Caracas Chronicles

Photo: Gabriel Méndez

Starting today, Human Rights Watch is running the campaign #TodosConVenezuela (#EveryoneWithVenezuela), to bring awareness and solidarity to the ongoing situation in our country, and pressure regional governments to no longer take an ambiguous stance to what is quickly becoming a continental crisis.

HRW is working with Argentinean-born, Venezuelan-at-heart musician Ricardo Montaner to help spread the message across Latin America. For him, recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Latin Grammy, this “is not just my job or yours, it’s something we should all do. Tell your friends – let’s do this together.”

The campaign is also reaching out to Latin American leaders attending the Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru, demanding a clear position towards Nicolás Maduro and the continuous abuses his government has inflicted, and continues to inflict, on the Venezuelan people.

The summit is usually held every three years and reunites 35 heads of state from the Americas and the Caribbean. This year has been particularly contentious, with Peruvian president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigning mere weeks before the event, the increasingly strained relationship with the U.S. president and Maduro himself being uninvited to the summit.

It is not just my job or yours, it’s something we should all do. Tell your friends – let’s do this together.

Of the countries that will be attending, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Saint Lucia make up the Lima Group, an international body established to deal with the ongoing crisis in Venezuela. Meanwhile, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua have remained steadfast allies to the process started by Hugo Chávez, now headed by Nicolás Maduro.

Everyone else, from Dominican Republic to Uruguay, has chosen to pay lip service with a general concern without pointing fingers (or mere silence while many die and Venezuelans keep fleeing everywhere).

This is less than a week from the anniversary of an anti-government protest held on an emblematic date from the Venezuelan Independence, that was met with brutal repression.

To get involved with #TodosConVenezuela, please visit the Human Rights Watch website.