"El Presidente" In Context
By Sean Stanley
The Man Himself
"El Presidente" is an exercise in absurdity. It is a live-action comedy series about a friendly dictator, El Presidente Edmundo Vergagordo, ruling the fictitious Caribbean Island of Puta Negra and the various misadventures he gets into. Episodes center around his dealing with the CIA, DEA, NSA, leftist rebels, drug cartels, as well as his meddlesome wife and servants. The pilot episode, "Welcome to the Jungle" was shot using local talent and locations from 2007 to 2008. It premiered February 22, 2009 at The Ottobar. There were laughs, groans, and a score of awkward silences, but at least nothing was set on fire. The show is my take on geopolitics, spiced up with absurdest and ribald humor. El Presidente is based on REAL dictators that the United States has supported or installed over the years. He is an amalgam of the worst despots the 20th century has ever seen, and many of the plotlines for the series come from actual events in history.
Who is this man? What does he want? What is he snorting? Is that a gun? To know the answer to these questions of who, we should start with the where.
"Puta Negra" loosely translates to "Black Whore", though I've also heard "Black Cunt" and "Black Bitch". I've been told that to choose this name makes me a racist. That the name is needlessly caustic. That it is egregiously offensive to native Spanish speakers, but then again, so is the long history of slavery, tyranny, kleptocracy, and abuse throughout the Caribbean nations.
An overhead view of Haiti's vast soil erosion.Americans forget our careless, silent conquests of tiny states and their long term ramifications. Would Hatai have soil today if we hadn't propped up the Duvalier regime in our efforts to combat communism? And so the country is Puta Negra. Black spot in the sea. Black blemish on American foreign policy. And later, as we find out in future episodes, Black Gold in the form of the largest oil deposit discovered in a century.
El Presidente's wife, Marlena is another amalgam. A pastiche of Imelda Marcos, Eva Peron, but with a WASPy, educated edge. She ventured from Vassar to the Third World intending to make a difference, but the grim reality squashed those notions. Her limited experience beyond her comfort zone transforms her into a low-key despot in her own right, butting heads with her husband's brute force approach to everything.
El Presidente's majordomo is a Wodehouse-inspired butler/valet character named Pendejo. He lives his life in constant fear, catering to the whims of a well-armed psychotic drunk. A straight man to a violent, unpredictable, and inscrutable comedic partner, Pendejo never knows if today is his last day alive. All that matters is that this hulking creature with the TV remote in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other gets that next drink, post haste.
A subplot of the series is the ongoing feud between the various branches of the US intelligence community. The territoriality and needless bickering of our "elite" government agencies came into stark relief after the 9/11 tragedy, and even now the "pissing contests" between the various branches continue. I know people working in these agencies. All of them describe a culture that, despite best efforts by congress and policymakers, remains gregarious and competitive to their own detriment. Naturally, this scenario is ripe for satire, so we've included it in the pilot. 
Then-CIA Director Stansfield Turner, right, waited with President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, for a ceremony in which Mr. Carter signed an executive order giving Mr. Turner an "enhanced role," in Jan. 24, 197Two characters, Reynolds (CIA) and Finks (NSA) find themselves at odds with one another and with their respective agencies as they are forced to work together. Reynolds is a jingoistic "true believer" in America's involvement in other governments, while Finks is a cynical, amoral opportunist who is trying to foment strife in order to make his job more interesting. Again, people like this have and do exist in our top agencies, and on more than one occasion their activities have caused embarrassment for the US, not to mention real turmoil in the countries they operate from. As I write this, the NSA is duking it out with the Pentagon and the DHS over who controls President Obama's Cyber-Warfare initiative. The losers will fight over the scraps of pork-barrel millions and I doubt that any of us will notice a difference online.
Subcommandate Largos, EZLNMeanwhile, in our sordid tale, a group of leftist rebels take to the airwaves. They are the Zapacontra Liberation Army, a motly bunch preparing for the end of El Presidente's tyranny through glorious revolution. This group is based on both the Zapatista movement in Mexico, the Columbian FARC rebels as well as the Contras in Nicaragua. Led by the jovial but inept Subcommandante Largos, they strive to inflict anarchy and disorder wherever possible, but rarely succeed. Many of these groups were trained by US special forces, or arose as a result of other paramilitary groups we helped. If you are unaware of the School of the Americas, you have some reading to do.
I suppose I could explain the "boutique cocaine magnate" and the Kilo-of-the-month club. I could also give you some kind of justification for the cybernetic incarnation of Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele as El Presidente's personal physician, but instead I'll trust that you can take a joke. I'll also trust that you would like a few surprises when you watch the show. If however you're spurred to do a little research on the Cold War and the long ripples that still affect us today, we've done our job well.
Bon appetit!
CHECK IT:
FRIENDLY DICTATOR TRADING CARDS -
http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Cards_Index.html
STATE DEPARTMENT REPORT ON FRIENDLY DICTATORS -
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2844.htm