The Debt of Dictators

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 regimes. 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, at the time of the film's production nearly 50% of the population lived below the poverty line and close to sixty children died 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%. At the time, the Argentine government paid more in interest to service these loans than it did on health, education, and welfare combined.

The filmmakers next go inside South Africa and find conditions of abject poverty, worsened by debt incurred by the apartheid regime, largely to prop up the apartheid machinery. Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, which began the country's transition from apartheid; meanwhile, the nation's debt to international banks was $21 billion. The post-apartheid South African government determined it necessary to repay these debts in order to continue to attract foreign investment. Since 1994, the South African government has spent billions of rands servicing foreign debt, outstripping spending on essential public services. Furthermore, the privatization of essential services required by international lending agencies such as the IMF exponentially raised prices, thereby restricting access to essentials such as water and clip-on utilities for 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 1972, imprisoning, torturing, and killing more than 30,000 people in the process, lending institutions still lined up to offer loans, resulting in the more than $56 billion in foreign debt owed by the Philippines. Most of the money was spent personally enriching Marcos and his cronies for commissioning projects in exchange for kickbacks that were useless and often never completed. A large portion of the national budget was subsequently 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, who remained in Congress.

The film makes clear that multinational lending institutions systematically subverted human rights and democratic principles to profits and the imposition of neoliberal 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.