AllMovie

The groundbreaking leftwing journalists-cum-filmmakers Chris Martin and John Pilger helm the muckraking social activist documentary The War on Democracy - an unflinching dissection and evisceration of U.S. policies in Latin America during the second half of the 20th century. Beginning with interviewee Hugo Chávez's U.S.-suppressed attempts at Venezuelan social reform, and moving forward to such events as the 1954 CIA-backed overthrow of Jacobo Guzman in Guatemala and the U.S. government's decision to support the death squads in El Salvador during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Pilger and Martin hauntingly demonstrate the United States' aggressive attempts to thwart and squelch democratic movements in the Third World. Additional interviewees include: U.S. congressman José Serrano, former U.S. ambassador to Chilé Nathaniel Davis and historian Greg Grandin, among others.