Today
in the corporate media, Venezuela’s economic problems are used to
paint the country as a failed state, in need of foreign-backed regime
change. To get the Bolivarian government’s side of the crisis, Abby
Martin interviews Venezuela’s Minister of Economic Planning,
Ricardo Menéndez. They discuss shortages, oil dependency, the role
of the US-backed opposition movement and more. The Empire Files
joined him in Cojedes, Venezuela, where he was speaking to mass
community meetings, organizing the population to fight against what
he calls an economic war.
At the time
where the 'civilized' West is dominated by the brutal neoliberalism
with inequality reaching unprecedented levels, social state and labor
rights systematically dismantled, Venezuela has chosen a different
path.
In the
following part of the interview, Ricardo Menéndez gives the numbers
proving that Venezuela rejected neoliberalism and started to create a
more fair society for its citizens. Chavez' heritage is still strong,
despite the economic war conducted by the US empire with the help of
the right-wing opposition:
The total
socially-invested resources in relation to the total income was gone
from 39% to 74%. This is a real fact. This is unobjectionable.
This
explains why a good part of our population, for instance, from the
working population, before the Revolution 900,000 had technical
training and university training. Today, the number has surpassed
four million (4,000,000). The number of people with college degrees
quadrupled.
The
number of students in primary education has increased from 500,000 to
2,800,000.
The
number of pensioners. Many of the liberal commentators will probably
say: 'Oh, this is an old person, this program is expensive, let's get
rid of it.' They are human beings. This is why we have increased the
number of pensions to over 3,200,000. That number went from 370,000
to 3,280,000, the total number of people with pensions.
We invite
other nations to compare those numbers. And we turned these numbers
midst the economic war.
The
quantity of infrastructure of schools has been enormously multiplied
from the point of view of the schools. At the moment we have more
than four million children included in the School Food Program. That
is to say they get all the calories they need at school. We went from
45% school enrollment rate to a 90% school enrollment rate midst the
economic war we face today.
We have
built 1,600,000 homes in the last four years. That growth, being this
is an investment in the economy. These houses are not given for
nothing, people pay for these houses, but they don't pay speculative
prices. For us, housing is not a commodity, housing is a social need
and this is why it needs to be satisfied.
We are
building a sustainable economic model. We are simply fairly
distributing among the population and making our economy more solid.
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