americans will have the opportunity to see and hear this story.

I read Emergildo Criollo’s open letter and responded to Criollo’s call to stand in solidarity against Chevron.