A once-popular romantic telenovela actor recently announced that he would lead an effort to launch a socialist propaganda film industry in Venezuela backed by an accused money launderer for the regime there, Venezuelan media reported this weekend.
Fernando Carrillo, one of the most high-profile “celebrities” in Venezuela supporting the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro, used the Chinese social media platform Tiktok to announce that he would spearhead the creation of a “Bollywood” to revitalize the country’s near-extinct entertainment and telenovela industry after years of socialism and censorship left it in complete ruins.
While Carrillo was once a fixture in internationally distributed telenovelas in the 1990s, he has spent much of the past decade collaborating with the socialist regime and praising its leaders. In one particularly bizarre episode, Carrillo declared socialist Vice President Delcy Rodríguez “the love of [his] life” in 2022, claiming he planned to one day marry her.
“For some time now, I have been telling you that what is coming for the artistic medium and for Venezuelan actors and artists is a new industry, Bollywood,” the actor said in his Tiktok announcement. “And it will be the new Venezuelan way of telling stories to the world.”
@ferrcarrilloficial Estan listos y listas ??? 💥 💣 Ὠ Ajusten sus cinturones de seguridad. ACTORES 🎭 ACTRICES 🎭 ESCRITORES ✍️ DIRECTORES 🎥 TECNICOS MAQUILLISTAS ARTE VESTUARISTAS UTILEROS GREMIOS Y SINDICATOS DE ACTORES RADIO CINE Y TELEVISIÓN. Lo que viene es susper Pawnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!! ❤️⭐️ CONTAREMOS LA HISTORIA !!! Que opinan colegas y amigos ARTISTAS? LOS ACTORES 🎭 y ACTRICES de VENEZUELA y LA PATRIA queremos CONTAR NUESTRA HISTORIA junto a los amigos de HOLLYWOOD en esta nueva industria llamada VOLLYWOOD VOLLYWOOD con V de VENEZUELA 🇻 en VICTORIA ❤️🇻 #venezuela🇻 #cine #art #love #amor #family #familia #1 #amen
“Bollywood” is a term often used to refer to the Indian film industry headquartered in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. While commonly used in the West, sometimes to refer to all Indian film and not just Hindi-language movies from Mumbai, many in the Indian film industry reject the term as it was once used derisively to mock Indian cinema. Others object to its exclusion of other film hubs in the country, such as Telugu-language movies from Hyderabad.
Carrillo did not exactly explain what about “Bollywood” he hoped to reproduce in Venezuela.
Carrillo claimed that the creation of the purported new “Bollywood” will count with the collaboration of his “great friend” Alex Saab, dictator Nicolás Maduro’s alleged top money launderer who was released from prison by U.S. President Joe Biden and sent back to Caracas by last December. Saab also appeared in the social media video.
Carrillo described Saab — a 51-year-old Colombian businessman widely described as dictator Maduro’s financial brain — as a “hero of the nation and a great friend.” Saab responded, “we are going all out. Novelas and series are back. We are going all out.”
The Department of Justice indicted Alex Saab in 2019 on charges of using the United States banking system to launder $350 million from Venezuela’s state coffers in overseas accounts as part of a bribery scheme that involved shady affordable housing construction contracts.
Saab was also an instrumental figure in the implementation of the Maduro regime’s ongoing CLAP program, which sells heavily subsidized monthly boxes of low-quality and often rotten food to Venezuelan citizens.
American law enforcement authorities arrested Saab in Cape Verde in 2020, where he remained until his extradition to the United States in October 2021. Upon his arrival to U.S. territory the alleged top money launderer was transferred to a federal jail in Miami, Florida, where he awaited his trial proceedings.
During his time in American custody, the Maduro regime spared no expense on a multi-million-dollar international media campaign to portray Saab as an “innocent” man who had been allegedly abducted by the United States and to demand his immediate release.
Saab was ultimately released in December 2023 midway through his trial after U.S. President Joe Biden pardoned him in a prisoner swap in exchange for roughly ten unjustly detained American citizens and a smaller group of Venezuelan political dissidents.
The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, receives businessman Alex Saab (R) at the Miraflores Palace, in Caracas, Venezuela, on December 20, 2023. (Pedro Rances Mattey/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The White House claimed shortly afterward that President Biden’s decision to send Saab back to Caracas would allegedly help curb the large flow of Venezuelan migrants entering the United States. The alleged top money launderer was given a “hero’s welcome” upon arriving to Caracas and immediately began to accuse the United States of trying to force him to participate in a conspiracy to destroy the Venezuelan state. He provided no proof to substantiate his claim.
Maduro designated Saab the head of the socialist regime’s new international investment center in January. Saab’s wife, Italian national Camila Fabri, is now one of the producers of M Factor, an ongoing musical reality show competition that sees local musicians try to earn a spot on Maduro’s official soundtrack ahead of the upcoming July 28 sham presidential election.
Fabri and her husband are both actively wanted by Italian authorities on separate money laundering charges.
While not a telenovela powerhouse compared to other countries in the region such as Brazil, Colombia, or Mexico, Venezuela, prior to the rise of socialist dictator Hugo Chávez in 1999, produced a large amount of internationally renowned television programming, particularly between the 1960s and 1990s.
According to testimonies from Venezuelan writers offered to international media outlets, the country’s film and television industry began decline under socialism as early as the year 2000, in large part due to political censorship. Following Hugo Chávez’s decision to shut down Venezuela’s main private television channel RCTV in 2007, the nation’s television industry reportedly suffered a near-instant instant 50-percent reduction in size.
Since then, exacerbated by the socialist regime’s own media censorship laws and the collapse of socialism in Venezuela, the nation’s telenovela industry continuously suffered a decline until it reached a near-permanent closure by the year 2019. While once producing up to a dozen telenovela productions per year in its heyday, Venezuela currently produces, at most, one a year.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
