Socialist Feminism in Venezuela

576 Feminist Studies 47, no. 3. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Ana Hernández Socialist Feminism in Venezuela: Revolution on Three Fronts Consider, as a starting point, Venezuelan scholar Jessie Blanco’s reflection on being a socialist feminist: Las mujeres feministas o luchadoras venezolanas pro-socialismo nos vemos gobernadas por la contradicción entre librar la batalla contra toda forma de opresión y discriminación por razones de género y por razones de clase social, contra el patriarcado y contra el capitalismo . En esta última nos podemos ver acompañadas por los camaradas de lucha pero en la lucha antipatriarcal aún nos encontramos muy solitarias, por eso tenemos una gran tarea histórica de engendrar y parir un socialismo no solo anticapitalista-antiimperialista sino sobre todo antipatriarcal.1 [Feminist women or Venezuelan pro-socialist women activists see ourselves ruled by the contradictions between waging the battle against all forms of oppression and discrimination based on gender and social class, against the patriarchy and against capitalism. In the latter, we can see ourselves accompanied by [male] comrades but in the antipatriarchal struggle we are still very solitary. Because of that we have the historic task of engendering and delivering a socialism that is not only anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist but, most of all, anti-patriarchal.] 1. Jessie Blanco, “Nuestro socialismo ¿feminista?,” Revista Venezolana de Estudios de la Mujer 12, no. 28 (June 2007). Ana Hernández 577 To be Venezuelan during the Bolivarian Revolution (referring to the reimagination initiated in 1999 of the Venezuelan Republic as a socialist nation), however, has also meant contending with an increasingly aggressive US and neoliberal world order. To be a Venezuelan socialist feminist, then, means to engage not only a patriarchal (and capitalist) social order from which the revolutionary state emerged, and the dialectic between the two, but also a forced and extraordinary struggle against an imperialism that imposes its search to have and control new markets, sources of raw materials, and more workers while also openly waging ongoing ideological and economic warfare. The Social Order In March 2020, around the time of International Women’s Day, Venezuelan feminists were grappling with President Nicolás Maduro’s spontaneous outburst during an event marking the Plan del Parto Humanizado y Lactancia Materna (a maternal healthcare initiative). He had exclaimed, “¡A parir, pues, a parir! Todas las mujeres a tener seis hijos, todas,” and continued, “las mujeres están hechas de parir.” [Give birth, then, give birth! All women, give birth to six children. Women are made to give birth.] The outcry was swift and focused, calling out the failures of the state to address the rates of violence against and poverty among women, both indicators of deeply rooted discrimination; the irresponsibility of Maduro’s statements in light of the economic crisis2 ; and the obvious devaluation and de-prioritization of women and girls’ education, independence , autonomy (including over sexuality and decisions whether or not to have children), and self-directed futures. Maduro’s statement is a blunt expression of Venezuela’s version of a contemporaneous, global gendered social order that creates the conditions for discrimination, oppression, and violence against women.3 Polit2 . The causes of the economic crisis in Venezuela, characterized by, for example , high rates of inflation and poverty, are many and complex. One cause, the unilateral economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies, whose cumulative effect constitutes economic warfare, is discussed in some detail below in the section titled “The Effects of Neoliberalism.” 3. Material cited and consulted does not define “woman” as such, however, feminist authors and organizations also identified as explicitly socialist or anti-capitalist articulate liberatory praxis at the intersections of sex, gender, and multiple forms of lived experiences of marginalization in work 578 Ana Hernández icization of this social order in twenty-first-century Venezuela, however, serves both to obscure long histories of sexism and feminism and to inflame international opposition to Venezuelan socialism that chooses to speak of the struggles of Venezuelan women, particularly poor Venezuelan women, as though they emerged with the Bolivarian Revolution. Feminist researchers in Venezuela attest to the following: although state-sponsored data on maternal mortality, femicide rates, and

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