¡Priviet!

Dear readers, today we are writing from the Russian autumn, the temperature hasn't gone any higher than 0ºC. The snow that fell some days ago still covers the streets and to go out we need at least four layers of clothes.

We left Azerbaiyan some days ago, our last Caucasian destination. Just like Armenia and Georgia, this country has a unique reality. One of the first things we had to do was remove the post in the web page of our visit to Nagorno-Karabagh (N-K), if the authorities discovered we had been in a zone “occupied” by Armenia, surely we would have won a “DEPORTED” stamp on our passports.

In our last report we told our first impressions of Baku, now after we have left the city, we think we can give a better idea of the country.

First, the Armenian and Azeri hate themselves, but ironically they seem more alike than they wish. Both use the same hair style and walk arm-in-arm. They start to hang-out at six o'clock and they all back home by midnight.

In Armenia and Azerbaiyan the people are very hospitable, thanks to that we won some meals and we went to a tea house where Pola and Cata were the only women not paid for being there. There also is hundreds of night clubs were the oil workers looked for some distraction from the cold and windy nights of Baku.

Here the streets are also spitted, but instead of kachapuri, vodka and bear here people drink tea with chocolates. In 21 days we drank more tea then what we had drunken in all our lives.

In Baku – not in Azerbaiyan – you breathe, smell and sweat oil. The city doesn't stop, it looks like it would explode any moment, all the streets have a traffic jam, the traffic lights are only city decorations and the horns are the orchestra of the chaos. Every block has a least a building under construction, a signal of the economic boom just that at night these buildings are only dark columns, because nobody can afford the million of manats these apartments cost. Even worse, there is no urban development plan, so nobody controls the quality of the buildings, for example they don't have a parking for the owners. Considering that Baku is located in a region as seismic as our dearest Chile, everybody is afraid that the next earthquake won't leave much standing up.

What happens in the country side is another story. In Sumgait, the former industrial capital of the U.S.S.R, nobody knows about oil and all is poor. We contemplated the huge and empty soviet factories and the poverty of enormous apartment blocks of the Kruschev era. The air had a strong chemical smell, a sign of the high pollution levels that affects Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea.

We also went to Guba, near the border of Duguestan and Chechnya, a beautiful forested mountain range, where for the first time we walked through the Caucasian mountains. Guba is a peculiar city, an enormous Jew colony lives in harmony with the rest of the Muslim habitants.

Like we told earlier, in Azerbaijan we had to delete our post about N-K. Besides the DEPORTED stamp we could have won, we learned that the freedom of speech is quite restricted by an apparent democratic government, but that nobody doubts to call authoritarian.

There isn't any corner where you don't see a poster of there former president Heyder Aliyev or of Ilham Aliyev, the actual president and son of Heydar. You walk by a street and you'll find on the walls all kind of phrases praising both. Libraries, airports, foundations, banks and buildings have the name of Heydar, which is considered the real saver of this Caucasian country.

We had some problems of freedom of speech. We hadn't been more than 24 hours in the country when the national television wanted a report of “the documentary of the young Chilean journalist”. The interview had all the KGB style and after their edition, all our words were transformed in praises to the government.

Another incident happened at the oil fields in the outsides of Baku. After recording the place and interviewing some workers, a jeep came out of no where, two men jumped out and started to yell us what were we doing on private property. Tamara, a journalism student that helped us on the spot, ran to intercept them while Catalina quickly replaced the recorded tape with a virgin one. We weren't going to loose such information. Meanwhile Tamara kept distracting the men, Catalina already trained in this kind of stuff, discreetly started to film the area to have something recorded if they asked as to see the tape. Luckily they only took the tape, without watching it. We had our treasure well hidden and we all felt a great sense of victory after that episode.

We interviewed lots of leaders from the unhopeful opposition. They had no means to organize and no way to divulge their ideas. We saw a hunger strike of the journalist of a newspaper that the government was going to close.

But not everything was so bad. Emin Milli, a young Azeri, was building a new kind of organization, without hierarchy, no institution, based on internet. It moved for something more than money. Based on the social needs of the university students, a new kind of movement was arising and surely we will be hearing about them soon and in the documentary as well.

We left Azerbaijan knowing that it was country living in a delicate situation. On one side there was a country with an expanding economy with an enormous potential thanks to its oil and on the other side a country leaded by a mob that got richer every day.

Now in Russia. We hope that we will be able to think about all what has happened in each of the countries we have visited, to think about the people we have met, their problems and their virtues. We also can see the Caucasus from the distance of this giant called Russia that has always watched over this strategic zone between the Black and Caspian Sea.

Big Hug

Hi everyone! We know it's been a time since our last report, but we're still here. Sadly this is our last report of the production of Caucasus the Documentary.

Now we're writing from Paris, we started the year celebrating our last recording and wishing to release the documentary on the second term of 2007. So get ready for the première. But back to where we left our last report.

We arrived at Russia in mid November, apart of the snow that fell those days we didn't see any more on the rest of our trip through Europe. Maybe the global warming could explain us something. The truth is we didn't see the “white winter” we thought we were going to bear in Moscow, we only suffered the really cold days that the Russian stood up with heavy coats, jackets and soviet hats that decorated the beautiful Slavs heads. That confirmed what we had seen on the recordings of our colleagues of Informe Especial1.

We drove by night from the Domodedovo airport to our apartment. On the highway we recognized that the Soviet legacy, so common in the Caucasus, had quickly disappeared. Anyhow we could feel that we were in the capital of once superpower; U.S.S.R. In many places we saw huge block kind of buildings and enormous soviet constructions of the Stalin or Krushev era.

On the streets there were many soldiers, policemen and the underground was full of security guards. There was a sense of fear by the possibility of a terrorist attack, like so many others that had happened in the recent years. Just as in Azerbaijan, we knew that our job wasn't going to be easy. We were afraid that our camera would take us to tough interrogations that wouldn't be an easy thing to understand. Our Russian lessons helped us for simple and basic conversations, but we weren't sure if it could manage a complete security interrogation.

To this, we must add the incomprehensible bureaucracy – for western standards – to validate our visa. In Russia you need more than a visa, first you must officialise it in the Foreign Minister and with the police and at every city you stay more than four days. The government says that it needs to know were every foreigner is, and all this isn't free. It cost us something near 30 dollars and a whole day in a row.

The day after we arrived we had the pleasure of an incredible lunch with pisco sour2, caviar, and a delicious chocolate dessert in the house of Chilean ambassador, who is related to Cristobal. That was one of our last good meals in Russia; typical days consisted of just a Snicker previously bought in Caucasus. Luckily we had been warned of the high prices of Moscow.

But we didn't suffer about that. Cristina, the Chilean owner of the apartment where we were staying, came every morning to prepare us a “light” breakfast, which it could be sausages with peas, beef with tomatoes, omelettes or cheese with jam. It helped a lot in the cold Moscow.

The first time we went to the Red Square was exciting, but what normally happens with famous places that you've only seen on TV; it's quite different of what you imagined. “It's much smaller”, “I imagined it more like a square” were some of things we complained. Even though, we must be fair and say that the Red Square is a hallucinating place to be, full of history, people everywhere, the majestic Kremlin and the beautiful bright-domed building of Saint Basil's Cathedral that cheers the always grey winter sky of Moscow.

There was a completely different world under the streets. The underground is a good example of the splendid soviet era. Huge stations - real bunkers – it took us five minutes to go down the stairs from the street to the station, the walls had enormous mosaic, true pieces of art. Images of the hammer, the sickle, workers, revolution leaders and all kind of soviet icons, remembered the Russians (and tourists) a little bit of there recent history.

In other terms, to mention Caucasus wasn't something left unnoticed, many people warned us to be careful. It was quite common to see racist attitudes against anyone that didn't seem Slav. Policemen on the streets stopped immigrants asking for there papers. Luckily we didn't have such problem, we seemed tourists. Except the day we were leaving, at the airport a police officer checked all our bags, once and again looking for paintings. He thought we were art smugglers because we had some cheap paintings bought in a Georgian fair, which he imagined them as valuable pieces of art.

In Moscow among many interviews we talked with Tatiana Vorozheikina, CNN international analyst and former dean of Political Science in an important University of Moscow, we also interviewed Vadim Medvedev, former member of the Politburo of Michael Gorbachov and a reformer leader. With them we confirmed what many Russian thought about Putin's attitude upon the Caucasus area. They told us that it's about the conviction, a vicious imperialist nature, that the Kremlin had the right to show control on the zone that, at least on paper, is independent of Moscow.

Many Russian also told us that the government's position upon the Caucasus was only a way to have a common enemy to cover other sort of internal problems that could affect the country.

We talked with students of a university of Moscow, with a housewife that had the karma of being from the capital of Chechnya, we drank tea with teacher in her apartment in those huge soviet blocks, at the Gorbachov Foundation we talked with one of the mentors of the glasnost and perestroika, and with all the conversations we made the idea of leaving a city that is growing capitalist, but where you still find soviet customs and manners.

Soon we will be back home with the a huge challenge, we must me able to show you – and as much people possible- all what we have seen, felt and lived in the last four months of hard work, amusement and discovery. Our project was centred in the Caucasus, but we intend to go much further, a place that makes us think of democracy, free market, globalization and also dreams and frustrations. The project has made a big leap, but it still has to give a few more. We thank every mail of support, they helped in every moment.

We will keep in touch with the last reports of the Caucasus the Documentary. Big hugs see you in Chile.

Caucasus Crew

1 Chilean TV program. A crew of this program made a report about how some girls from Bielorussia and Russia try to get married with foreigner (also Chileans) to have the chance to move away from their countries.

2 Chilean drink.