By Marea Socialista
A new 8th of March. Not only are the previous years women’s demands maintained, but are also deepened in the face of the offensive of a deeply patriarchal, capitalist, anti-worker and anti-rights government.
In Venezuela, this year is the anniversary of a decade of economic, social and political crisis in which the Maduro government, as falsely feminist as socialist, has placed on the back of the working class the most brutal austerity package, where women are left in conditions of absolute precariousness because of the elimination of the value of the minimum wage; to which is added the failure of basic services, imperialist sanctions, anti-worker austerity, elimination of labor rights and a reactionary political-religious offensive
Salary equal to the Basic Basket!
In recent months, government propaganda has focused on imposing the opinion that Venezuela has managed to get out of the crisis. Their main slogan is Venezuela is fixed! The truth is that this advertising narrative has a lot to be discussed.
The business sectors together with Maduro’s government have reached agreements that are based on the fact that the value of the minimum wage in Venezuela has been eliminated. These are years of lumpenproletarization, of economic displacements where the greatest weight of anti-worker politics is carried by women.
The deepening of feminization of poverty has been the sign that marks the government of Nicolás Maduro and the right wing “opposition” that promoted unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States.
Since the beginning of 2023, Venezuelan teachers, mostly of women, have staged massive protests demanding wages, labor rights and in defense of Public Education.
Three months after the protests, the government is trying to reach an agreement with Fedecámaras, the union bureaucracies with the ILO as an “intermediary” to continue the anti-worker policy.
So this 8M we are still demanding that our Salary has to be equal to the Basic Basket!
Against sexist and state violence!
The law against violence against women was passed in Venezuela in 2007. However, the lack of protection in which Venezuelan women find themselves in cases of violence is alarming.
Impunity, lack of attention and absence of numbers and statistics show that there are no policies to confront and eradicate gender-based violence. In recent months there have been many reports of women who have been savagely beaten by police officers, which gives it a component of state and police violence that must be confronted forcefully.
Thus, the law against gender violence has become useless in a country where no official figures of femicides are presented and we only have summaries from journalistic sources of the murders of women that occur in our country and that only in 2022 reached the figure of 23 femicides.
We demand the publishing of figures of femicides and cases of gender violence!
No to sexist violence! No to state-institutional violence!
No more femicides! Not One More Victim!
Legal, safe and free abortion
In the struggle to conquer sexual and reproductive rights, we have encountered an important difference with sectors of the feminist movement: demanding the decriminalization of abortion or legalization in a safe and free way.
From Juntas y a la Izquierda we have opposed the possibilist argument that maintains that decriminalization is the only possible thing to conquer. This reduction in this requirement is absolutely functional to an anti-right and deeply conservative patriarchal and macho government.
Decriminalization alone leaves working women and the most vulnerable sectors outside the ”Right”. Since decriminalizing contains in itself the fact of privatizing the right and commodifying it. Which means that the interruptions would be done in private centers that would deny access to working women.
It is up to us, then, to confront in the struggle feminist sectors that have been determined to lower the flag of legalization under a possibilist narrative and that detracted from the radicality of the movement at its best.
These actions have their threads in the interests of NGOs or government sectors. The result is that small niches continue to be promoted to the detriment of mobilization.
The proposal of revolutionary feminism to open public spaces for debate, discussion and information on comprehensive sexual education, free access to contraceptives and legalize abortion, to form a National Coordination for the legalization of abortion that agrees on an agenda of struggle in that direction.
Comprehensive sex education to decide, free contraceptives so as not to have an abortion, legal and free abortion so as not to die!
Reactionary counter-offensive against political-religious rights
In recent months, the alliance between the Maduro government and the evangelical church has meant a setback in the entire debate for women’s sexual and reproductive rights.
Many see this approach of the PSUV-Evangelical Church as a way to gain followers and votes in pre-electoral times. The resources and programs fill the pockets of those who administer the evangelical religion with the same speed in which, conversely, the pockets of workers and pensioners are emptying and places them well below the levels of extreme poverty.
Likewise, with the advances and deepening of the authoritarian character of the government, dozens of radio stations have been closed, newspapers are practically non-existent, television spaces are hegemonized by the State, private media act as satellite sources of the government, but the evangelical church has resources to restore its churches, enough money to promote its religion, an evangelical university, open radio space, in short, the entire construction of an alliance so that the resources that are denied to the working class go to the mercantilists of faith.
That is why lowering the slogans and demands at the moment is another blow to the weakened women’s movement in Venezuela and, therefore, to the workers and the oppressed sectors of society.
Separation of the Churches from the State!
Our proposal as Juntas y a la Izquierda
Since the formation of Juntas y a la Izquierda, the working women’s movement within Marea and the International Socialist League have given the fight to imprint a transformative force of struggle, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical to the movement.
That is why, in the face of every demand, our premise is not to give in, not to lower our demands and to fight thoroughly for our rights.
Our proposal is integral, we understand the urgent need to build a political alternative for dissident women, workers and oppressed social sectors to dispute Power.
8M 2023
Salary equal to the basic basket!
Support for teachers in the struggle in defense of their labor rights and public education!
Freedom to the imprisoned workers!
Comprehensive sexual education!
Free access to contraceptives!
Legal, safe and free abortion in public health centers!
Against sexist violence!