Assignment: Venezuela (1956) watch online HD

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!!

Like 99% of the people who have seen "Assignment Venezuela", it was brought to them via the geniuses at MST3K, although it did not air. They did a very good job of making fun of it as usual, but aside from the laughs there is a lot learn from this short, even though one must read between the lines to fully appreciate it. This was an educational short meant to acquaint the expatriate employees of Creole Oil (a subsidiary of Standard Oil I believe,) with a strange country. Its a standard corporate propaganda video for the 50s that gives a sugarcoated overview of the wonders of Venezuela. From beautiful(and likely very polluted) Lake Maracaibo to the hustle and bustle of Caracas, our narrator takes us on a journey that is laced with assurance and paternalism. It is this were the short succeeds. It can be quite difficult for people to adjust when living and working in a foreign land, and it is a good idea for a company to give its workers a heads up when stationing them overseas.

Unfortunately, this is a very idealized view of Venezuela in 1956. It was an unstable country both politically and economically. The country at the time was ruled by Colonel Perez Jimenez, a brutally efficient strongman who took power in a coup in 1948, who himself would later be overthrown in a revolt in 1958. It was very irresponsible of Creole Oil not to make its employees aware of the political situation of the host country in this short.

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.

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.

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.