| Women support Chavez Letters Friday February 25, 2005 The Guardian It is appropriate for women to comment on plots against Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, since women have most to lose from his assassination (Bush is plotting to kill me, says Chavez, February 22). Behind the elected military man there is a women's revolution. Women are the majority, as users and service providers, in all government social programmes to tackle poverty - literacy, education, health, water, housing, and land rights. Venezuela's crime is its refusal to privatise oil and hand it over to US corporations. Behind this refusal are economic priorities diametrically opposed to those of the would-be US assassins. ["The economy must be at the service of human beings, not human beings at the service of the economy. And since 70% of those who live in conditions of poverty are women, economic change must start with women," explains Nora Castañeda head of Venezuela’s Women’s Development Bank*.] Women are least likely to accept defeat when loved ones are kidnapped, murdered and disappeared - we have been the hidden majority in human rights organisations everywhere. Women were the majority to come out demanding the return of Chavez, which reversed the 2002 coup. They have been the majority in the electoral battle units which ensured his victory in the 2004 referendum and regional elections that followed. Latin America will go up in flames if Chavez is killed. And Europe? Will it allow the US government to get away with preaching democracy while assassinating popular elected governments? Nina Lopez Global Women's Strike Cristina Navarrete Sara de Witt Latin American Group for Venezuela Maggie Ronayne Lecturer, National University of Ireland, Galway The sentence in [ ] was in the original letter but cut from the published version. * Nora Castañeda and Angelica Alvarez, Banmujer's promoter co-ordinator, will be speaking at the London School of Economics on Monday 14 March at 8pm and in a number of other cities as part of the European tour organised by the Global Women's Strike. |