Free healthcare; house to house visits of doctors; online video consultations; food boxes delivered to seven million families; suspension of all residential and business rents; prohibition of lay-offs for the rest of the year; cash payments to all workers including in the self-employed, informal and private sector; prohibition of telecom companies cutting off phones and internet; payment of salaries of employees of small and medium businesses. This is a socialist response to the Covid-19 crisis, prioritising people not profit.
Venezuela’s impressive package of social protection goes hand-in-hand with a rigorous containment plan. On 12 March, before the first Venezuelan case was even confirmed, the United Socialist Party (PSUV) government decreed a health emergency, prohibited crowds and cancelled flights, measures swiftly followed by a shut-down of schools, universities, theatres, bars, nightclubs and more whilst requiring passengers to wear face masks on the Caracas metro. Days later, a national quarantine was enacted with 90% compliance. An existing online system of distributing benefits was repurposed to survey and record potential Covid-19 cases. As Code Pink’s Leonardo Flores reports, within 11 days, over 12.2 million had participated, over 20,000 people had been visited by medical professionals and 145 had been referred for testing. Venezuela actively sought the support of socialist Cuba who sent 130 doctors and 10,000 doses of Covid-19 drug interferon Alfa 2b. Key trade partners China and Russia sent experts, equipment and diagnostic kits for 320,000 people.
Venezuelan revolutionaries have risen to the challenge, utilising the Bolivarian movement’s well-established networks of community organisation and collaboration, the communal councils and communes. Local committees for supply and production (CLAP) already deliver food boxes to millions of families while communes got to work producing cloth face masks and sharing formulae to produce disinfectant gels and cleaning materials from household products and plants.
Such a robust, coordinated response that guarantees free healthcare, widespread testing and rapid provision of food and economic support for huge sections of society has enabled Venezuela to significantly slow the spread of the disease. The government’s response is guided by public health and is designed to protect the working class and poor. As we go to press Venezuela has only registered one Covid-19 death, with 107 infected and 31 recovered. Compare this to neighbouring Brazil with over 3,400 cases and 96 deaths and whose President, Jair Bolsanaro, dismisses it as a little flu, and is demanding people ignore quarantining and go back to work.
Yet none of this is reported by The Guardian or BBC. Instead The Guardian gives space to the Venezuelan right-wing journalist Clavel Rangel (who writes for reactionary Correo Del Caroni, owned by media mogul David Natera and the powerful Venezuelan Press Block). In a piece penned with the disreputable Tom Phillips, Rangel tells us ‘There is no ideal time for a pandemic, but fewer countries are less equipped to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak than crisis-ridden Venezuela’ (The Guardian, 17 March 2020). There is not a word about the remarkable measures detailed above. More shamefully, she refuses to examine the impact of sanctions imposed by the US which has enacted 300 unilateral measures since 2014, estimated to have cost Venezuela $120 billion. Human rights expert Alfred de Zayas, who as UN rapporteur visited Venezuela in 2017, estimates these measures have killed over 100,000 as imports of key medicines and healthcare equipment have been blocked. Since the US imposed a total oil embargo in 2019, Venezuela’s oil production has been slashed in half, decimating foreign currency reserves and pushing down imports by 64% in a year. Venezuela lost a third of its GDP in 2019.
Seeking to use the pandemic to topple PSUV President Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration defied the UN’s call to suspend all sanctions in the battle against the virus. Instead, the US ensured the IMF rejected Venezuela’s request for an emergency $5bn loan and days later declared Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism, announcing indictments for narco-trafficking against Maduro and others, offering $15m for information leading to arrest. Such moves are to criminalise and isolate Venezuela, cutting it off further from credit lines and trade partners. The Guardian and BBC are willing collaborators in this dirty imperialist game.
Covid-19 cases are rising in South America whilst the lack of an adequate response in neighbouring Brazil and Colombia, both hostile US-allies, is driving migration into Venezuela as desperate people seek free healthcare and social protection. Coupled with crushing sanctions, this places Venezuela at risk of suffering heavily in the pandemic. However, the Bolivarian revolution has leapt into action, using popular mobilisation to create social protection, and internationalist coordination. Venezuela is preparing to weather the storm. We join our voices to the millions demanding an end to the genocidal blockade of both Cuba and Venezuela.
Viva Cuba! Viva Venezuela! Sanctions kill!
Sam McGill
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 275, March/April 2020
