One week after the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela, a humanitarian crisis is developing, with the death toll approaching 2,600 and tens of thousands of people missing. In addition to the immense grief this devastation has caused, the population will face health risks, illnesses, and potential epidemic outbreaks linked to the collapse of basic services, the accumulation of rubble, and the lack of adequate emergency infrastructure.

The magnitude of the disaster is greatest in low-income neighborhoods, where the earthquakes have exacerbated pre-existing conditions of urban decay, loss of services, and precarious living conditions. This is especially difficult in a country where over two thirds of households live below the poverty line and lack adequate housing, employment, healthcare, and education. All of this is unfolding against the backdrop of more than a decade of economic crisis, aggravated by international restrictions and pressures, including the blockade and sanctions imposed by the United States.

We denounce the political exploitation of the humanitarian crisis by President Trump, who cynically claimed he would make just $150 million available to Venezuela while spending $3.5 billion to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro in January and imposing neocolonial control over Venezuelan oil trade. We reject the use of the suffering of the Venezuelan people as a bargaining chip in the geopolitical disputes between U.S. imperialism and the Venezuelan government, where humanitarian aid is used as an instrument of pressure, coercion, or political legitimization. Assistance must be provided only on the basis of the working populations’ needs.

Let’s Support the Women On the Frontlines

This crisis is exacerbating existing structural inequalities for poor and working people, particularly women.

Makeshift shelters in schools, sports facilities, and public spaces often lack adequate conditions to meet the distinct needs of women and children. The burden of childcare, the lack of privacy and menstrual hygiene products, difficulties accessing prenatal and postnatal care, and the scarcity of protective measures against violence create additional challenges for women.

In response to this situation, grassroots support has come from community networks of neighbors, healthcare workers, and other sectors who are providing solidarity and support for rescue, evacuation, care, and assistance efforts under extreme conditions. Women are central to these survival networks, sustaining community life on a daily basis.

This enormous capacity for self-organization must be strengthened, coordinated, and expanded. It cannot be replaced by the state apparatus or by military structures that intervene belatedly in emergency management, attempting to organize, control, and administer aid while the immediate response has been sustained by massive collective solidarity and women on the front lines of the disaster. Popular distrust of the state apparatus is the result of years of corruption, deterioration of public services, social inequality, and the use of security forces to repress and harass working people.

Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the capacity of volunteers, demand access to resources for those who have been carrying out rescue tasks since the first moment of the catastrophe, and put all technical and logistical resources at the service of this enormous popular solidarity.

We call for the creation of a large, unified international campaign in solidarity with women and the Venezuelan people. This must be driven by women’s and LGBTQ+ organizations, feminists, the gender committees and secretariats of trade unions and student organizations, human rights organizations, and other political organizations and social movements

We propose prioritizing the provision of menstrual and feminine hygiene products, diapers, infant formula, and other basic supplies to health centers, women’s, feminist, and gender-focused organizations in Venezuela, for distribution among the most needy women.

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International Feminist Solidarity

From our international socialist feminist movement Bread and Roses1Bread and Roses is an international socialist feminist current promoted by the Socialist Workers Party (Argentina), Revolutionary Workers Movement (Brazil), Revolutionary Workers Party (Chile), Revolutionary Workers League (Bolivia), Socialist Workers League (Venezuela), Socialist Workers Current (Uruguay), Socialist Workers Movement (Mexico), Permanent Revolution (France), Revolutionary Workers Current (Spanish State), Revolutionary Internationalist Fraction (Italy), Revolutionary Internationalist Organization (Germany)., we stand in solidarity with our sisters and all the working and poor people of Venezuela to demand:

–  That all information on victims, missing persons, structural damage and resources allocated to the emergency be public, transparent, and accessible.

–  That all the material resources necessary to confront the catastrophe be placed at the service of the working population, under the control of organized communities. Down with the neocolonial control of Venezuelan oil in the hands of the United States!

–  That international aid not be used as a mechanism of political pressure or intervention on the Venezuelan people.

–  That Venezuela’s external debt be cancelled completely.

–  That the State’s material and logistical resources be immediately placed at the service of emergency coordination and popular volunteering.

–  That large business owners and bankers, responsible for decades of inequality and wealth concentration, be forced to contribute all the necessary material and financial resources, under the control of emergency committees and organized communities.

Originally published in Spanish on Friday, July 3, in La Izquierda Diario.

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