Happy Mother’s Day to those struggling to raise families while living in poverty, under sanctions and war

Happy Mother’s Day! This is an important day when we stop to think of our own mothers and appreciate all their sacrifices and love. Today is also a day to reflect on the mothers of the world struggling to raise their families in poverty, under the horrors of war, or being sanctioned by the United States for living in a country that insists on being independent and free from the yoke of neoliberalism.

We are especially thinking about the Mothers in Venezuela who are living under a U.S. directed blockade that affects their children and most vulnerable members of their families.

The National Survey on Living Conditions, a yearly survey administered by three Venezuelan universities, reported that from 2017 to 2018, a year which saw the intensification of the sanctions, there was a 31 percent increase in general mortality which would imply more than 40,000 deaths.

The report claims: “More than 300,000 people were estimated to be at risk because of lack of access to medicines or treatment. This includes an estimated 80,000 people with HIV who have not had antiretroviral treatment since 2017, 16,000 people who need dialysis, 16,000 people with cancer, and 4 million with diabetes and hypertension, many of whom cannot obtain insulin or cardiovascular medicine.”

The United States government is the author of this inhumanity and, thanks to the complicit media, most people here in the U.S. know little about it.

Resumen LatinoAmericano, where this story first appeared, is a weekly newsletter that publishes information in solidarity with Latin America and the third world and can be reached at P.O. Box 22455, Oakland, CA 94609.