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Opinion
VENEZUELA - The Fallacy of Famine
Ilka Oliva Corado
Thursday 11 August 2016, posted by
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I wonder what is happening with the common sense of the people, with the natural intelligence and the ability to reason. We’re letting ourselves to be influenced by what the world big media corporations are imposing upon us. Where is our power of resistance, of questioning and the right to doubt? Is it perhaps that we have allowed ourselves to be robed even of our instinct?
Who on earth would think that there may be famine in Venezuela because of the current government; when the international news channels, related to capital, show the images of dozens of good looking, well nourished, and somewhat overweight women, dressed in white -like the Ladies in White in Cuba, or the Latin American oligarchy seeking to overthrow progressive presidents- crossing the border with Colombia to buy Venezuelan products which were stolen in Venezuela and resold in Colombia by the mob who acting as part of the strategic plan of economic warfare against Venezuela is seeking to destabilize the current government.
There is necessity, of course, and there is poverty too. Ills of centuries can not be cured in months or in five years. Against that is working Maduro’s government, in eradicating it, despite the countless attacks of those who seek to impose a neoliberal system in the country, lashing out against his own people and sacrificing it for the benefit of the corporations.
Constantly, from different fronts, in unison they attack the health system, education, infrastructure, agriculture to bring down the progressive system implemented by Chavez. What for? So that the bank accounts of those seeking to put it at the feet of its haters -the US and global capital- becomes fatter. It is a simple rule of three. It can be understood in a flash, jumping rope or playing hopscotch. Why do we struggle to understand what’s so simple?
A person affected by hunger presents a visible clinical picture; none of those drooling in interviews to capitalist international media suffer that condition. Why the media that speaks of famine does not interview people who can prove with evidence that it doesn’t exist as a result of the current government?
Now, properly speaking of famine, there we have Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, and Colombia as examples of what governments do to their own people; the number of people who are dying for not having anything to eat, for not having a health system that treats then on time; for lacking a government with a preventive system that invest in the most urgent. Why does the world media turn a blind eye to those true humanitarian crises? Right here in the US there is hunger, and thousands of poor people die because they don’t have access to health care. They are dying of cold in the winter because they don’t have money to pay for heating. What does the corporate media say about it? Nothing, they are silent.
It is not so difficult to understand the reason why the stupefied masses believe what the news says specially if they have as their guiding light media outlets such as Univision, Telemundo, CNN in Spanish and El País that infest Latin America. And the crew of national media created by that gang of oligarch entrepreneurs and US embassies with the sole purpose of turning the minds and reasoning -as in higher education- into an amorphous mass easy to use by a few scoundrels who manipulate it.
“It is easy to speak from the United States, come along to live in Venezuela” is a familiar retort for those who support this kind of outside intervention, who have no identity and call for the end of Maduro dictatorship. What they don’t say is that they are people living in the comfort of the upper middle class, the bourgeoisie and the oligarchy which for years benefited from the system and are now seeing the people who were humiliated and marginalized having the opportunity to live in dignity, with access to education, which for a long time was denied to them, a plate of food on the table, shelter, access to health -in short an integral life.
These are the people with bank accounts abroad, luxuries, vacations abroad several times a year, who come to the US to celebrate July 4 as their own independence day, have three maids and two nannies, make them to wear uniform and, send them to eat leftovers to the patio in dishes that should not be mixed with those of the family. They are not paid a fair wage and are forced to work after work hours. This is the kind of people asking for a US intervention in the country. And if they happen to live in the United States will give their vote to Hillary Clinton so she can do it. And if they live in Venezuela or in another country in the world they will have employees who will be exploited and discriminated. These people gladly serve as carpet and put themselves under the orders of any foreigner who wants to destroy Venezuela.
These are the type of people who avoid saying anything about the starving children in La Guajira, Colombia, or that in Haiti the UN Blue Helmets rape children and women in exchange for a cookie, or avoid to denounce that the US Border Patrol go hunting for undocumented immigrants. These are the people who doesn’t denounce that the government of Peña Nieto is massacring its own people in a genocide that is bleeding the country. Or that Macri is returning Argentina to misery from where Nestor and Cristina pulled it out. Or that Temer is implementing the neoliberal system in Brazil and is cutting the social policies of benefit to the favelas for which both Lula and Dilma fought a great deal. Or that in Guatemala the military continue to rule causing the country to tremble in a wave of government violence disguised as ordinary violence.
People who avoid denouncing the paramilitaries in Colombia for the violence perpetrated against the needy. Or that more than 200 girls a day become pregnant by rape in Guatemala, or that because neoliberalism, the Central America Northern Triangle is suffering a perennial humanitarian crisis. The same is happening in Mexico where dozens of people disappear a day, and where the femicides as in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are our daily bread. The question that arises then is how many femicides Venezuela is experiencing a day.
In Venezuela they want to reintroduce that neoliberal system because it benefits them expressly and excludes the majority. These people because their colonized mind, their racist and classist character, and insensitivity, lack the ability to see the needs of others. These are the kind of people who is asking for the end of the Maduro government, which they call it a dictatorship, because it means an opportunity for the outcasts -the same they use as their servants. They want to return Venezuela back to the times of interference and ecocide, of police oppression, and of military violence. They want Venezuela to become once more a land of looting and torture -a land of vassals.
The next time they tell us that Venezuela is living under a dictatorship and that is urgent to liberate it, we should think how we live in our own countries and what kind of government we have. And very importantly, think of the source of information, how reliable can be certain journalists, artists and media communication related to capital, what’s at stake and why they care so much about persuading us. Why we are constantly bombarded with the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and why they don’t give the same importance to the real humanitarian crisis that other countries of the continent are living through, like the genocide that exists in Mexico which is important.
We just need a little common sense in order not to allow them to play with, or insult, our intelligence. We need only be humans. The next time we think about Venezuela, it is necessary that we do an exercise of reason and let us think for ourselves, it is our absolute right and it is our duty to defend it. And when we are told “Maduro is a dictator” think about what we have as presidents in our own countries and you’ll see that many will want to have as their president a dictator like Maduro. It’s not a joke.
@ilkaolivacorado
contacto[AT]cronicasdeunainquilina.com
Translated by Marvin Najarro
contacto[AT]cronicasdeunainquilina.com