Nadie escuchaba

This is a two-hour doc about some of the lucky (and not-so-lucky) survivors of Cuba's prisons after the revolution of 1959.

Unfortunately, the necessary 'bite' required for such a doc is watered down in sheer redundancy: there are 30 -- count 'em -- 30 different witnesses to the post-revolution days in Cuba. Many of these stories, sad to say, become repetitive.

This is, whether you like it or not, a propaganda film, a thoroughly one-sided view of Castro and the revolution.

I'm an old man and I well remember Cuban fascist dictator Fulgencio Batista, an American puppet hell-bent on destroying Cuba through Mafia infiltration, unrestricted gambling, prostitution, drug smuggling and distribution, systemic corruption and non-existent economic development. Billions of dollars were bleeding back into America under Batista, whose army routinely killed many thousands (nobody knows how many). Most were dissenters and peasants, whose land was stolen from them.

Lest we get too lathered and foamy about the evils of Castro, let's not forget the relatively recent (the 1980s, in the same period as this doc) Death Squads in El Salvador, Somoza's private army in Nicaragua, the generals in Argentina who made 30,000 people conveniently 'dissapear,' the CIA-backed destabilization and overthrow of democratically elected Salvador Allende's Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, followed by his murderous reign of terror, for which he was never really punished.

All of these 'activities' were sponsored and sustained by the United States, the same country that has been screaming about Castro's 'terrible' human rights abuses for almost 50 years. Depending on your point of view, this hypocrisy can make you sick to your stomach.

Something is really missing in this doc. Life is a process of opposites: there is always another side to every story. You won't find another side in 'Nobody Listened': the Castro regime is evil; end of story. That just isn't good enough.