Caracas Chronicles

Photo: EFE retrieved

“The feminist revolution simply does not exist, it’s a mere illusion,” Mrs. Kislinger, our own resident feminist guru, states in this amazing piece for El País. It’s always great when a female voice speaks out against the government’s propaganda and its use of women’s rights as disguise for totalitarianism.

The piece covers the heartbreaking story of M, a mother to be who decides to flee the country and head onto a nine-day trip to Argentina to give birth, because she can’t afford to have her child in a private clinic in Caracas, and there are no basic supplies at public facilities. M’s story is the story of hundreds of pregnant women who cross Venezuelan borders everyday to give birth elsewhere.

At Hospital Universitario Erasmo Meoz in Cúcuta, Colombia, medical attention to pregnant women increased 316% between 2016 and 2017. In Roraima, Brazil, childbirths by Venezuelan women represent 10% of total births.

After meticulous analysis, Mrs. Kislinger destroys the myth of the socialist, feminist government: “Humanized labor and obstetric violence are only one of the factors that play part on maternal mortality rates. But Nicolás Maduro has turned them into flags that hide inaction of a criminal, hypocrite regime.”   

It’s always great when a female voice speaks out against the government’s propaganda and its use of women’s rights as disguise for totalitarianism.

Truth is, this government is the absolute opposite of feminist. While Maduro claims he got rid of the macho values plaguing the healthcare system, the harsh reality is maternal mortality rates are higher than they were 20 years ago. Just between 2016 and 2017, deaths rose 65%.

The “revolution” is a huge setback for women’s rights and feminist accomplishments. With 90% shortage of birth control methods across the country, women have no reproductive rights. There’s no information and there aren’t reproductive health centers either. Women have no access to equal job opportunities, healthcare, information, protection from violence or supplies to decide over their bodies.

Venezuela’s teen pregnancy rates —the second highest in Latin America— are comparable to those of Sub-Saharan Africa. The regime has adopted a policy of massively incorporating poor women to its machinery in slums, turning them into instruments for social control.

“Feminism is equality and freedom so that women can be whatever they want to be, with no other limitations than our own capacities and talent,” is Mrs. Kislinger’s statement, hitting all the right notes. No woman can be free under the current condition Venezuela is in.

Maduro, the feminist, is just an act.