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Summary:

The Debt of Dictators is the first film to expose the nefarious lending of billions of dollars by multinational banks and international financial institutions to brutal dictators throughout the world. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, asserts that transnational banks "know the price of everything, but have no values". Debt of Dictators reveals the impoverishment resulting from the odious debts incurred to multinational lending institutions by these dictators. The film transports viewers to Argentina, South Africa, and the Philippines, where they come face to face with those suffering from the sacrifice of essential social services in order to repay these illegitimate debts. The film begins in the slums of Buenos Aires, where the poor and starving are seen digging through trash, searching for food. While Argentina used to be the seventh richest country in the world, today nearly 50% of the population lives below the poverty line and close to sixty children die from poverty related causes everyday. One reason for this is the $168 billion in foreign debt accrued by the military junta that came to power in the 1976 coup. More than 70,000 people were brutally tortured, killed, or disappeared during this rule. In spite of this, major banks and lending institutions lined up to offer loans to the military leaders, increasing the Argentine debt by 600%.Today the Argentine government pays more in interest to service these loans than it does on health, education, and welfare combined. The filmmakers next go inside today's South Africa and find conditions of abject poverty, worsened by debt incurred by the Apartheid regime, largely to prop up the apartheid machinery. When Nelson Mandela marched out of prison in 1990, the international banks presented him with a bill for $21 billion. The present South African government is determined to repay these debts in order to continue to attract foreign investment. Since 1994, the South African government has spent more than 500 billion rand servicing foreign debt and more than five times as much as on essential services. Furthermore, the privatization of essential services required by international lending agencies such as the IMF has exponentially raised prices, thereby restricting access to essentials such as water and electricity by the nation's poor. Finally, the viewer is transported to the slums of Manila, where children who cannot afford to go to school are shown peddling trinkets in the town market. They live in shacks with no water or electricity, lacking even basic health services. After Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1976, imprisoning, torturing, and killing more than 30,000 in the process, lending institutions still lined up to offer loans, resulting in the more than $56 billion in foreign debt currently owed by the Philippines. Most of the money was spent personally enriching Marcos and his cronies for commissioning projects in exchange for kickbacks, which were useless, and often never completed. 70% of the Philippine population now lives below the poverty line and nearly 1/3 of all children suffer from malnutrition. One third of the national budget has been allocated to service this debt, largely to avoid investigation which might reveal the 'disappearance' of the borrowed funds into the pockets of those previously aligned with Marcos' regime, which are still in the Congress. The film makes clear that multinational lending institutions systematically subverted human rights and democratic principles to profits and the imposition of neo-liberal economic policies. As activists, including representatives of the Jubilee Campaign, vehemently argue in the film, the time has come to forgive these unjust debts in order to ameliorate the suffering of the world's poor, who are unwitting victims of the relationships fostered by corrupt dictators and the institutions that profited from their rule.

Table of Contents:

• Argentina (10 min.)
• South Africa (18 min.)
• The Philippines (17 min.).

Contributors:

Borgen, Erling , director, producer

California Newsreel (Firm) , presenter, production company, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/pre, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/prn

Borgen Production , production company, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/prn

Languages:

English
Spanish

Language Notes:

Narration in English; some dialogue in Spanish with English subtitles.

Subjects:

Loans, Foreign — Developing countries

Debts, Public — Developing countries

Developing countries — Economic conditions — 20th century

1900-1999

Debts, Public

Economic conditions

Loans, Foreign

Developing countries

Genres:

Documentary films

Online media

Internet videos

Performers:

Narrator, Terry Carter.

Production Credits:

Music, Ragnar Bjerkreim ; camera, Alejandro Reynoso, Zhang Wei, Nic Hofmeyer ; editor, Line Bie.

General Notes:

Title from resource description page (viewed September 20, 2017).
Streaming media.
Restricted to the University of North Texas System.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 video file (45 mins.))

Digital Characteristics:

video file

Call Numbers:

Online Video

OCLC Numbers:

1009099300

Other Control Numbers:

3644041 (source: VaAlASP)
[Unknown Type]: ASP3644041/avon