Assignment: Venezuela

An overview of a man who moves to Venezuela to work for the Creole Petroleum company, a Venezualan corporation back in the 1950's. I guess a LOT of people were working for them who were moving from the US. After all, Isn't this why the film was made? The narrator just glows to what can be found working for such a company, where it looks like he's moving into industrial suburbia where the 'house' he moves into is this aluminum bunker which is one hideous house. Couldn't the nice folks at Creole spend a little more on employee housing then the Athletic Club? The narrator is writing back to his family in the mainland, and my god, does the woman who plays the 'wife' look anemic.

An engineer hired by the Creole Oil Company moves down to Venezuela, to work on the Maracaibo oil fields. He writes back glowing letters of the modernity of the country, and how it's just like the good old USA, except that you have to speak Spanish. Soon they will be joining him.

It's. A nice little puff piece, half travelogue about how great Venezuela is, and half an ad for people to come work for the Creole Oil Company. The first half is average for travelogues. When James Fitzpatrick made a Traveltalk about South Africa, you didn't hear about the evils of apartheid. When he made one about Germany, there was nothing about the red light districts. Creole wanted engineers and skilled oil workers. Why emphasize the sort of bad elements that could be found in every city in the world?

The Creole Oil Company was established in 1920 to exploit the Maracaibo oil fields. By 1928 it was part of what is now Exxon. Through 1951, it was the largest single producer of petroleum in the world. Its. Refinery at Amuay Bay is still the third largest in the world. All its Venezuelan assets were nationalized in 1976,

This short film, presented by the Creole Oil Company talks about a man who is assigned to work in Venezuela. He moves from the USA to there and is shown life there. I happen to speak Spanish and I haven't heard Spanish that bad since I was in Spanish 101. They really polish up Venezuela by trying to make it look like a good place to visit and live. What really shoots this short down is this: All gloss and no substance. They show all the good things about Venezuela without showing the rampant poverty, crime, and drugs there are down there. It's a good example of why the book The Ugly American was written.

Yippee! Another first.

Oh this would have been an awesome short to have on a regular episode, probably as cheesy as any other short that MST. This was supposed to be part of a CD-ROM that MST never made, along with a short about mylar. Anyway pasty oil company employee from the US is sent down to Venezuela to make sure that not only the locals know how to drill correctly but also to criticize the narrowness of Lake Maricaibo (though he does try to back out of this view) He narrates to his family back in the USA on how wonderful Venezuela is (obviously not filmed in any of the slum ridden sections)Well heck he doesn't want to scare the family, they're moving down too. Anyway in the end mom and kids (who knows more Spanish than dad)join them in their new host country, hopefully mom will be safe down there since she has no skin pigment whatsoever!!

People who are comparing this video to Venezuela today, or of American corporations, are totally missing the point. That's really close to what it was like. Thousands of Americans lived in Venezuela in the 1950's and 1960's can testify to this. (I came a little later and lived there for over 20 years.) This film was made at a time when many Americans were going to college, often for the first time in the lives of their families. To them, a very high-paying job, generous benefits, and a sense of adventure were worth the minor inconvenience of living in a Quonset hut for a few years.

The country was not a democracy, but it was economically stable, with little crime, very little anti-American sentiment, no drug problem, and no tradition of violent political unrest. The Perez Jimenez government welcomed foreign investment and was spending a lot of money on things like schools, hospitals, roads, etc. and living standards were improving a great deal during this era. When he was overthrown in 1958, the transition was very peaceful, compared to many countries before and since.

There are hundreds of natural oil seepages in and around Lake Maracaibo which brought the international oil industry there in the first place. The lake is polluted now, but mostly due to untreated sewage treatment from more than 2 million people who live around it, not the oil industry.

P.S. The Spanish is just fine. The Venezuelans shown are speaking slowly and clearly for the camera. And no, they don't sound like Mexicans, Spaniards, or Argentinians.