Kassandra: The peacekeeping telenovela in Bosnia

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

In the early 1990s, the soap opera or telenovela craze was sweeping the world. One of the most popular was Kassandra made in Venezuela, about a girl switched at birth and raised in a travelling circus. The show was broadcast all over the world, including Bosnia. In 1997, ravaged by war, people found escape in the make-believe world of Kassandra. When supporters of Washington-backed president Billiana Plavšić took over a local TV station and turned the show off, there was outrage. The United States State Department was so worried that the loss of Kassandra could hurt Plavšić's popularity and even undermine her government, they hatched a plan to get it back on the air. Johnny I’Anson speaks to the star of Kassandra, Coraima Torres, along with Tony Paez who distributed the show across the world. (Photo: Coraima Torres and Osvaldo Ríos. Credit: Circulo Rojo)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service, with me, Johnny
0:10.0	Iansson.
0:11.0	We're going back to Europe in 1997, a fragile peace was holding after the brutal Bosnian
0:16.6	war ended in December 1995, but rival political factions threatened instability, and the West
0:24.1	looked to a South American soap opera to avoid any more bloodshed.
0:31.1	I've never heard of a television program be so popular that it actually helped to contribute
0:38.1	to peace.
0:39.1	That's what it did.
0:40.1	It actually contributed to the peace in the region.
0:45.1	The story starts in the early 1990s.
0:56.1	The Telly novella craze was sweeping the world.
0:59.1	These melodramatic Latin American soap operas, with their overblown stories of love, heartbreak
1:04.4	and rags to riches success, were a global phenomenon.
1:08.1	Tony Payez was the executive vice president of distribution agency Coral Pictures in
1:13.3	Caracas and Miami.
1:15.3	All of the novellas of that time were very popular, and in fact I opened several markets.
1:21.3	I opened the Chinese market, the Russian market, then novellas were very popular, for example,
1:26.3	in Israel.
1:27.3	They were subtitled in Russian and in Hebrew.
1:30.3	We were popular all over the world.
1:32.3	And in 1992, a new show was being recorded.
1:37.3	One which would become the most successful Venezuelan soap opera of all time, written by the
	...

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