by Maria Paez Victor, a speech given in a UNAC/Sanctions Kill Webinar July 23, 2024
There are a few things that is necessary to stress about the situation in Venezuela. Because in the presidential elections that are about to take place this Sunday 28th of July, the sanctions are the elephant in the room. For two reasons:
- because of the tremendous damage they have done and
- because of the almost miraculous turn around in the economy that Maduro’s government team has achieved despite the sanctions.
The far right (especially PUD MC Machado/ E.Gonzalez) tries to blame Chavistas for the economic troubles, and simply deny that sanctions have had any effect, despite studies and UN pronunciations to the contrary.
The far right’s implicit, and explicit, message is that they will get rid of the sanctions as they have excellent relations with Washington.
The far right ignores the successful economic measures Maduro’s team has done to defeat the sanctions.
Venezuela is a beleaguered nation by an illegal, vicious hybrid war unleashed by the USA and its allies and some of its corporations. This includes open violence such as coups d’etat attempts, assassinations, sabotage, bribing of criminals, cyberattacks, attack on the currency by international finance agencies, and a comprehensive media deluge of lies and false accusations.
Venezuela was forbidden to produce and sell its petroleum, buy and sell on the international market, especially buy medicines and food, banned from international financial transactions or use of SWIFT, have no access to their own bank accounts.
Many in the West believe the sanctions are supposedly a “soft” tool of attack: the unilateral economic sanctions are meant to collapse the economy so that the government falls.
Venezuela has suffered 930 illegal sanctions and only Russia has more.
54% of sanctions are imposed by the USA
14.2% are imposed by Canada
7.2% are imposed by the European Unión
These sanctions are not soft, they leave a path of death and disease. In Venezuela at least 100,000 people have died directly due to the economic sanctions that have impeded the buying of food and medicines.
The harm is just as harmful as dropping bombs, making “economic sanctions possibly the deadliest weapon used by Western Powers. “(as quoted in the Financial Times)
Here’s the thing: the prostituted international media, in its articles severely criticizing Venezuela and President Maduro, hardly ever mention the sanctions as causes of the dire economic and political troubles in the country. IT IS ABSURD. It is also on purpose.
ECONOMIC IMPACTS
The Venezuelan state lost 90% of its revenue.
The oil industry having lost 80% of its production, is estimated lost $232 billion
The provoked hyperinflation reached levels unimaginable in the tens of thousands such that the currency became almost meaningless. Only in nations utterly defeated and destroyed in war with bombs had such hyperinflation existed before.
Sanctions have allowed the shameless, immoral, illegal looting of Venezuelan assets.
Between 2016 and 2020 alone Venezuela lost $194 billion, equivalent to approximately 16 months of national production, and the entire foreign debt could have been paid with it, or we could have imported enough food and medicine for 60 years.
$7 billion illegally taken by foreign banks
$5 billion illegally taken by the International Monetary Fund
$2 billion in 31 tons of Venezuelan gold in the Bank of England, pirated
$10 billion obtained by looting the Venezuelan oil company in the USA, CITGO.
So please US and Canada and EU, spare us the sanctimonious talk about you abiding by the “rule of law” and the care for democracy of the supposed “international community”.
They have robbed, looted, sabotaged, tried to invade, ordered assassinations, provoked migrations, damaged the currency, and maligned the nation of Simon Bolivar.
CATASTROPHIC IMPACTS ON THE VENEZUELAN POPULATION
We are not just talking of numbers and percentages, but of people and what they have had to suffer:
100,000 died; in one year alone (2017018), 40,000 died.
2.6 m children could not get their regular vaccinations
5,859 hemophiliacs could not get medication
2.5 m patients could not get blood related products
8,000 HIV patients could not get anti-viral medicines
16,000 patients needing dialysis could not get it
16,000 cancer patients went without medicines
4m with diabetes and hypertension could not be treated
Thousands of operations and treatments could not be done
These are not just numbers, but people.
My dear first cousin died of cancer because the medicines that could have prolonged her life were not available anywhere in the country.
My octogenarian sister with glaucoma is now blind, and she struggled to get the eye drops that were necessary to have prevent it.
But the most unconscionable, immoral and hard to forgive, thing the US and Canada did was to ban COVID vaccines to be sold or donated to Venezuela in the midst of a world pandemic.
But the sanctions were also a bit of a boomerang, as thousands of Venezuelans migrated to the USA – a migration they themselves programmed and abetted although then afterwards they considered it a huge problem for them when they showed up at their borders. People were making money arranging for these migrations, the reprobate son of a family friend was in on this “business”.
These migrants on the whole, found no Nirvana, and thousands longed to return, which the government of Venezuela complied by sending planes to bring them back free of charge. I don’t know any other country in the world that has done this.
SANCTIONS CONDEMNED BY UN
They are illegal, violating a series of international laws and commercial regulations, including the Charter of the UN and Geneva Convention. They violate the basic principles of :
Sovereignty
Self-determination of peoples
Freedom of trade
Freedom of navigation
Non-discrimination
Prohibition of the use of force
Dr. Alfred De Zayas, UN Human Rights Rapporteur:
Dr. De Zayas considers the sanctions to be crimes against humanity, veritable sieges like in the Middle Ages designed to starve populations into surrendering.
He states, they are a form of state “terrorism”, which by definition entails indiscriminate killing, just as land mines, cluster bombs and the use of cancer-producing depleted uranium weapons. The history of sanctions is one of suffering and devastation.
Dr. Alena Douhan, UN Human Rights Rapporteur:
Sanctions violate international law, and they caused a devastating effect on the Venezuelan economy and a catastrophic impact on its population; they are a blow against a nation’s sovereignty.
On Nov. 2023, 128 nations of the UN voted that all sanctions to all countries, about 40 of them, be lifted. To no avail.
Throughout these attacks and hardships, China, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Cuba, came to Venezuela’s aid, and heroically when the pandemic struck. That will never be forgotten.
SANCTIONS FAILED TO OVERTHROW THE BOLIVARIAN GOVERNMENT
Why did Venezuela not collapse? How could the country survive such a blow to its economy?
Well, it was not easy. Maduro and his team tried many things but on the whole this is what saved Venezuela.
The population rallied around its government as it perceived they were being attacked by an external enemy: the USA and allies. It was Maduro and his team that were seen, rightly, as protecting with all their might, the people of Venezuela. Therefore, the sanctions gave Maduro a greater standing and popularity.
On the other hand, the opposition did nothing useful indeed, they were the ones who actually ASKED the USA to impose sanctions and plus, as MC Machado has many times said, asked for military invasion of Venezuela.
People will not soon forget that thse fascists, Machado, Capriles, Gauido, backed by Washington and the racist Venezuelan elites, have never ceased to try to create chaos and overthrow the government. In 2014 they were responsible for a series of virulent street violence that led to 43 deaths, 878 injured and millions in damages. In 2017 they continued with 121 deaths and 1,958 injured, including the horrendous death of a young man, Orlando Figuera, who because of his dark skin, “looked Chavista” and was burned alive on the street.
The government put all its efforts in diversifying the economy, bolstering the small and medium sized enterprises, opening new markets in the world for Venezuelan products, creating special Economic Zones for foreign and national investments
Maduro has made peace with and lured the domestic private sector. Their maximum representative FEDECAMARAS, has done an about face. From being the leaders of coups against the government and of economic sabotages, the private financial sector has finally realized that they too have been hurt by the sanctions as they cannot do business nor open accounts in international banks. As well Maduro has lured them with the Law of Safeguards for Investors, the Economic Zones, and the new world markets that the government has negotiated. It is significant that Machado/Gonzalez does not have the backing of the powerful FEDECAMARAS.
Remarkably, demonstrating that it is a lie that the country is polarized, it is how 11 opposition mayors who have renounced the opposition and joined the Maduro camp : all saying that it is Mauro who guarantees peace in the country.
Venezuela learned to feed itself: it became self-sufficient in food due to the great support for agricultures, and the rural Communal Councils and Communes became the ones to feed the nation. Venezuela no longer imports food.
SOLIDARITY so meticulously nurtured FOR 25 YEARS by the PSUV, came into its own with all the grassroots organizations with which they work with: helping in a host of ways to feed, tend and care for the population. The neighborhood networks of the PSUV, the urban communal councils, groups of all sorts, just jumped in to help in many ways. People began to trade, to barter, to help each other even without payments.
Example my niece’s apartment building: she needed nothing, people cooked for each other, bartered goods and services, the nearby people that lived in a more rural way, came by every week to sell or barter what they grew. And this happened all over the country in neighborhoods and city buildings.
Another of my elderly sisters, who lives alone, not only got the monthly food package delivered to her by the local neighborhood PSUV group, but they even offered her ready-made, cooked food, if she should need it. The government gave absolute priority to the bi-monthly food packages – and that is why there was no famine in the country.
As well, let us not forget the impetus of history. Venezuela’s glory is its history, one of rebellion against an empire. It is the nation that defeated the formidable Spanish Empire and liberated 5 other nations to boot. Our indigenous and black people have a long sterling history of many rebellions against slavery and servitude. History tells the people today to look towards that for strength, especially when those struggles that actually took place were successful in the end. That history, embedded in their national identity is beckoning the people of Venezuela to live up to it as it faces yet another murderous empire.
And finally, Maduro has had a triumphant tour through all corners of Venezuela where he has been greeted with exuberant expressions of support and affection and much happiness. He is seen as the leader who managed to bypass the Yankee sanctions, has brought a good measure of prosperity back, and, above all, has defended the homeland of Bolívar.
Without a doubt he will win the presidency handsomely on Sunday 28th of July 2024, the day of Chavez’ birthday.