Preface

Eli Gómez Alcorta

Ministry of Women, Genders, and Diversity (Argentina)

When mandatory preventative social isolation was announced in our country, only a few weeks had passed since 8 March, the date when women’s and the LGBTQIA+ movements once again put a political agenda and series of demands on the table. This agenda is linked to eliminating gender-based violence and inequality, which confront us in every aspect of life.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought visibility and clarity to many of the things that feminist and socialist movements have been saying for some time. First of all, that we live in a system that has reached atrocious and unprecedented levels of inequality, exclusion, hate, and discrimination as if it were ‘normal’ or ‘natural’. It is not an exaggeration to say that if we don’t put an end to this ‘normalcy’, we will drive straight towards the destruction of the planet and of humanity. Second, on a global level, COVID-19 has also made clear the importance of the state, once again shedding light on the vitality of state intervention — not just any kind of intervention, but the intervention of a state that cares for people and health and that preserves life. The pandemic has also put care work into the spotlight like never before, shedding light on tasks that have historically been feminised, socially and economically devalued, and which have become increasingly precarious.

Existing inequalities remain apparent. It is not the same to experience quarantine for those who live in houses and for those who live in shacks; for those who have work and those who do not; for those who have access to adequate infrastructure such as roads, internet, and transportation, and those who do not; those who have running water and those who do not; for women and for men; for cis women and for trans women… This inequality — which is normalised as if it were a natural phenomenon and not a political one — corresponds directly to the severity of the impact of today’s health crisis felt by different sectors of society.

For women and the LGBTQIA+ community, the inequality and oppression associated with this ‘normalcy’ are reflected by the exacerbation of gender-based violence, the increase in poverty, and the increase and overload of care work.

The enormous challenges that we face today are how to craft a strategy that takes the current emergency into account and that transcends it, and how to make sure that the impact of the pandemic doesn’t leave us even poorer, more subjected to violence, and more exploited. At the same time, we must work towards structural transformations that disarm relationships of power that reproduce violence and inequality.

The role that we have as militants of popular feminism is central in the tasks that lie ahead of us. In our country, thousands of us have met for over thirty-four years[1] to discuss a political agenda for the women’s and feminist movement, sharing with each other and organising ourselves in various parts of the country. We have a history of labour organisation, of fighting for our rights and fighting for our work to be recognised. We see ourselves reflected in the struggle for human rights in our country, in the madres and abuelas[2] who are part of the history of our movement.

In the last few years, the women’s movement has gained resounding strength. For five years, the Ni Una Menos (‘Not One Less’) movement has erupted in the streets of Argentina, putting on the agenda the urgent need of public policies to prevent gender-based violence and to provide aid to those who are subjected to such violence, demanding no nos maten más: stop killing us. With the Cambiemos (‘Let’s Change’) party in office[3] and the advance of neoliberalism, these debates of the movement lined up behind a new agenda. When there is an economic crisis, there is also a feminisation of poverty and of neoliberal policies, which hit women and the LGBTQIA+ community even harder, further exacerbating inequality. But the movement responded with organised resistance. The women’s movement led the first national women’s strike in 2016 and the massive ‘green wave’ during the debate on abortion in 2018, making it clear that the women’s and the LGBTQIA+ movement is among the most dynamic actors of our time.

Standing on the shoulders of the struggles that came before us and the sisters of our Patria Grande (‘Great Homeland’)[4] and of the world, we must work to emerge from this crisis better off than we are now, to put everything up for debate, and to assure ourselves that this debate comes from a popular, progressive, and feminist consensus.

Introduction

In our series on CoronaShock, we have discussed how a virus that struck the world with such gripping force has swiftly laid bare today’s social, political, and economic issues; COVID-19 has exposed the crumbling bourgeois social order while shedding light on the humanising resistance in socialist parts of the world.

In the midst of this global health, political, economic, and social crisis, it is often women who bear the brunt of the cataclysmic shifts in daily life, from the increasing care work of children, the elderly, and the sick to skyrocketing incidences of gender-based violence, as women and LGBTQIA+ people are quarantined with their abusers. As countries across the world experience different stages of the pandemic, it looks like 2020 will be shaped by an attempt to adapt to and survive in this new reality.

For months now, several countries around the world have been experimenting with different methods and stages of physical distancing and shelter-in-place orders. Some have begun to loosen lockdown restrictions and reopen the economy, while others are trying to flatten the rising curve of new infections. Uncertainty looms over how long it will take to recover from these incalculable social and economic losses as new challenges emerge for societies at large.

In this study, we seek to understand the current health crisis more comprehensively, which means that we must also understand it as a social and economic crisis. First, we will address the social and labour impacts of the crisis and look at the consequences for workers who are on the frontline of the pandemic: healthcare and essential workers, informal workers, and the most vulnerable members of society. Second, we will address care work as well as the impact of the lockdown and physical distancing measures on those workers. Third, we will address the increase in patriarchal violence during the quarantine, providing a historical analysis and connecting the latest increase in violence with recent political events, especially in the Global South. At the end of this study, we present a list of people’s demands that have been put forward by women’s and feminist organisations across the world to build a more just, humane, and equal society as we face this global crisis.

I. The Social and Labour Impact of CoronaShock

We are living through the worst crisis in the history of capitalism. This current crisis was sparked by a small, invisible virus that nevertheless led to the ‘largest inadvertent general strike in modern history’ as it forced the planet into lockdown, in the words of Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. At least half of the global labour force is out of work and/or staying at home, which has had far-reaching effects on the world’s economic growth rates. Labour produces value, and when workers are forced into lockdown, no economy escapes the repercussions. In a globalised world, when supply chains and industrial plants are forced to shut down either part or all of their operations, the economic impact becomes catastrophic for all countries — especially those in the Global South.

The implementation of the neoliberal model has made it even more complex to tackle the challenges that we face today. As this model promotes tax reductions, privatisation, and outsourcing, states become more and more debilitated, cut their budgets, and reduce social investments. Austerity policies, a minimal state, and the weakening of labour unions and social organisations have compromised the social and public resources that are necessary to tackle the pandemic, whether in the realm of healthcare, social services, or services dedicated to assist the most vulnerable segments of society. Under these conditions, healthcare and social service systems have collapsed, lessening access to essential humanitarian aid.

Kruttika Susarla / Artists For Progressive Politics (India), May Day, 2020

The Consequences of Neoliberal Expropriation

Health is not only about the individual; it is a complex, socially determined process. This aspect is often left out of the discussion on public health, which is centred instead on biomedical views that reduce health issues, prevention strategies, and treatment processes to the individual level. The neoliberal project gravely and severely threatens health as a fundamental universal and social right. Human rights, universality, equity, coverage, primary healthcare, and other concerns have been co-opted and transformed by neoliberal ideology.

Neoliberal ideology, which increased its hegemony in Latin America in the 1990s following the Washington Consensus, has successfully promoted the idea that the problems faced by Latin America were caused by the allegedly oversized public sector, and that structural fiscal adjustments and the privatisation of state-run services were necessary to solve those issues. After decades of neoliberal transformations and structural adjustment policies that were marked by the implementation of new technologies and the expropriation of common resources and goods, market fundamentalism ultimately prevailed. This led to partial, short-term interventions at the cost of efficient, sustainable, long-term public policies. In the midst of this political and economic climate, and based on the document ‘Investing in Health’ (1993), the World Bank intervened in the area of public health by forging an agenda and a model for reforms that lean toward the privatisation and commodification of healthcare.

The fight against health crises such as the one that we are facing today has been severely stunted by the destruction, dismantling, dispossession, and trade-off of public healthcare systems. The scenes of desperation seen across the world of dead bodies left in the streets after local systems collapse — as in the case of Guayaquil, Ecuador, or the mass graves dug in many Latin American countries — expose the depth of neoliberal dispossession in the region. The Americas have the largest number of reported COVID-19 cases of any region in the world, followed by other countries in the Global South such as India.

The World Health Organisation estimates that healthcare workers account for 10 per cent of COVID-19 infections across the world. It is clear that being on the frontlines results in a greater risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and of being exposed to excessive stress, combined with other feelings of uncertainty. This reality predates the pandemic but has only become more dire, provoked by issues such as a shortage of personal protective equipment, long work hours, and the imminent risk of becoming unemployed or being forced to take informal jobs. In addition to this stress, women health workers continue to carry out care work in their private lives, often including housework and child and/or elder care.

What makes certain workers in the healthcare field — from cleaning staff to informal care workers — even more vulnerable is how invisible they are to the health sector and society at large, a reality rooted in historical and social factors intersecting class, gender, and race. This means that these workers hold less control over their working conditions and do not benefit from the same regulations and state protections, therefore facing greater health and security risks. As the precarity and fear of loss of income loom large, workers are less likely to organise and unionise, becoming more subjected to overexploitation, poor working conditions, and job insecurity.

The pandemic has clearly exposed the longstanding attack on healthcare and on the efforts to maintain free, public, quality service for the people, and has unveiled the gender gap among the most vulnerable health workers. We have no choice but to fight for a world where workers are acknowledged and gender discrimination is abolished — not just by cheering from our windows, but by winning tangible victories for the working class.

Women Healthcare Workers on the Frontlines

Women make up the majority of healthcare workers, especially in nursing. According to the United Nations (UN), some estimates say that women represent 67 per cent of the global healthcare workforce. Women also constitute the majority of workers in the cleaning industry and, notably, in social services (90 per cent). In the case of Brazil, 2 million of the 2.7 million people employed by the country’s public healthcare system (the Unified Health System, SUS), or 75.4 per cent, are women. In terms of racial demographics, 34 per cent of the SUS workforce is black; 8 per cent are black men, and 26 per cent are black women.

Despite the fact that women make up the majority of the workforce, the global healthcare industry is primarily led by men. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 69 per cent of global health organisations are headed by men; only 20 per cent have reached gender parity on their boards and 25 per cent have reached gender parity in senior management positions. The WHO also showed that, while women in this sector work longer hours, they are paid 11 per cent less than men.

In Argentina, the healthcare sector has historically been characterised by the feminisation of technical, operational, and cleaning work and the masculinisation of professional and leadership positions. Available data shows that 82 per cent of nursing undergraduates, nurse technicians, and nursing assistants are women. In recent decades, there has been a process of the ‘feminisation of the medical profession’, a shift from the historically male-dominated field. Today, women make up 70 per cent of healthcare professionals and the majority of medical students and graduates. However, only 40 per cent of leadership positions are held by women. In the private sector, the gender gap is even wider: only 13 per cent of management positions are held by women workers.

Despite the process of feminisation of these occupations, the share of women in leadership and management positions has not increased across healthcare institutions, whether in hospitals, local and national government health departments, professional associations, scientific organisations, or labour unions. This also has a profound impact on the wage gap, as women are paid 10 to 20 per cent less than men in the healthcare industry, according to a 2018 report by the United Nations Development Programme (Argentina).

Wages, Race, Gender, and the Invisible Side of Health Work

As in other fields, discrimination plays a major role in the management of healthcare workers — a reality that arises out of the patriarchal and neocolonial roots that shape the healthcare sector. The impact is evident in gaps in pay, educational level, and leadership positions between men and women and across racial lines. This reality underlines the need to implement active policies that would lead to gender and racial equality.

Around the world and in every industry, women are still paid 20 per cent less than men for doing the same work, and they are disproportionately employed in lower-paying jobs. Women are still regarded as less competent in the workplace, enjoy less prestige, are less likely to get promoted, and have less access to basic labour protections such as unionisation, safety, security, and decent wages. In Brazil, for example, there is a sevenfold gap between the lowest and highest-paying jobs in the public healthcare system. Overall, women are paid 75 per cent of what men make, and black women are paid as little as 60 per cent of what white men earn.

In addition to the disparity in pay between men and women, there is also a disparity in access to formal healthcare job opportunities. According to Women in Global Health, while female healthcare workers contribute to around US$3 trillion of the global GDP, almost half of that work goes unacknowledged or unpaid; much of this unpaid health work is carried out by women. In Argentina, while 77.1 per cent of healthcare workers have formal jobs and pay into pension schemes, the rate among male workers is higher, at 81.3 per cent. There is a 5.5 per cent gap between the number of men and women who are registered as medical professionals — such as doctors — and other medical workers such as nurses, social workers, and custodians, which in turn has implications for the wage discrepancies between men and women in the healthcare sector.

The role of women workers in popular economies[5] has also come into the limelight during the pandemic, especially in working-class areas. The health crisis has taken on a distinct shape in urban settlements and peripheries — where people do not have access to basic utility and public services, including water, electricity, and sanitation — creating a breeding ground for the virus to spread in precarious living conditions. It is the residents of these areas who most urgently need access to basic healthcare, information, and services during the pandemic.

In Argentina, women workers are on the frontline in working-class neighbourhoods, promoting community health and surveying and aiding older adults and individuals who live alone and who are at greater risk. In coordination with health centres, hospitals, and healthcare programmes, these women go from door to door testing residents and guiding individuals and families who have to self-quarantine. Not only are they managing the health crisis — they are also providing food supplies, essential goods, and overall care to their communities. But these community health workers — who often provide primary healthcare but are not registered in the healthcare system — are also generally unacknowledged and unpaid.

In South Africa, Community Health Workers (CHWs) — who have played a fundamental role on the frontline yet often have temporary contracts — staged a protest in July 2020, calling for full-time employment and greater recognition of their contributions in public health institutions. ‘How can we be relied on to screen and test communities for COVID-19, yet not be allowed to share our perspectives from the frontline at health forums?’ asked Noluthando Mhlongo, a CHW from KwaZulu-Natal.

Efforts to bring these realities and this essential work to the fore are now starting to shape the policy conversation, in particular in terms of advocating for professional training and to make sure they are paid. We must give credence to their demands to be paid and recognised for their work, and to be treated equally.

Informal Workers and Unemployment

Since the onset of the pandemic, most people have been faced with the stark reality of how to provide for themselves and their families as the economy shrinks further and further. This reality is particularly stark for informal and unemployed workers and for women. Before the pandemic, the informal economy was predominantly made up of women. Now, masses of women workers are losing their jobs and income in the midst of the pandemic.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), women are disproportionately employed in many of the industries most severely affected by the crisis. Nearly 510 million (40 per cent) of all women employed globally work in the four most affected industries: hotels, restaurants, retail, and manufacturing. Women are also predominantly employed in domestic work, healthcare, and social services, putting them at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and of losing their source of income if they become infected. They are also less likely to have access to social protections.

The ILO indicates that the crisis could cause an increase in relative poverty rates in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially among the number of informal workers. Informal employment is characterised by unstable jobs, low income, and no social protection to face health emergencies or situations such as unemployment and a lack of labour rights.

When the formal sector closes its doors to women, they are left with no other alternative but the informal sector (which women have historically been forced to occupy), in which they are subjected to precarious working conditions and low pay. Women are hit especially hard as city authorities clamp down on street vendors and other informal workers whose livelihoods depend on having access to public spaces. According to available data, it is estimated that around 30–40 per cent of the total trade within the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) is associated with informal cross-border traders. In South Africa, informal and transborder trading has come to a grinding halt across the country; thirty-five land border posts were shut down, as well as other posts with neighbouring countries, such as Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Scenes of women shutting down their fruit stands have become common in places such as the border town of Komatipoort in South Africa. These predominantly women workers are left with no income; all they are left with is the uncertainty of when they will be able to resume their work.

Even before the pandemic, more than 1.6 billion people — half of the global workforce — worked in the informal sector, constantly faced with the possibility of losing their livelihoods. As the United Nations estimates, informal workers around the world lost 60 per cent of their income in the first month of the pandemic. The ILO estimates that these figures are even worse in Latin America and the Caribbean, where informal workers’ income has been cut by 80 per cent in the same time frame. Fifty-nine percent of informal workers in the region are self-employed, while 31 per cent are employed by micro and small enterprises. In Brazil alone, more than 600,000 micro and small enterprises have been forced out of business since the pandemic began, and unemployment is expected to increase twofold or maybe even fourfold by the end of the year.

In India, according to the ILO Monitor, nearly 90 per cent of the workforce is based in the informal sector, making it the biggest workforce in the economy. The report also indicates that the roughly 400 million workers belonging to India’s informal sector will experience extreme poverty as the crisis intensifies. The precariousness of the informal sector disproportionately impacts women; 94 per cent of the women who are counted as being part of the workforce in India remain concentrated in the informal sector. Despite the huge number of workers hailing from India’s informal sector — which contributes significantly to the country’s GDP — their welfare has been tremendously neglected. Workers in India are facing additional challenges as labour laws are being weakened under the ruling government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including an attack on the eight-hour workday.

The ILO Monitor also highlights that ‘94 per cent of the world’s workers were living in countries with some sort of workplace closures’, many of whom have lost their jobs during the pandemic. Amidst this are mounting levels of anxiety and depression brought on by the pandemic and the increasingly precarious situation facing informal sector workers. On a global level, ‘More than half of young people surveyed had become vulnerable to anxiety or depression since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. One in six young people surveyed had stopped working, and 60 per cent of women and 53 per cent of men in this survey viewed their career prospects with uncertainty and fear. Young people who had discontinued working ran the highest risk of anxiety and depression’.

The emergence of a new kind of gig economy is further institutionalising precarity and informality. This new phenomenon, also referred to as the ‘uberisation’ of work, is the result of decades of changes in and the deterioration of working conditions and job security. This process maximised overexploitation by creating so-called ‘just-in-time’ labour, a system that requires workers to be constantly ready to report to work, but only calls them to work when there is demand. They are paid by the hour, or even the minute, for the time it takes to make a delivery or finish a temporary service, which externalises the cost of downtime to the workers rather than the company. This has had a disproportionate impact on young workers as well as poor women (mostly women of colour and/or migrants) and has become an unreliable source of employment for a tremendous number of people as an alternative to the shortage of jobs and lack of sources of income.

As these rates continue to increase, more and more people will be forced into poverty across the world, hitting women especially hard. They manage to scrape by with informal jobs, working in public spaces as street vendors, garbage collectors, recyclers, small-scale farmers, etc. Physical distancing and lockdown measures undermine the daily livelihoods of these women — who are often the heads of their household — as they cannot work from home, remotely, or online, and because many of them rely on busy streets, public marketplaces, and small businesses.

Paid Domestic Work in the Global South

The 67 million domestic workers across the world account for a key sector of the informal workforce. This sector of the workforce — 80 per cent of whom are women — accounts for the vast majority of the informal sector in much of the world. In addition to suffering from many of the same conditions as other informal workers — such as job insecurity and precarious conditions — domestic workers are often deprived of the scarce protections afforded to other precarious workers.

In India, most domestic workers are women and girls who have neither bargaining power nor any guarantee of employment. They do not have any of the social security benefits or legal protections that are guaranteed to other workers — even those in the informal sector — such as a minimum wage or allowances. High rates of illiteracy and a low level of formal education have made them even more vulnerable to horrendous working conditions, job insecurity, and low wages. The pandemic has exacerbated this vulnerability, as many have lost work or not been paid for their services. According to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the official count of domestic workers in India is 4.2 million. However, according to some studies, the actual number is likely to be between 50 to 90 million — over ten times the official count.

In Latin America, one-third of informal workers are domestic workers. In Brazil, women account for 97 per cent of domestic workers, earning 78.44 per cent of what men are paid for the same work — even though male domestic workers comprise only 1 per cent of all men who work outside the home. Among the approximately 7 million women domestic workers in the country, nearly 5 million have no job security (and are therefore subjected to informal employment) and are hired as day labourers. These informal domestic workers are paid even less, earning 60 per cent less than formally employed domestic workers.

In South Africa, the more than one million domestic workers, who are also disproportionately women, account for 8 per cent of the country’s workforce. Some domestic workers live in their employers’ homes, while others endure long commutes every day from the outskirts of large cities or neighbouring towns. While some have been granted paid leave and can stay at home with their families during the pandemic, most day labourers who carry out informal domestic work cannot survive if they practise physical distancing. They are faced with two options: following public safety protocols, staying home in the face of COVID-19, and facing possible starvation and eviction, or breaking the guidelines, increasing the risk of infection, and potentially securing a source of income.

As the economic crisis deepens, domestic workers are haunted by the uncertainty of whether or not they will still have a job after the quarantine. According to South African domestic workers’ unions, the sector is one of the most susceptible to cuts as middle-class families who employ them struggle to get by. Undocumented migrant women are especially vulnerable.

Though the governments of several countries announced economic relief plans, they were slow to introduce measures for the informal sector, postponed their implementation, and cut down the amount of aid that would be provided. Meanwhile, the rich have only been getting richer during the pandemic. A recent Oxfam report showed that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, the wealth accrued by the richest groups between March (the beginning of the pandemic) and June of this year is equivalent to one-third of the funds provided for economic stimulus packages implemented in the region. The fortune of Latin America’s 73 billionaires surged by US$48.2 billion in this time period, while massive numbers of people in the region lost their jobs and sources of income. Between March and late July, eight new billionaires emerged in the region — one every two weeks. Meanwhile, 40 million people are expected to lose their jobs and 52 million will be forced into poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2020.

The neoliberal state is not at the service of humanity. The capitalist logic disregards domestic workers, informal workers, and the unemployed; it promises them the opportunity of success while delivering only increased exploitation, lower pay, and more precarious lives. It cannot support them through hunger and misery. This is a world where all the ‘nobodies’ die, as Eduardo Galeano so eloquently wrote:

The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. (…)

Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.

The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.

Rising Social Vulnerability: Poverty, Evictions, and Forced Migration

The cruelty of the capitalist system and capitalist states has driven humanity to its limit in the era of COVID-19. Though there was hope that the poverty rate among women would fall by 2.7 per cent between 2019 and 2021, as a result of the pandemic the rate is now projected to increase by 9.1 per cent. This means that, by 2021, 96 million people will fall into extreme poverty, 47 million of them women and girls. This will increase the total number of women and girls in extreme poverty to 435 million people.

This is the result of policies adopted by capitalist states in this period, driven by a concern for profits rather than a concern for humanity. This direction stands in sharp contrast to the policies implemented by parts of the world with socialist governments, from Kerala (India) to Venezuela to Vietnam, as shown in a recent study by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Among the heartless policies implemented during this period are the evictions of individuals, families, and entire communities in the midst of the pandemic. Women and children have lost their homes, and, as a result, their livelihood, as was the case with families brutally evicted from an MST encampment in Brazil in August of this year. The evictions that are underway in South Africa, as well as the forced migration in India after the lockdown was announced with little notice or state support, are two examples of the reality faced by the majority of the world’s people in capitalist states in the midst of the pandemic.

In India, the first phase of the lockdown was announced on 23 March 2020 with merely four hours’ notice, lasting for twenty-one days. The lockdown, which would be continually extended, completely lacked a proper roadmap for implementation; the questions of how people could abide by the lockdown, where to go if they were left stranded, and how to feed themselves and meet their basic needs for survival with a sudden loss of income were left dangling in the air. As a result, India witnessed the biggest on-foot migration since the Great Partition, when the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan in 1947. While migration due to a lack of opportunities is not new, the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown have brought this hardship to light. According to the Economic Survey (2017), roughly 139 million seasonal or circular migrants in India perform essential work that allows the rest of the economy to run, from factories to office buildings.

Despite this, migrants are often excluded from various government schemes. Many are from rural areas but have moved to cities to find work, and they rely on rented rooms for lodging and lack savings and regular pay. A number of reports surfaced after the lockdown that portrayed the sufferings of the migrant workers who were left stranded in big metropolitan cities with no lodging, no food, and no income or savings to get home. Tens of thousands were forced to walk hundreds of kilometres without any transport facilities or other means to return to their villages and hometowns during the initial period of the lockdown.

Identifying the government’s failure to respond to the situation of migrant labourers, the Supreme Court intervened and issued its first order on 26 May, followed by an interim order on 28 May and the full order on 5 June. The orders emphasised the lapses where the government failed to provide adequate means to the stranded migrant workers and failed to facilitate their means of transport during the lockdown. As reported by PRS Legislative Research, the Supreme Court ordered the central and the state governments to take responsibility for the migrant crisis through a series of measures. This included providing free food to stranded migrants, mandating that the state receiving migrants pay for their transportation as soon as possible and within fifteen days of issuing the order on 9 June, and ensuring that migrant workers not pay train or bus fare.

Despite these orders, India’s situation continues to be grim as millions of working-class people suffer and struggle every day for their survival. The report ‘Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid the Pandemic’ documents the response of a number of migrant workers and sheds light on the problems that they face. One stranded migrant recounted that:

Bhagwam bharose chal rha hai kyunki sarkar se koi umeed hai nahi; woh bas ghosana kr deti hai, mara jata hai gareeb (‘We are left to fend for ourselves because we don’t have any expectations from the government. They just make sudden announcements; it is the poor who pay the price)’.

A similar situation has occurred in South Africa during the pandemic as evictions are carried out throughout the country. In all of the major cities across the country, municipal governments have evicted people living in shacks in contravention both of the country’s laws, which prohibit evictions carried out without a court order, and of the rules governing the lockdown, which include a moratorium on evictions. In Durban, Abahlali baseMjondolo, a movement of shack dwellers that is the largest popular movement to have emerged in the country since the end of apartheid, has been subjected to daily evictions during which there has been considerable state violence; at times, live ammunition has been fired at residents. The movement has more than 75,000 members in good standing in Durban as of this year, the majority of whom are women, and in many cases mothers, fighting to protect their homes.

Ezrena Marwan (Malaysia), Pisang Topeng, 2020

Abahlali’s women’s organisation has issued two statements elaborating the gendered impact of evictions: ‘Why this Suffering?’ and ‘Sekwanele! Enough is enough!’. In the first statement, the women declare that:

We are afraid of the coronavirus, but there is no virus worse than not having a place to stay. There is no virus worse than armed men attacking and destroying your home. There is no virus worse than armed men shooting at your family, including children and old people. There is no virus worse than having to sleep outside, where there is always the fear of rape. There is no virus worse than our children waking up at night crying and shouting in fear.

Together, these statements note that evictions place women at a very high risk of sexual assault when they have to sleep out in the open after evictions. Evictions cause tremendous stress and anxiety for children, the impact of which is largely managed by women, and some women have lost male partners due to such state violence.

Ordinary forms of organisation such as meetings, street protests, and the like are impossible during the shutdown. It is incredibly difficult to access legal support or to prepare for court actions for a number of reasons: it is difficult to travel, police stations have refused to certify documents and to sign affidavits, and so on. For women who no longer have any income during the shutdown, online organisation is also impossible. It is vitally important that organisations staffed by middle-class gender activists remain acutely aware of just how difficult it is for women who have lost their income during this crisis to organise under the lockdown.

Holding the line of the fragile gains made by grassroots women’s rights activists in previous waves of struggle will require focus and fortitude. It will also require that an incisive gender lens be cast on every move by the government and the state in the coming months.

The Impact of CoronaShock on LGBTQIA+ People

As we have discussed, the impact of COVID-19 is far from equal in communities across the globe. The worst effects of the virus have been felt by marginalised communities along the lines of class, race, sexual orientation, gender, and — notably — gender identity. The pre-existing conditions caused by transphobia, heavily compounded by class and race, put transgender people in the crosshairs of COVID-19. In this section, we will briefly outline some of major challenges facing the LGBTQIA+ and especially the transgender community across the world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first challenge in measuring the impact of COVID-19 on the transgender community is that data is largely unavailable. This is no accident: despite the objective impacts of discrimination, patriarchal violence, and marginalisation on the material lives of transgender people, they remain largely invisible. In the United States, California became one of the few states to collect data on the impact of the pandemic on the transgender community in July. In Brazil, federal data on the 12.9 million unemployed leaves out any mention of transgender people, as do government reports of the 53 per cent increase in homelessness in the city of São Paulo over the last four years (from 15.9 thousand people in 2015 compared to 42.3 thousand people in 2019). While it is impossible to fully quantify the impact of the pandemic on transgender people, support networks in the transgender community see this reality in their lives and on the streets, pointing to disproportionately high numbers of transgender people among the unemployed and unhoused.

This disparity starts early in life, as many LGBTQIA+ and especially transgender children are expelled from their homes by unsupportive families, resulting in a lower level of education and professional skills required by much of the formal sector — a factor further compounded by discrimination. Transgender people are often forced to stay in the closet or risk losing their jobs, leading to much higher levels of depression, anxiety, and suicide. One survey of 498 transgender people (452 transgender women and 46 transgender men) reported that, in Argentina, 40 per cent transgender men have attempted suicide at some point in their lives, and one-third of transgender women have attempted suicide, beginning on average at the age of 13 for transgender men and 16 for transgender women. Another survey in the United States among 27,715 transgender people found that 40 per cent of those surveyed had attempted suicide at some point in their lifetime — 8 times higher than the rate of the population as a whole. As many schools shut down and pivot to online learning, transgender children in unsupportive home environments remain trapped with their abusers.

In the era of COVID-19, that means that unhoused children and adults are at a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 and have a lower level of access to care if they contract the virus. Some accounts point out that, unlike many migrants, who scrambled to travel home in great numbers with scarce funds in the midst of tremendous adversity, transgender children and adults often have no home or family to travel to. Many transgender people are migrants themselves, as we have seen with the crisis at the United States-Mexico border, where migrants who survive the treacherous journey are kept in squalid, overcrowded detention centres.

In South Africa, COVID-19 has brought such complex ongoing struggles for sexual and gender minority refugees to light. Victor Chikalogwe, the gender and LGBTQIA+ refugee project coordinator at People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), notes that the severe and prolonged trauma that queer refugees experienced in their home countries is compounded once individuals attempt to settle in South Africa. In an article in New Frame, Chikalogwe notes that, ‘unlike many refugees who can rely on the support of their communities or compatriots, it’s not usually possible for sexual and gender minority refugees to do that. So without that support, it can be much harder for them’.

Unsurprisingly, given this reality, transgender people are disproportionately unhoused. According to one survey, in Buenos Aires (Argentina), 65 per cent of transgender people live in precarious, state-subsidised hotel rooms inhabited by people who cannot afford rent; 22.5 per cent rent their homes; and 6.6 per cent live in shelters or on the street — only 5.9 per cent own their own home. Discrimination plays a large role, as transgender people are often denied stable housing opportunities or faced with predatory landlordism and exorbitant fees. Florencia, a transgender woman, recounts that, ‘We don’t have proof of income, and we are faced with the stigma that transgender women will rent and then convert the place into a brothel, so they charge us double or triple what they charge others in rent’.

In Hyderabad (India), posters warned that talking to transgender people might expose them to contracting COVID-19. Based on nothing but transphobia and fear, such rumours have nevertheless had concrete consequences: as a result, The Hindu reports, ‘housing complexes ask[ed] transgenders to vacate their rented accommodation’.

Transgender people are also systematically excluded from the formal labour market and are most often left with the option of sex work or begging. For example, shortly after South Africa was placed under a national lockdown in March 2020, the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) announced on 6 May that sex workers, many of whom are transgender, were ‘the most marginalised of all workers because their profession is not recognised as work in South Africa’. According to Larissa Heüer, Academic Associate at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, sex workers’ illegal status renders them especially vulnerable to abuse by police, healthcare providers, and clients. Heüer highlighted how sex workers’ lack of access to justice creates poor and dangerous working conditions and furthers their continued stigmatisation within South African society. The loss of income precipitated by the pandemic only aggravated already worsening conditions and crises such as the loss of shelter and the inability to access food, medication, and other basic necessities.

In Argentina, 90 per cent of transgender women work or have worked as sex workers, and only one in ten transgender women and men have some form of retirement benefit. In the words of one Panamanian sex worker, Monica, who supports her family and two sisters with her income, ‘many transgender people work as sex workers here in the city. Is it our first option? No. But it is regular work and it means I can take care of my family’. Like street vendors, the impact of physical distancing and quarantine has essentially evaporated the income of sex workers and beggars.

Compounding this is the fact that many transgender people do not have basic identification documentation and, as Divya Trivedi of Frontline writes on the situation of the transgender community in India, they ‘therefore remain outside the coverage of government social security schemes like rations and pensions, making it impossible to survive in these difficult times of lockdown’. This lack of documentation also excludes them from basic aid programmes, such as the scarce financial and food assistance provided by the government, as well as government social security schemes such as pensions.

In Brazil, much of the LGBTQIA+ and in particular transgender community does not have the necessary identification documentation to access the little aid provided by the government. Transgender people are among the 40 per cent of the black population in Brazil that is unable to access the internet, providing a huge barrier to sign up for the aid to begin with.

Excluded from the formal workforce, expelled from family support networks, and denied government aid, transgender people are much more likely to suffer from pre-existing medical conditions and less likely to receive medical care should they fall ill. In Brazil, the average life expectancy for transgender people is 35-years-old, compared to the average of 76.3-years-old for the general population, according to the National Association of Transgender People (Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais).

According to the World Health Organisation, on a global level, transgender women are ‘around 49 times more likely to be living with HIV than other adults of reproductive age with an estimated worldwide HIV prevalence of 19%’. This disparity is even higher in some countries, where the HIV prevalence rate among transgender women is 80 times higher than the rate among the general adult population. Those who are HIV/AIDS positive may have a compromised immune system, putting them at a higher risk of dying from COVID-19, as one report notes.

In Brazil, 60 per cent of those killed by HIV/AIDS are black homosexual men. Following a common theme, the WHO notes that there is little data available on HIV rates among transgender men. Furthermore, many HIV-positive people do not disclose their status for fear of discrimination, putting formal estimates at risk of underreporting. The lack of access to stable jobs and health services contributes to such illnesses often going untreated or undertreated and being more likely to get pushed to the side as the treatment of COVID-19 cases takes priority.

Furthermore, historic barriers such as discrimination keep many transgender people from seeking medical care. One study in Argentina shows that, up until the recent passage of the Gender Identity Law (2012), seven out of ten transgender people relied on the public health system, and eight out of ten transgender people experienced discrimination based on their gender identity (though this number has decreased to three out of ten after the implementation of this law). Walking into a hospital to seek care often means being subjected to harassment, sneers, denial of care, and even physical and sexual abuse.

Exclusion from healthcare is further compounded by what some refer to as a ‘transgenocide’, officially sanctioned by the state and public policies. One recent example in the United States, where the Trump administration attempted to roll back non-discrimination protections for transgender people in healthcare in June, resulted in a record level of calls to transgender crisis lines, which had already skyrocketed by 40 per cent since the beginning of the pandemic. Though a judge halted Trump’s efforts in August, his administration has succeeded in rolling back other protections, and the constant threat of increased precariousness looms over the transgender community.

Some countries, on the other hand, have implemented public policies to protect the LGBTQIA+ community during the pandemic, in particular to address the precarious situation faced by many transgender people. In Argentina, the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, in coordination with organisations of civil society, has reinforced food assistance to LGBTQIA+ people by delivering food during the quarantine. Along the same lines, transgender people have been incorporated into social assistance programmes implemented by the national government during the pandemic. On 4 September, the federal government passed the Transgender Work Quota Law (Cupo Laboral Travesti Trans), which mandates that at least 1 per cent of the workforce of federal public administration must be made up of transgender people.

A recent law in Brazil shows the absolute callousness of the state towards the poor, working class, people of colour, the LGBTQIA+ community, and other marginalised groups by allowing cremation without a death certificate, giving a carte blanche for the state to burn and disappear unclaimed bodies. Even with the lack of data, we can imagine that transgender people who have been kicked out of their homes, disowned by their families, excluded from the job market, forced to work in precarious sectors — such as sex work — amidst the pandemic or to starve, are among these bodies. As Brazil becomes a global epicentre of COVID-19 infections and deaths, some have charged the state, under the leadership of Jair Bolsonaro, with genocide.

This section barely scratches the surface of the impacts of COVID-19 on the LGBTQIA+ community, much of which remains invisible and ignored. In the face of these issues, activists, grassroots community groups, and non-governmental organisations are calling on the government to decriminalise sex work, provide relief and food aid, provide emergency housing to unhoused transgender and queer people, and to support non-national and undocumented migrant communities in their efforts to access essential services for their survival. Whether their calls will be heeded remains to be seen.

 II. Care Work and CoronaShock

Care work is work. It is work that provides the material and psychological conditions to serve our basic needs and our human development as a society. It encompasses the continuous tasks carried out to maintain and care for the environment, the body, the being, and everything that is necessary to intertwine a complex network to support life and its reproduction. Among these tasks are caring for children, the elderly, and people with mental or physical illnesses/disabilities alongside household chores such as cooking, washing, and cleaning. While this work is essential for the reproduction of the labour force — a fundamental commodity for capital — it is usually underpaid or even unpaid, and almost always unacknowledged.

A recent Oxfam report (2020) shows that women are responsible for 75 per cent of the unpaid care work carried out across the world. That is more than 12.5 billion hours that women and girls around the planet spend doing this kind of work every year. According to the report, this is the equivalent of approximately US$10.8 trillion of unpaid care work per year that subsidises the global economy — three times the size of the global tech industry.

In rural communities and low-income countries, women dedicate up to 14 hours to unpaid care work every day — five times more than men. In South Africa, on average, women do three times more care work at home than men. In Brazil, 90 per cent of the care work is done in the household, 85 percent of which is carried out by women. In 2019, women dedicated on average 21.4 hours per week to care work, while men dedicated only 11 hours per week. Women who work outside the home dedicated on average 8.2 more hours per week to household chores than men who work outside the home.

The scale of care and housework has only increased during the pandemic. As quarantine and physical distancing measures are enforced, the necessity of care work has become increasingly visible as people are spending more time at home, caring not only for their house, but also for themselves, their families, loved ones, neighbours, and even their community. Following the recommended guidelines for cleaning in order to fight COVID-19 takes an extra effort: constantly cleaning and wiping down objects and surfaces and washing clothes upon coming home, caring for and becoming substitute teachers for children who are not going to school, caring for more people as they fall sick and stay at home (even when they are healthy), cooking most meals, tidying up as the house becomes more messy, and having restricted or no access to leisure and communal spaces such as churches, parks, bars, public squares, and businesses. All of this care work has increased exponentially, and the extra burden continues to fall on women.

A recent survey carried out by Gênero e Número and Sempreviva Organização Feminista

on the life and work of women in Brazil during the pandemic estimates that 50 per cent of Brazilian women have had to take on the responsibility of caring for someone since the outbreak; 72 per cent of these women say that this caregiving takes the form of intensive care and close monitoring, as is often the case with children, older adults, and people with severe disabilities or illnesses. Moreover, 40 per cent of women say that the pandemic, lockdown, and stay-at-home measures have put their own and their households’ livelihoods at risk; this is especially the case for black women, 55 per cent of whom reported that their and their households’ livelihoods are at risk. Meanwhile, 41 per cent of the women who have continued to work and get paid say that they are working longer hours without additional compensation during the quarantine.

Even women who are able to work from home face daunting challenges as their remote work and housework coalesce into a seemingly endless chain of overlapping tasks. The time to tidy up, clean, wash, and cook adds onto their other demands: mothers manage their children’s education at home, and the daughters of ill and/or elderly parents become their primary caregivers, taking on the roles that used to be shared with childcare centres, schools, and other institutions as the separation between home and work vanishes. Work that requires high focus, for example, does not go well with being constantly disturbed at home. After shelter-in-place measures were implemented in several parts of the world, editorial teams of scientific publications reported a sharp drop in paper submissions by women academics on a global level, while papers submitted by male academics increased by nearly 50 per cent.

Care work at home is not only continuous but it also requires other considerations. Caregivers have to consider the activities of the other people around them — not only those they care for, but also the noises, the distractions, and the demand for attention. The mental load of love and emotional care is also among the roles assigned to women in private life. Women continue to shoulder the same tasks and emotional labour they did before the pandemic — only now this work has become even more gruelling.

Home is not just a space of private relationships, but also of the production and reproduction of social behaviours, rules, and values, as well as of hierarchies and the sexual division of labour. When these rules mean that the care work done at home should be a woman’s job, this jeopardises their paid work, their economic autonomy, and their chances at professional improvement when compared to men.

Ezrena Marwan (Malaysia), Untitled, 2020

It is no coincidence that, globally, women make up the largest share of the informal sector, as they have to bear the additional responsibility of unpaid care and housework. According to an Oxfam report, around the world, approximately 42 per cent of women are unable to find a job because all of their time is dedicated to care and housework, while only 6 per cent of men face the same issue.

Additionally, the idea that women’s social role is historically related to care work has resulted in a kind of professional qualification in which working and lower-middle class women are channelled, as the Brazilian sociologist Heleieth Saffioti wrote in Women in Class Society, first published in 1967, ‘into second-rate, poorly paid jobs with no prospects for advancement’ that give them low prestige and little social acknowledgment (Saffioti, 1978, p. 64). Saffioti concludes that ‘Since a woman’s occupation is of secondary importance in her life, she has neither the motivation nor the time to concentrate effectively on improving her bargaining status on the labour market through union activities’ (Saffioti, 1978, p. 66).

In Brazil, the IBGE estimates that, between children and the elderly, there will be nearly 77 million dependents who will need care by 2050 (just over one-third of the country’s population). Society as a whole should be concerned about who will shoulder this responsibility, considering that the course of history could maintain women in that position. This same scenario is unfolding around the world.

Immediate solutions to the crisis are not difficult to find. As Oxfam points out, if the world’s richest 1 per cent paid an additional 0.5 per cent tax on their wealth for the next 10 years, that money could create 117 million jobs in education, health, and elder care. But — given the realities of class domination — there is no real chance of this happening in the foreseeable future. Instead, throughout the pandemic, capitalist states have granted astounding financial aid to big banks and corporations. Governments that have discussed incorporating a wealth tax, such as Argentina and Chile, have been met with strong resistance by the most powerful elite, which has so far prevented such a tax from being implemented.

From this we begin to understand what feminists like Alexandra Kollontai explained almost a century ago: ‘Capitalism has placed a crushing burden on woman’s shoulders: it has made her a wage-worker without having reduced her cares as housekeeper or mother.’

‘Women’s Work’ as a Social Construct

Despite efforts to convince us otherwise, the fact that women take on these responsibilities is not ‘natural’. The situation of women in class society is the result of the imposition of two different sets of values of a natural and social order. The natural order is based on biological factors, whereby (in order to control their labour) society assigns care work to women based on their proximity to motherhood, which arises from their ability to experience pregnancy and breastfeeding. But, as Saffioti stated in Women in Class Society, ‘Indeed, since the survival of society is contingent on the birth and rearing of new generations, it should bear at least part of the cost of motherhood, or find satisfactory solutions to the occupational problems that maternity creates for women’ (Saffioti 1978, p. 59).

In the 1970s, a global feminist social movement emerged along these lines promoting the Wages for Housework campaign, which also advocated for the right to equal pay for equal work and parental leave. Created in Europe, it spread across the United States, Italy, England, and other countries in Europe and in the Global South, spearheaded by Selma James, Silvia Federici, Leopoldina Fortunati, and others. The campaign also condemned the sexual division of labour and the process of assigning more importance and a certain hierarchy to different tasks, which devalues reproductive care work. Despite the fact that it is key for the production and reproduction of human life, reproductive work has long been seen as unproductive and has been devalued and unrecognised; as a result, it has also been excluded from remuneration. In a society in which money is the medium of all interactions, women’s access to certain goods and services vastly decreases and their power is systematically undermined. As long as their place is in domestic work, which often remains unpaid, women will be economically subordinated to men.

Echoing Friedrich Engels’ analysis in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Angela Davis expanded on this point, writing in Women, Race and Class that this hierarchisation of labour came alongside the development of capitalism and private property:

In advanced capitalist societies … the service-oriented domestic labour of housewives, who can seldom produce tangible evidence of their work, diminishes the social status of women in general. When all is said and done, the housewife, according to bourgeois ideology, is, quite simply, her husband’s lifelong servant.

The engrained and structural subordination of women, then, is part and parcel of the capitalist mode of production and the bottomless greed of the capitalist, who seeks to subsidise his profits and the cost of production with unpaid reproductive labour — labour that is predominantly carried out by women.

The sexual division of labour is a social construct within the general division of labour, in which certain tasks have historically been delegated differently between men and women. Under capitalism, this division is indisputably unequal, as certain roles are regarded as primarily masculine (in the political, religious, and military realms, for example) while others are set apart as feminine (roles related to reproduction, service work, and caring for the household and family unit). In order to maintain control over this unequal organisation of the workforce, the tasks performed by men are granted more value in terms of prestige and pay. Therefore, the sexual division of labour is based on two organising principles. First, the distinction between what constitutes ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’, and, second, the hierarchy that attributes more value to ‘men’s work’. That structure upholds gender inequality and the overexploitation and oppression of women through their work and role in society.

As a result of the sexual division embedded in the social logic of labour, house and care work are continuously undervalued and rendered invisible. This has not only proved useful to capitalism, as it allows this work to remain almost unquestionably unpaid, but it also feeds off of the psychological effects on women, who view themselves as having a social fate that is deeply determined by their biological sex, and by what society allows or demands them to do based on that.

CoronaShock opens an opportunity to spark a global debate about the essential nature of care work. Care work has long remained invisible to those who benefit from its status as unpaid labour and who are responsible for perpetuating this exploitative structure: the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has always been unwilling to question the sexual division of labour and to foster a social, collective responsibility for reproductive work. The bourgeoisie reaps billions of dollars from unpaid reproductive work every year and absolves the state from taking the responsibility for care work; as a class, the bourgeoisie moves a political agenda to privatise services and cut social investments, placing the burden of those roles on households — and on women.

The women who most acutely feel the impact of this burden are women of colour, poor women, and immigrant women. They clean, wash, nurture, and care for everyone and everything, and are responsible for the roles that allow for the social reproduction of humanity. Underappreciating this work serves a purpose for capital. The war waged by the 1 per cent against the 99 per cent seems to have no limits — but its invisibility does.

The 99% versus the 1%

According to the ILO, most of the world’s workers — around 93 per cent — live in countries with some level of economic shutdown and job loss. Countries in the Global South are experiencing the worst cuts. It is the masses who have to leave their homes to work and seek — or desperately try to maintain — some source of income because they do not have savings to weather the quarantine during the pandemic without the intervention of the state. The failure of the state to provide basic income or emergency aid across much of the world — with important exceptions in regions such as Cuba, Venezuela, Kerala (India), and Vietnam — has exposed the neoliberal system’s concern for profit over humanity’s concern for life.

The richest sectors of society generally have not granted paid leave to their employees during the pandemic, even when the WHO recommended physical distancing practices and quarantine. Many workers, such as domestic workers and service employees, have had to continue to care for the homes, bodies, health, and well-being of the rich. While workers are forced to put themselves at risk, it is their employers who are able to stay safe at home per WHO recommendations.

A number of other factors put the poor and working class at an increased risk of falling ill and dying: among them, a lack of access to quality healthcare and a higher probability of pre-existing risk factors due to the structural attack on poor and working class communities — from asthma induced by coal plants and pollution kept away from wealthier areas by ‘Not In My Backyard’ movements to chronic issues caused by precarious working conditions. It is not a coincidence that the first person to die from COVID-19 in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was a 63-year-old female domestic worker. Her employer had recently returned from a trip to Italy and neglected to tell her about the possibility of being infected. While the employer self-quarantined, she refused to allow the domestic worker to go home; the worker continued to work in the employer’s apartment in one of the country’s most expensive neighbourhoods. The employer had COVID-19 and infected this worker, who eventually died.

Leyla Tonak (USA), Lungs I, 2020

There have been reports of many other cases of domestic workers whose employers did not grant them leave, even when they had to face long commutes in public transportation and overcrowded buses and trains between home and work. There are also cases of people who knew they were infected and required their domestic workers to continue to work. While employers clearly perceived the need to keep a clean house and the need for domestic and care work, the value of those workers’ lives remained invisible to them. This provides a snapshot of social inequality: some remain steadfast that their lives are worth more than the lives of the predominantly women workers who provide services to them, a logic that is supported and encouraged by capitalist societies.

The COVID-19 crisis has created an opening to give new meaning to both the value of labour and the value of the lives of the women who care for the reproduction and maintenance of our society. We must recognise and remunerate this invisible labour, understanding that all people have the right to be cared for. This means advancing access to care that is outside family networks and outside the commodity form; this kind of care must cease to be the privilege of a few and instead become a human right.

Some countries and regions have pushed forward the creation of federal systems of care that attempt to respond to these concerns, as is the case in Uruguay and Argentina. In Argentina, the creation of the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity is a step forward in the discussion about the organisation of care work. Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry has been working on a Federal Care Map (Mapa Federal de Cuidados) in order to plan care-related public policies, which seek to reverse the gender inequality that is hidden in the current social organisation of care.

III. The Rise of Patriarchal Violence^[6] Under CoronaShock

Before the pandemic, we already faced a global reality in which, on average, 137 women were killed every day by someone in their family. UN Women estimates that one in five women between the ages of 15 and 49 around the world has experienced some type of physical or sexual assault by their partner. It is not a coincidence that, by the end of the twentieth century, fighting violence against women became the biggest demand for many women’s movements across the world. As impossible as it may seem, patriarchal violence has become significantly worse since the initiation of shelter-in-place measures. Over the last few years, we have also seen an increase in transfemicides across the world, propelled forward by a rise of hate speech and anti-human rights ideology.

While rates of gender-based violence are known to be high, especially in the Global South, it is challenging to find accurate statistics. However, we do know that, during times of emergencies and lockdowns, these rates go up, as has been the case during the current state of shelter-in-place orders due to COVID-19. Unemployment, overcrowding, remote work, an overburden of reproductive work, increasing impoverishment, a crisis of one’s ability to maintain one’s economic livelihood, and drug and alcohol abuse are some of the elements that exacerbate gender-based violence — even more so during the pandemic. Women’s groups warn that lockdown conditions may be used by abusers to control the behaviour of their partners, blocking their access to security and support.

Feminist activists and political authorities who know this history anticipated the gendered impacts of physical distancing and quarantine measures enforced around the world, warning early on that these measures could hit women particularly hard. Gender-based violence flourishes on the social isolation of victims. A key aspect that impacts women who face domestic violence is that they often become deprived of all social and professional bonds, growing apart from family, friends, and colleagues, which in turn increases their dependence on their abusers. For this reason, supporting women who are experiencing gender-based violence must include the important task of rebuilding a support network that can help them emotionally so that they can regain economic, emotional, cognitive, and housing autonomy.

In Brazil — a country where one woman was assaulted every 15 seconds on average before the pandemic — femicide rates (the killing of women because of their gender) have surged in 2020 compared to previous years. The state of São Paulo, for example, reported a 46.2 per cent rise from March 2019 to March 2020, while femicide rates increased by 300 per cent in the state of Rio Grande do Norte and by 400 per cent in the state of Mato Grosso. Police responses to domestic abuse calls increased by 44 per cent in the state of São Paulo alone, and the number of abusers caught red-handed in the state increased by 51 per cent. These numbers only reflect the cases that are reported to the police — many other cases go unreported and are not included in these statistics. In Argentina, approximately one femicide was reported every day in the first month of shelter-in-place orders, 66 per cent of which took place in the victim’s home.

In South Africa, prior to the pandemic, femicide rates were five times the global average. However, the country does not produce statistics that appropriately reflect upon analyses or data of gender-based violence, supposedly because it is difficult to gather reliable data on the issue. From April 2018 to March 2019, the South African police reported 179,683 contact crimes against women (‘in which the victims themselves are the targets of violence’), such as murder, attempted murder, sexual offences, bodily harm, and ‘common assault’. Of these, 82,728 were cases of common assault and 54,142 were assault with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm. In that year, 2,771 women were murdered; there were 3,445 attempted murders (though the police do not provide data on motives for these murders); and there were 36,597 recorded cases of sexual offences against women. This is a broad crime category that includes rape, attempted rape, sexual assault, and contact sexual offences.

During the first week that South Africa went into lockdown, between 27 and 31 March 2020, the police recorded 2,300 calls about gender-based violence. In a webinar on 20 April 2020, Sonke Gender Justice, a South African-based NGO that supports women, reported that these figures do not reveal the full extent of violence against women and children, as most women who are abused cannot go out and file reports in the current situation.

In fact, we have seen a surge in cases of violence against women across the world since the beginning of the pandemic. This is why the Argentinian slogan el femicidio no se toma cuarentena (‘femicide does not respect the quarantine’) clearly points out how an already grave reality is becoming worse. As one solution to this reality, in France — which experienced a 32 per cent spike in cases of domestic violence in the first few days of the lockdown — the government started to put victims of domestic violence in hotel rooms and announced the establishment of counselling centres to support women who are experiencing domestic abuse.

Women’s movements have been creating new ways to fight these realities. In Argentina, on 30 March, the second week of quarantine, the local feminist movement organised a ruidazo federal (‘federal noise action’) against patriarchal violence after a double femicide took place. Faced with the restriction of movement, community and neighbourhood networks have taken on a significant role in creating support systems. As a result, governments have been forced to acknowledge and continue services and networks dedicated to protecting women, which are essential for caring for and maintaining human life. During the first phase of the quarantine, Latin American countries such as Brazil and Argentina pushed policies to tackle the effects of the lockdown on gender-based violence. The first measures were focused on developing and improving apps and hotlines to support victims of gender-based violence. During the first month and a half of the quarantine in Argentina, the demand for gender-based violence hotlines increased throughout various jurisdictions by 40 per cent on average as compared with the month prior to the declaration of quarantine. As the quarantine has been extended, public resources have been strengthened with new strategies of accompaniment, hotlines, and coordination between the jurisdictions of Nación, the Province of Buenos Aires, and the capital city, Buenos Aires. During the second phase of the quarantine, the feminist support to women in situations of violence was declared essential work in Argentina, allowing support groups to continue their work to help victims.

In Brazil, initiatives by social movements and organisations have gained traction, such as the Mapa do Acolhimento or ‘shelter map’, a service that helps women who need psychological or legal counselling to connect with volunteer psychologists and lawyers who provide online or in-person services. The World March of Women has held conversations and solidarity actions across the country, publishing a list of concrete demands for the state and society to tackle the pandemic and women’s issues (which contributed to the People’s Feminist Demands at the end of this paper).

However, it is worth noting that women’s and feminist organisations have been denouncing not only the increase in cases of patriarchal violence during quarantine, but also the increasing brutality of instances of abuse. As Rita Segato points out, this happens as neofascist conceptions about female subordination overshadow more enlightened ideas about women. These views have been spreading on a large scale under Brazil’s Bolsonaro, India’s Modi, and so many other countries with conservative right-wing administrations.

Inspired by a neofascist ideology, the rhetoric adopted by heads of government who vocally promote hatred and encourage misogynistic attitudes inevitably legitimises perpetrators of violence against women. Violence is then seen as an ordinary or normal act that authorities will not prevent or fight; quite the opposite — it is actually encouraged. This contributes significantly to increasing incidences of violence: fighting and eliminating people is the rule of barbarism, which is supported by hate speech, the failure to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions, and the failure to criminalise these attitudes.

Kruttika Susarla (India), Untitled, first published by Smashboard for the Sexual Violence vs. Capital Punishment series, 2020

The deepening of hate speech and sexist ideology is accompanied by an increase in homophobic and transphobic rhetoric, which has notable repercussions on the violation of the LGBTQIA+ population’s rights. During the pandemic, the transgender community has been subjected to discrimination, harassment, abuse, and persecution by the police and security forces. In many countries, policies pushed forward by political authorities have been characterised by the absence of a lack of inclusiveness towards the transgender community, reinforcing a sexist binary.

In many countries, restrictions on mobility were implemented based on biological sex, alternating days when men and women were able to leave their homes, a policy that excludes non-binary and transgender people. The implementation of these policies has often been left up to the discretion of security forces to decide if a transgender woman is allowed to go out with other women, or with men — according to the sex by birth — or stuck in the middle and forbidden from leaving at all. In the midst of this uncertainty, police and other security forces have often perpetrated violence against transgender and non-binary people, and store vendors have denied them service — either because of flagrant transphobia, or because of a fear of being fined or punished by authorities for not abiding by state orders.

In some cases, the pandemic has been used to increase harassment and attacks of LGBTQIA+ organisations and activists, at times forcing transgender people to hide or deny their identity. As a result of this reality, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a call in April for the states of the Americas to guarantee the rights, equality, and non-discrimination of LGBTQIA+ people in measures issued to contain the pandemic.

The social consequences of political attitudes cannot be disregarded or separated from the increasing rates of patriarchal violence during quarantine in several countries around the world. Amid this scenario, whether in Brazil, India, or elsewhere, life becomes impossible. It is not simply about a pandemic that exacerbates historical and social problems, but about a society that is deteriorating to the point of triggering its own inefficiency and decline. It is time to get rid of hierarchies and miseries inherited from the past and build possible — and necessary — utopias for the future.

IV. The People’s Feminist Demands

CoronaShock is exposing the structural crisis of capitalism, demonstrating the urgent need to overcome longstanding problems that have become even more dire in recent times, such as the social, economic, political, and ideological crises that predate the pandemic.

While the global bourgeoisie is unable to solve basic problems such as unemployment, hunger, patriarchal violence, and the underappreciation, precarity, and invisibility of social reproduction work, the movements of the working class offer their own solutions. Women in political organisations and social movements around the world have been organising to present their demands and proposals to overcome all of these crises in the midst of the global health crisis. With organised working-class women and women of colour spearheading this change, we know not just that another world is possible, but that a socialist, feminist, anti-racist world in which the wellbeing of humankind and of our planet is placed before the endless accumulation of profit is not only possible, but necessary. Below, we will introduce a list of urgent demands from feminist organisations from Brazil to India to South Africa who are fighting to create such a world.

1. Ensure that the measures being demanded by movements in the face of CoronaShock are made available to all people, with special attention to those who are the most systematically excluded from such aid: women, informal workers, migrants, people of colour, lower castes, and LGBTQIA+ people. These general demands, which have been outlined in earlier texts at more length, include:
2. 1. Cancel the payment of utility bills such as electricity, water, internet bills, and rent as long as the pandemic lasts; guarantee that debt will not accrue for non-payment.
   2. Distribute personal hygiene supplies (including masks and hand sanitiser) on a massive level.
   3. Freeze prices for essential cleaning supplies, hygiene products and healthy food products, such as grains, vegetables, and meat, according to each country’s cultural specificities.
   4. Ensure the right to paid leave to all working people; guarantee no loss of income or rights.
   5. Provide economic assistance — of at least a minimum wage — for informal workers and self-employed workers.
   6.  Place private healthcare facilities and structures to fight COVID-19 under public control; expand the capacity of the healthcare system to serve the people.
   7. Take emergency action to solve the water supply crisis in each region and guarantee public access.

2. Ensure full transparency of information and data about the evolution of the pandemic and about every country’s government measures (broken down by sex, age, income, sexual orientation, gender identity, and place/territory, whenever possible).
3. Include women from working-class women’s movements in leadership positions for decision-making processes regarding responses to and recovery from the crises that we face today.
4. Demand that governments launch campaigns to encourage men and women to share household chores equally so that women do not have to shoulder the brunt of the burden of housework.
5. Increase long-term public investment for the public good in areas such as social protection, pensions, universal public healthcare, free public childcare, and other actions that affect women directly.
6. Aid and financial stimulus packages implemented by governments must include social protection measures that address women’s special circumstances and acknowledge the care economy.
7. Provide a guaranteed minimum income for women and households that carry out the many different types of essential care work (including domestic/housework), especially for those who have dependents.
8. Provide food baskets for families with children where childcare centres/schools are closed.
9. Demand essential health interventions to protect the health of all people, with special attention towards marginalised, poor, and transgender people, migrants, people of colour, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Such services include mental health services, HIV/AIDS medications, cancer treatment, etc.
10. Ensure that marginalised communities — including those without access to official documentation, in particular the poor and working-class transgender people and migrants — receive aid services; ensure the expedient delivery of emergency relief such as a Universal Basic Income, food distribution, and other services demanded in this list.
11. Demand that the government protect LGBTQIA+ and all marginalised people from discrimination in the midst of policies aimed at fighting COVID-19, such as policies that only allow for men or women to leave their home on certain days.
12. Decriminalise sex work, provide relief and food aid, provide emergency housing to unhoused transgender and queer people, and support non-national and undocumented migrant communities in their efforts to access essential services for their survival.
13. Guarantee readily available hotlines and other publicly accessible communication channels and services for all victims of patriarchal violence as essential services.
14. Demand that governments take on the responsibility for advertising these hotline numbers and publicly accessible communication channels through automated services, text messages, banners on buses, billboards, and displays in public spaces, newspaper ads, etc., so that those in need know about the service.
15. Demand that governments offer counselling facilities for women, marginalised people, the poor, LGBTQIA+ people, migrants, people of colour, the elderly, and people with disabilities in vulnerable situations and/or victims of violence.
16. Demand that governments offer safe, comfortable alternative shelter during the pandemic, such as hotel rooms and vacant buildings, to women struggling with domestic violence and provide necessary protection and security in these locations; ensure the continuation of these services in the long-term to meet the pre-existing need for such services.
17. Build networks of solidarity and collective support that respect physical distancing practices to fight against individualism and violence; create women’s rights groups and local information campaigns about emergency plans for women and children suffering from domestic violence; and create teams to care for children in neighbourhoods with greater social vulnerability.
18. Mobilise healthcare workers to help the community, support women workers in popular economies, and make sure that they are given proper pay and protective equipment.

Kruttika Susarla (India) / AIDWA, International Women’s Day, 2020

[1] Translator’s note: The Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres (‘National Women’s Gathering’) has met annually since 1986.

[2] Translator’s note: In 1977, madres (mothers) and abuelas (grandmothers) of those disappeared by the civic-military dictatorship began protesting in the Plaza de Mayo (Buenos Aires). From 1976-1983, the dictatorship disappeared 30,000 people, many of whom had been targeted for political activity, or simply for being poor. The madres and abuelas continue their protests today, demanding — among other things — to know the whereabouts of their disappeared love ones, many of whom remain missing.

[3] Translator’s note: The Cambiemos Party — led by former President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) — pushed forward a number of neoliberal reforms such as funding cuts to the Ministry of Health and Work and attacks on workers’ rights; deepened the economic crisis in the country; and took on unprecedented loans from the International Monetary Fund.

[4] Translator’s note: Patria Grande refers both to the idea of a ‘Great Homeland’ and to a political front, Frente Patria Grande, a broad coalition of grassroots organisations and people’s movements in Argentina.

[5] The term ‘popular economy’ refers to strategies of economic subsistence that poor workers who are excluded from the formal labour market develop to guarantee the reproduction of their lives, such as working as street vendors, collecting recycling and trash, urban farming, etc.

^[6] It is important to distinguish patriarchal violence from other terms such as domestic violence, which too often inadvertently ignores power and male dominance inherent in such violence, as well as the fact that violence against women is not only exerted in the household. In Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks writes that ‘[f]or too long the term domestic violence has been used as a “soft” term which suggests it emerges in an intimate context that is private and somehow less threatening, less brutal, than the violence that takes place outside the home’. Rather, patriarchal violence is a more expanded definition that is linked to the inherent inequality of the capitalist system, and which manifests in many forms, including domestic and physical gender-based violence, but also symbolic and cultural violence. Patriarchal violence ‘continually reminds the listener that violence in the home is connected to sexism and sexist thinking, to male domination’, bell hooks writes.

Adapted graphic from People’s Medical Publishing House, China, 1977.

CoronaShock is a term that refers to how a virus struck the world with such gripping force; it refers to how the social order in the bourgeois state crumbled, while the social order in the socialist parts of the world appeared more resilient.

This is the third in a multiple-part series of studies on CoronaShock. It is based on research by Ana Maldonado (Frente Francisco de Miranda, Venezuela), Manolo de los Santos (researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), Subin Dennis (researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), and Vijay Prashad (director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research).

Friedrich Engels once said: ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism’. What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean to our lofty European civilisation? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilisation. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilisation and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.

Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy, 1915.

Ở nhà là yêu nước! (‘To stay at home is to love your country!’), Vietnam, 2020.
Hiep Le Duc

In late December 2019, the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in central China’s Hubei Province detected cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause. In the first few days of January 2020, Chinese authorities were regularly informing the World Health Organisation (WHO) as well as other major countries and regions with close ties to China’s mainland, such as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan about the outbreak. On 5 January, the WHO released its first briefing on a ‘pneumonia of unknown cause’ in Wuhan. Little was known about the virus, neither how to properly understand it nor whether transmission could occur between humans. The genome sequence for the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was published by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) on 12 January. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a leading Chinese pulmonologist who is advising the Chinese government on this pandemic, confirmed human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus on 20 January.

As soon as it was clear that this virus could be transmitted between humans, the Chinese authorities acted. Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, was shut down, the scientific establishment in China – and its collaborators around the world – went to work to understand the virus and the disease (COVID-19), and medical personnel in China rushed to be trained and to help break the chain of the infection. Inside Wuhan, the neighbourhood committees, which include members of a range of other associations, Communist Party cadres, and volunteers of all kinds, hastened to assist with temperature checks, food and medicine distribution, and assistance in hospitals. After ten weeks in lockdown, Wuhan opened once more on 8 April. On 15 May, the authorities started to test all the residents of Wuhan once again in order to protect public health and to resume social and economic activities (China shared the results of this test to aid with studies on the feasibility of the herd immunity theory).

On 30 January, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). From its Geneva headquarters, the WHO sent up a flare which effectively read: a highly contagious virus has been detected that requires stringent measures of tests, physical distance, and aggressive sanitation.

At this point, in the aftermath of 20 January, a gulf opened between the capitalist states and the socialist states. Our analysis shows four main areas of differentiation between the socialist and capitalist approach to the virus. The socialist approach is based on:

1. Science-based government action
2. Public sector production of essential materials
3. Public action mobilised to facilitate social life
4. Internationalism

In the capitalist states (such as the United States, Brazil, and India), the governments have instead operated in a hallucinatory manner, pretending that the virus is either not real or not contagious and hoping that some extraneous factor would protect their citizens from its dangers. For-profit sector firms have failed to provide the necessary equipment, while public action has been hard to galvanise in atomised societies that lack the habit of organisation and struggle. Finally, to cover up their incompetence, the ruling political class in these states has resorted to stigmatisation and jingoism, using – in this case – the lethal combination of racism and anti-communism to blame China.

In this report, we look at three countries (Cuba, Venezuela, and Vietnam) as well as one state (Kerala, India) to investigate how these socialist parts of the world have been able to handle the virus more effectively.

Cuba

On 17 January, Cuban media reported the detection of a mysterious pneumonia in China that, at that point, had killed two people and infected forty-one. When more information came in about the novel coronavirus, the government began to disseminate the WHO’s reports. The Cuban media provided comprehensive coverage of the decisions made in China to implement lockdowns and other measures to break the chain of the infection. On 28 February, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, President of Cuba, spoke by phone with Xi Jinping, President of China. During the call, Díaz-Canel expressed the firm support and solidarity of the Cuban people, their government, and the Communist Party with China’s struggle against the virus. Cuba offered to help in any way it could to assist the Chinese people. BioCubaFarma, a public sector firm, increased its production of Interferon Alpha 2B and, as of 24 February, had provided more than 150,000 double dose vials of the drug to China.

On 28 January, Dr. José Ángel Portal Miranda, head of the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), convened a national-level meeting on the novel coronavirus. Medical vigilance was to be the priority, which is why the government created a National Working Group (NWG) to lead the struggle. MINSAP began to train all public health personnel – over 95,000 doctors and 84,000 nurses – to diagnose and treat cases of COVID-19. A public campaign began to call for vigilance of symptoms and heightened hygiene. Media platforms shared this information, but so did mass organizations such as the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs), and the Federation of University Students (FEU). Dr. Francisco Durán García, the national director of epidemiology of MINSAP, made the first official statement that day. He calmly explained that the administration had designed a plan ‘similar to the plan we developed when the Ebola epidemic hit several countries’. Dr. Carmelo Trujillo Machado, national head of the MINSAP International Health Control Program, said that officials would be vigilant at ports of entry for travellers with any known symptoms of COVID-19.

The National Working Group authorised the immediate purchase of protective gear, medical equipment, and reactive agents. The production of thirty critical medical products became a priority. Agencies in Cuba began a renewed emphasis on the research and development of candidate vaccines and anti-viral treatments to be shared with China. By April, the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) started the first clinical trials on a vaccine that could boost the immune system. Dr. Gerardo E. Guillén Nieto, the director of Biomedical Research at the China-Cuba Centre for Biotechnological Innovation (CCBJIC) in Hunan, China said that his team was examining whether the innate immune system could be activated and, if activated, would produce a specific immunity against the virus. There are no specific vaccines for this disease, but Cuba, he says, ‘has products that already exist’.

On 10 March, four tourists who had arrived from Lombardy (Italy) showed symptoms of COVID-19. When they tested positive for COVID-19, they were shifted to the Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), which has a long history of combatting epidemics. The IPK, along with regional hospitals in Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba, was designated as the primary site for testing patients suspected of having COVID-19. Each of these hospitals has the capacity to test 1,000 patients per day. The government decided to place all travellers arriving in Cuba under fourteen days of medical observation.

On 17 March, 28,000 students from Cuba’s thirteen medical universities joined a campaign to visit every home in the country. The students went to check each person for symptoms, and if they found someone with symptoms, they referred them to their community’s family doctor. This doctor would then make a decision about whether or not to test the person. Within a week, the medical students had visited six million Cubans – half of the island’s population. With this approach, close to 40,000 people were tested for COVID-19 by 26 April. In the province of Villa Clara, the students visited 250,000 people, leading to the detection of 2,687 cases with respiratory symptoms, including five potential COVID-19 cases most likely to test positive. Thousands more foreign medical students on scholarships provided by Cuba joined this campaign. Ishaira Nieto Rosas, a third year student from Puerto Rico, said that for foreign students these visits were voluntary, but ‘in these moments you realise that our work is very important and that the population is aware of that. It does not matter how many doors we have to knock on, or how many times we have to shout good morning. We do this because the country needs us, and we do it with great pride’.

On 20 March, President Díaz-Canel, along with seven members of Cuba’s Council of Ministers, went on television to report on the steps taken thus far and to outline further measures. ‘We have a responsibility to protect human lives and the entire social fabric’, he said, ‘with serenity, realism, and objectivity. There can be neither panic nor overconfidence’. A science-based attitude defined Cuba’s response. By that date, 21 people had tested positive for COVID-19 and another 716 people were under observation in hospitals. The government put forward several measures:

1. Cuban nationals who returned home from abroad would be placed under a fourteen-day quarantine.
2. Sixty thousand tourists would leave the country; the entry of travellers would be heavily regulated, which would impact tourism, one of Cuba’s key sources of revenue.
3. Physical distancing was mandated.
4. People vulnerable to the virus and those who were not working in key industries were mandated to self-quarantine at home.
5. The Ministry of Internal Commerce suspended all public activities. Food stores and farmers’ markets would be kept open under the strictest health regulations. Restaurants could remain open but only at 50% capacity.
6. Minister of Labour and Social Security Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera said that ‘No one will be left helpless’, and measures were implemented to ensure this. Tax payments for self-employed private sector workers were suspended. For the first month of the quarantine, furloughed workers received 100% of their salaries; after that, workers were promised 60% of their salaries. Workers in the private sector were told that they would receive the equivalent of the national minimum wage.
7. To stave off the possibility of hunger, the Cuban authorities expanded the existing rationing system in order to guarantee each family equitable access to food and basic sanitation supplies during the pandemic. Ration cards were used for distribution through 12,767 neighbourhood stores; these cards offer a basic food basket that includes cooking oil, sugar, rice, and beans, and was expanded to include eggs, potatoes, vegetables, an extra pound of chicken per person, and extra soap, toothpaste, and bleach. Despite its limitations, the ration cards and neighbourhood stores have served 3,809,000 families and limited price gouging.

By 6 April, the number of confirmed patients rose to 396, with 1,752 hospitalised. The government announced additional measures based on the national plan. These included suspending all non-essential economic activities, sit-down service in restaurants (only pick-ups and deliveries allowed), urban public transportation, and postponing payment for water, electricity, and gas.

The backbone of Cuba’s response to COVID-19, as in other socialist countries, has been public action. The Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs), founded in 1960 under the threat of a possible US invasion, have an estimated 8 million members (out of a population of 11.34 million). The committees are organised on a block-by-block basis; they mobilise the people to help the most vulnerable in each community, to participate in health campaigns, and to provide food and shelter during the hurricane season. In the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, CDR members like Juana Guerra, a university professor and a member of the Federation of Cuban Women, made 16,000 masks. Members of the Federation of University Students volunteer in different cities, helping to clean and cook in isolation centres, delivering supplies to families under quarantine, and working in designated support centres preparing food for medical personnel and vulnerable families. Inspired by the battles of the past, many students proudly say that COVID-19 has become their Bay of Pigs (#EsteEsMiGiron).

Internationalism is at the core of the revolutionary Cuban ethos. In 2005, Cuba founded the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to provide emergency health assistance around the world; since then, it has sent twenty-five contingents abroad, aiding 3.5 million people in twenty-three countries. This brigade is now at the centre of the fight against COVID-19, responding to requests to send Cuban health workers to countries around the world. On 15 March, the first contingent of 130 epidemiologists and other medical specialists left for Venezuela. Since then, thirty-three more contingents made up of 3,337 health workers have gone to work in twenty-seven countries in Europe, Africa, and Latin America (the contingents range from two doctors in Grenada to 217 health workers in South Africa). Many of these countries have come under increased pressure from the US government to deny Cuba’s help. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has led the charge, accusing the island of profiting from the pandemic. Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla responded to the US smear campaign, saying, ‘What right does the Secretary of State have to put pressure on sovereign governments to deprive their nation[s] of medical care?’

As the world entered into CoronaShock, the British cruise ship MS Braemar was left stranded in the Caribbean carrying 682 passengers, including five with COVID-19, desperately looking for a port in which to dock. While other countries refused to allow the ship to dock, Cuba – at significant risk – opened its doors and organised the disembarkment and return home of its passengers, stating that ‘These times call for solidarity, understanding health as a human right and strengthening international cooperation in order to address our common challenges; i.e., values that are inherent to the humanist practice of the Cuban Revolution and people’.

Cuba’s revolutionary system has given it the strength and ability to survive in the face of blockades and pandemics, integrating workers, peasants, scientists, mass organisations, and civil defence systems with a party and a government that puts human life at the centre of its attention.

We sent a doctor to Cuba; the doctor transformed into millions, 2020.
#CubaSavesLives

Vietnam

On 16 January, before it was clear that the new virus could be transmitted between humans, Vietnam’s Ministry of Health informed the other government agencies and the public about the dangerous virus and urged immediate action. Five days later, on 21 January, the Ministry of Health gave detailed instructions to hospitals and clinics about how to tackle the virus. On 24 January, Deputy Health Minister Đỗ Xuân Tuyên said that inspections would take place at all border posts; this was an important decision, since Vietnam shares a 1,400-kilometre border with China, and this border is only a ten-hour bus ride from Wuhan. On 30 January, the Vietnamese government – led by Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc – established a national steering committee on epidemic prevention. Two days later, on 1 February, Prime Minister Nguyễn declared what was effectively a national emergency.

The Communist Party of Vietnam very early on offered a motto: ‘fighting the epidemic is like fighting against the enemy’. But this fight was to be conducted with a scientific attitude. Testing began at the border points, and epidemic control teams began to test the population and carry out contact tracing if an infected person was identified. The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology was able to create a test very quickly, which was used extensively in the country; over 100 laboratories across the country performed real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, which allowed for much faster COVID-19 results at the rate of 27,000 samples per day. On 10 March, the government released the NCOVI mobile application to facilitate contact tracing. Rather than lock down the entire population, the epidemic teams studied the population and isolated and treated those with symptoms, those who tested positive for COVID-19, and anyone who they came into contact with; any region with particularly high numbers was quarantined.

Based on the scientific knowledge available, the Vietnamese authorities followed a four-tier approach to isolation:

1. Tier one: anyone with a confirmed diagnosis is isolated in a health facility (in these cases, self-quarantine is not permitted).
2. Tier two: anyone with close contact with the confirmed cases must be tested and go into a government-run quarantine centre.
3. Tier three: anyone who has been in close contact with the people in tier two must self-isolate at home.
4. Tier four: if there is a particularly bad outbreak in a village or a hospital, the entire village and hospital must go into lockdown.

This multi-tier isolation system helped the authorities break the chain of infection. But the government remained vigilant. On 30 March, soon after the Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi – which had been essential in the fight to break the chain – experienced a flare of cases, the government announced a national pandemic.

The Ministry of Health posted a music video to explain the concept of physical distancing and hand washing; this video went viral on Tik Tok, where young people created a dance to go with it. The message was broadcast within days. Telecommunications firms – including private companies – sent three billion messages about COVID-19 to those with mobile phones. Masks were mandated in public and alcohol-based hand sanitisers were distributed and made available for sale everywhere. Schools and religious sites were all immediately closed.

The government directed public sector units to produce necessary equipment, including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and ventilators, as well as hand sanitizer and medicines. There was enough industrial capacity that could be directed to produce these goods without any concerns about price gouging, since these are public sector enterprises. On 8 April, the government of Vietnam sent 450,000 units of PPE to the United States in an act of solidarity. This is the same country which was bombed beyond belief by the United States government, which used such harsh chemical weapons that the people remain scarred by. Vietnam’s agriculture will not recover for generations.

The private sector followed suit, and so did philanthropists who set up ‘Rice ATMs’ to distribute food to those who had lost their incomes. The government set up food kitchens to feed any one in need.

Vietnam, with a population of 100 million, has had no fatalities from COVID-19 as of early July.

Cảm ơn Việt Nam! (‘Thank you, Vietnam!’), Vietnam, 2020.
Hiep Le Duc

Venezuela

On 26 February, Brazilian authorities reported the first case of coronavirus; this case was also the first to be reported in Latin America. Two days later, on 28 February, the Venezuelan government created the Presidential Commission for the Prevention and Control of Coronavirus (weeks before the first case was reported in the country on 13 March). Strikingly, during the same time frame, the United States government decided to deepen its hybrid war against Venezuela – despite the highly contagious nature of the coronavirus, and despite the warnings of the WHO.

Before the pandemic, Venezuela had already been under severe US sanctions, putting pressure on Venezuela’s economy as a whole and sabotaging Venezuela’s public health system. In 2018, the Venezuelan Pharmaceutical Federation reported 85% shortages of essential medicines. Another study from 2018 showed that 300,000 people are at risk of dying because they lack access to key medicines for HIV, kidney disease, cancer, and diabetes as a result of the sanctions. Venezuela turned to its international allies – China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia – to provide necessary equipment and support. Squeezed by the hostile US-driven sanctions regime and by a blockade by US warships, the Venezuelan government and its allies demonstrated nerves of steel in their decision to break the US embargo.

On 13 March, Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez confirmed the first positive cases of COVID-19: a forty-one-year-old woman returning from travels in the European Union and the United States and a fifty-two-year-old man returning from Spain. The previous day, the government had suspended flights – effective 15 March – from Europe, Colombia, Panama, and the Dominican Republic and began checking for symptoms at airports and seaports. Because of the cases of the travellers returning from Spain, mandatory quarantines were ordered for all passengers who arrived on Iberia flight 6673 on 5 and 8 March.

The government took the WHO advisories seriously and banned all public gatherings, suspended all schools, ordered the use of face masks on public transportation, and, on 15 March called for a total quarantine in certain states of the country (La Guaira, Miranda, Zulia, Apure, Táchira and Cojedes, as well as in the city of Caracas). Within two days, the government confirmed sixteen new cases, and so it extended the quarantine to the entire nation for one month. The use of face masks in public was declared compulsory.

It was imperative, again based on the advice of the WHO, to collect relevant medical and epidemiological information about the population. On 16 March, the government announced that the Sistema Patria (‘System of the Homeland’) – the national card system established by President Nicolás Maduro in 2016 to facilitate access to social programs and electronic payments– would be used as an instrument in the fight against the disease. In 2017, Maduro’s administration established this web-based platform as a way to reach the most vulnerable parts of the population in the fight against sanctions-induced problems. Through a voluntary registration process, over eighteen million of Venezuela’s roughly twenty-eight million residents enrolled in the system, making it the most comprehensive way both to collect information and to deliver goods and services to the people. Over the years, the Sistema Patria has become the basis for organising the food supply, allocating monetary assistance, and experimenting with digital currency. In the case of the struggle against COVID-19, the system has been used to deliver cash assistance to the people as well as to do a proper inventory of the people’s medical needs.

On 26 March, the US Department of Justice accused the Venezuelan leadership of drug trafficking and put a bounty on President Nicolás Maduro, Minister of Industry and National Production for Venezuela Tareck El Aissami, Minister of Defence Vladimir Padrino López, and President of the National Constituent Assembly Diosdado Cabello Rondón, among others. On that same day, the government announced a COVID-19 survey and screening plan using Sistema Patria as its basis. The plan, focused on house-to-house visits of those who are the most vulnerable to the disease, is an effective mechanism in the prevention and early detection of new cases. At the same time, it creates employment for healthcare workers in the midst of an economic crisis. The plan was developed by Venezuelan and Cuban medical teams who worked closely in their outreach with the various organisations of the people such as communal councils, the Local Committees for Supply and Production, health committees, and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Venezuela has carried out 929,599 tests to diagnose cases of COVID-19, equivalent to 30,987 tests per million inhabitants.

On 24 March, President Maduro reiterated the importance of taking preventative measures against the virus and tightened the lockdown in the Capital Region. This announcement came in light of seven new detected cases of COVID-19, bringing the country’s total at that time to ninety-one cases. This government response required at least the bolstering of three kinds of institutions: 1) Forty-six hospitals dedicated to COVID-19 patients; 2) comprehensive diagnostic centres, which were established in 2005 as local health clinics as a project of the Venezuelan and Cuban governments; 3) private health centres. Based on the latest science, the government circulated epidemiological and clinical protocols. Medications such as the Cuban anti-viral drug Interferon Alpha 2B and hydroxychloroquine were introduced to assist in the treatment of infected patients, even in private medical centres. Twelve thousand medical and nursing students were mobilised to assist in the treatment of the patients.

Venezuelans – familiar with the harsh conditions imposed on them by the sanctions – had already built relief institutions and political resilience. One such important institution is the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP), which were created in 2016 as a method to deliver food to at least seven million households who were otherwise in danger of hunger. The point of the system is not only to meet the basic nutritional needs of the people, but also to strengthen local community organisations, since these are the bodies that are in touch with the people and that deliver food. Each CLAP box has similar supplies (flour, grains, rice, milk, oil, and canned meat); while the market price of the goods in the box is roughly $11, the cost to the public is less than a penny.

The CLAP programme has been under targeted attack by the United States government, which has sought to sanction overseas suppliers of food products that enter the CLAP relief boxes. This has not deterred the Venezuelan government, which – despite manifold problems – remains committed to the relief of the people. In 2016, Aristóbulo Istúriz, vice president of Venezuela, said that the programme is a ‘political instrument to defend the revolution’; this attitude remains intact. On 19 March, the government created a supplementary plan for CLAP, using the programme as a way to enhance relief at a time of the lockdown.

On 24 March, the government further extended the CLAP programme, and – despite the economic uncertainty posed by the sanctions – its distribution is guaranteed until at least August 2020. There has been a long-term plan to move from the import of food – including what goes in the CLAP boxes – to becoming more self-sufficient in food production. The government announced further investment to strengthen the Centralised Public Procurement Plan, which manages state purchases of social goods, and it encouraged the creation of ways to bring food from the countryside into cities. Since schools are closed, the School Feeding Plan, which feeds a large percentage of Venezuela’s children, has now been transformed into part of an emergency plan; drawing on a bedrock of public action, food that is cooked in community kitchens is being distributed to the students’ homes. The People to People Socialist Plan of Production, Distribution and Consumption enhances this School Feeding Plan with fruits and vegetables from productive communes and a participatory and pedagogical methodology of work. The city of Caracas has established a home delivery programme, ‘I Buy from Home’, with regulated prices of subsidised food and hired workers whose daily income had vanished as delivery persons.

A range of policies was announced on 23 March to secure the already fragile economy. Using the Sistema Patria, the government provided cash assistance to the vulnerable and to small and medium businesses directly in order for them to continue paying their workers. The government suspended lease and rent payments and prohibited evictions. It called upon real estate associations to find a way to manage the long-term crisis of insolvency. All principal and interest payments on loans were suspended for six months, and fines and interest on fines were also abolished. The government ordered banks to reclassify the measurement of credit in this period in order to protect people’s credit histories. Since communications are central – especially during the quarantine – the government prohibited the suspension of cable television services and telephone services (including the Internet) for six months. To enable the import of key goods to sustain the country, the government offered tax exemptions and invested in strategic sectors such as food production and distribution, pharmaceutical production and distribution, and the production of hygiene and sanitary equipment and goods.

In addition to such measures by the state, a key part of the Venezuelan response has been the centrality of public action. The theory of the Bolivarian Revolution is to decentralise institutional power into people power, to build institutions of the people that self-manage localities and that collectivise production. Crucial to carrying out this process are the communes, their communal councils, and the CLAP committees, as well as people’s movements. Women play a central role in the leadership of these entities as part of the Social Missions; it is women who cook every single day, who work preparing infusions and making masks, and who provide assistance to families who do not have the means to school their children at home.

The response to the pandemic is met not only by the state, but by these decentralised bodies, which are highly motivated and political. As the hybrid war against Venezuela deepens, the people’s participation not only provides vital support to counteract the impact crisis, but also strengthens their own determination to defend their Bolivarian Revolution against the attack on the currency, hyperinflation, and the armed aggression against the country intensifies popular resistance. The reaction to the pandemic – both by the state and through organised public action – has weaved relief efforts to meet people’s immediate material needs together with the political fortitude and resilience required to resist the US-led hybrid war.

Over the first six weeks of the lockdown, roughly 49,628 people returned to Venezuela, mainly from Colombia and Brazil. After being tested at the borders, they went into mandatory quarantine in government-run centres. Despite these thorough measures, many of the COVID-19 cases are imported – 77.8% of the thirty-four cases of COVID-19 identified between 9 and 27 May alone were brought in from outside of the country.

Knowing these risks, the government sent planes to Santiago (Chile), Lima (Peru), and Quito (Ecuador) to bring Venezuelans home at no cost, regardless of their political affiliations, and despite the additional obstacles to managing the crisis and accessing adequate medical supplies that are posed by US sanctions. Venezuela has faced hostility from the governments of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil, but this has not impacted how the government of Venezuela helped Venezuelans who migrated to those countries. Furthermore, when the Colombian Ministry of Health said that its only machine to diagnose COVID-19 had broken, President Maduro offered to send two machines, which had come from China, to Colombia – despite the fact that Colombia houses anti-Venezuelan military forces on the border and has consistently acted as a ‘doormat’ for US intervention in the country. The Venezuelan government tried to coordinate this offer through the Pan-American Health Organisation, but the offer was rejected by Colombia.

Venezuela and Cuba have been brought closer together by the US attack on both countries and by their joint commitment to socialism. The response to COVID-19 was therefore very closely coordinated by the two states. The Cuban government sent 10,000 doses of Interferon Alpha 2B; its creator – Dr. Luis Herrera – visited Venezuela on 16 March and praised the Venezuelan decision to impose quarantine as an effective way to break the chain of infection. The day before, a team of 130 Cuban doctors arrived to support the efforts to combat coronavirus in the country. This team joined the Cuban Medical Mission that has been in Venezuela since 2003 (its members rotate every two years). On 23 March, a medical team arrived from the People’s Republic of China to offer assistance, and China – along with Russia – sent medical equipment, medicines, diagnostic tests, reagents, protective lenses, biosafety suits, and air purifiers for health centres, and an air bridge was established between Venezuela and China to facilitate imports of essential goods.

In May, Iran sent five oil tankers with fuel to Venezuela with the intention of providing relief to the Venezuelan people, thereby breaking the US blockade of Venezuela’s ports. These tankers entered Venezuela with a broad message of peaceful solidarity between peoples.

A los médicos cubanos (‘To the Cuban Doctors’), Venezuela, 2020.
Miguel Guerra/Utopix

Kerala

On 18 January, KK Shailaja, Kerala’s health minister in the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government of this Indian state of 35 million, convened a meeting to discuss what was going on in Wuhan, China. Wuhan had not yet gone into lockdown, but Shailaja was aware that there were students from Kerala in Wuhan, and that when they returned, there would be a possibility of the coronavirus being imported into the state. On 22 January, the health department sent an alert to all hospitals and district authorities about the need to prepare for the virus. On 24 January, Kerala set up a state-level control room; by 28 January, control rooms had been set up in all of the districts. Isolation facilities were also set up in all of the districts, and eighteen committees were established and preventive measures were set in motion.

The first case of coronavirus in Kerala, a medical student who had been in Wuhan, was detected on 30 January; soon, two more tested positive, and by 3 February more than 2,200 people who returned to Kerala from coronavirus-hit regions had been placed under quarantine. The vigilance exercised by the state proved effective: all three patients fully recovered within a few days, and there were no cases of secondary spread. The number of people under quarantine soon decreased.

But late in February, as the coronavirus spread to more countries, the influx of people into Kerala from coronavirus-hit regions intensified. Several people – initially those coming from Italy, and later those coming from the Persian Gulf region – tested positive for COVID-19. Others who came into contact with them also contracted the disease. This was the second wave of COVID-19 infections in the state. Throughout the subsequent weeks, Kerala continued to screen passengers who came into the state not just by air, but also by road at twenty-four border checkpoints, and by train – an arduous task given the sheer number of passengers.

Kerala carried out extensive contact tracing, using route maps that contain the details of the places visited by infected persons. The people who were present at those locations during the time when the infected persons visited were asked to contact the health department. The route maps have been widely circulated through social media and through GoK Direct, the Government of Kerala’s mobile phone app. Elected representatives from Local Self Government Institutions and community health workers helped carry out contact tracing. The formula was clear: ‘trace, quarantine, test, isolate, treat’, as Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan – who is also a Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – would later state.

Those who come from abroad or from other states are placed under quarantine, either at designated quarantine centres or at home. Those who have come into primary and secondary contact with infected persons are under home quarantine. Health department officials visit or call regularly to check whether isolation protocols are being followed at home. Those who do not have enough facilities at home for effective quarantining are lodged in government-run quarantine centres, and anyone who develops symptoms associated with COVID-19 is hospitalised. Testing and treatment are free and available to everyone in the state.

When COVID-19 started being reported in the state, Health Minister KK Shailaja held daily press conferences to inform the public about the latest updates, the measures being taken to combat the virus, and the measures that must be taken by the public. From 10 March onwards, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan started to give daily press conferences, as the efforts to contain the pandemic now involved the work of several departments. More COVID-19 test centres and COVID-19 care centres have been set up in all districts, and 276 doctors and 321 junior health inspectors have been newly appointed.

The government has taken steps to manufacture masks and sanitiser in light of the increased demand, rather than leaving the problem to be played out in the free market. The public sector has taken the lead in producing more medicines, hand sanitiser, and gloves. Kudumbashree, a massive government-backed collective of neighbourhood groups of 4.5 million women (roughly one-fourth of the population of women in the state), started making masks. Activists of the left-wing Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (‘The Kerala Forum for Science Literature’ or KSSP, Kerala’s biggest people’s science movement) pitched in by making hand sanitiser.

The government launched the Break The Chain campaign to encourage people to adopt the practices necessary to prevent COVID-19 infection. Government employees’ organisations set up hand sanitiser kiosks in front of government offices. DYFI set up hand washing facilities in 25,000 locations across the state, and call centres for people who needed help. Preparedness, utmost vigilance, strict adherence to protocol, and transparency have been crucial in Kerala’s battle against COVID-19.

By late March, when the rest of India awoke to the reality of the pandemic, Kerala had already moved towards an in-depth plan to alleviate the economic hardship of the people. By 12 March, it had announced the closure of educational institutions and soon began to deliver food at home for children who would have otherwise been in childcare centres. Rather than impose a blanket lockdown with no thought as to how families might eat, stay in their homes, or comply with the policies being rolled out – as done by the India’s central government – Kerala’s state government gradually put restrictions into place, taking care to provide the people with the conditions to follow them. On 19 March, the Chief Minister announced a relief package of Rs. 200 billion. The package included advance payment of social welfare pensions, free food grains to everyone for a month, additional funding of Rs. 5 billion for public healthcare, and relaxation of utility bill and tax payment deadlines.

The state implemented a lockdown from 24 March onwards. India’s central government implemented a country-wide lockdown from the next day onwards. In the subsequent weeks, Kerala’s state government distributed food grains for free to all families in the state. Cooked food is being provided to the elderly who live alone, the disabled, those who cannot cook for themselves due to illness, and the extremely poor. Ward-level committees of Local Self Government Institutions (LSGIs) – panchayats in villages, municipalities in towns, and municipal corporations in larger cities – are doing this work with the help of volunteers. Community kitchens have been set up by the LSGIs, and volunteers deliver cooked food from these kitchens to the homes of those in need. Members of the left-wing unions of LSGI employees, such as the Kerala Municipal and Corporation Staff Union (KMCSU), constitute a majority of those who are volunteering their services at the community kitchens. The government has also distributed grocery kits containing seventeen essential items to all families for free.

Anticipating the possibility of supply chains being disrupted due to the lockdown, the state government took steps to ensure that paddy, the staple crop of the region, is harvested without interruption. Measures were also taken to ensure the procurement of rice, vegetables, and several other crops.

Right at the outset, the Government of Kerala recognised that the accommodation facilities for migrant workers from other Indian states were often inadequate to ensure physical distancing. Therefore, state-run relief camps were set up for the workers and medical check-ups were arranged. Food, masks, soap, and hand sanitiser were made available to the workers. As of 20 April, 19,902 camps had been opened for migrant workers in Kerala, with 353,000 workers staying in the camps – the highest number of such camps in the country.

Kerala has many welfare fund boards for workers of various sectors, which provide social security benefits by pooling contributions by workers and their employers into welfare funds. All workers in sectors with welfare fund boards are being provided financial assistance through the boards. Workers who are not part of any welfare fund board are being given Rs. 1,000 each.

The scale of voluntary work that is underway is massive. Apart from voluntary work by government employees, trade union members, youth activists, and student activists, work by the Social Volunteer Force of youth set up by the government has also been a crucial part of the relief efforts. As of 23 June, 346,306 youth had registered as volunteers who are working to identify those who need assistance, deliver food and essential items, provide emergency assistance at homes, help with the operation of call centres and control rooms, deliver materials to relief camps, communicate alerts, and provide assistance at hospitals.

Kerala’s efforts to contain the second wave of COVID-19 infections were successful – by 8 May, the number of active COVID-19 cases in the state had come down to just sixteen. But a third wave of infections began soon after. This was because, as part of the easing of the lockdown in India, the severe restrictions on inter-state travel and on the arrival of international flights which were in place began to be relaxed from the first week of May onwards. Hundreds of thousands of Keralites living abroad and in other Indian states, faced with rising COVID-19 infections and deaths, unsafe conditions, a lack of medical attention, and even job losses in many cases, scrambled to get back to their home state. The state government adopted the stand that it is committed to bring back all Keralites who wanted to return to the state. More than 315,000 people returned to Kerala from other states and abroad between 4 May and 23 June. Since most of those who return come from regions with very high numbers of COVID-19 cases, this led to an increase in the number of infections in Kerala.

As of 23 June, the number of active COVID-19 cases in Kerala stood at 1,620, and the number of deaths at 22. Out of all the cases reported in the state from 4 May to 23 June, 90.7%f were reported among those who came from abroad or other states. A total of 150,196 people were under observation at this point – 147,990 at home or at quarantine centres, and 2,206 at hospitals. Restrictions are being relaxed in a calibrated manner, but there is no room for complacency. Awareness campaigns are continuing, norms about physical distancing are in place, large gatherings are not allowed, and the use of face masks in public is compulsory. The state government continues to hold regular press conferences and provide daily updates for the public.

The efforts of the LDF government are rooted in a comprehensive approach to ensure the welfare of all citizens. This is an approach which recognises the importance of the public healthcare system, as well as other social and economic determinants of health and well-being. It recognises that hunger and homelessness would be serious impediments to health. The LDF government’s policy measures amid COVID-19 aim to address all of these issues in order to provide relief to the people.

The objective is to reach every single person in need. As of 9 June, 116,328 volunteers had been deployed to identify those who need assistance so that no one falls through the cracks. The government’s strategy has been to mobilise its entire state machinery, including the public sector and LSGIs, along with the collective energies of the state’s powerful mass and class organisations, collectives, and cooperatives, and the zeal of Kerala’s citizens for voluntary action. This is a strategy of total mobilisation that integrates the work of the state machinery with the work of the general public, with those mobilised by mass and class organisations playing a key role.

All of this has been made possible as a result of public action in the state. Right from the time when the first communist ministry was elected in 1957, Kerala has invested in public education and public healthcare. Communist-led governments have taken the lead in implementing land reforms that broke feudal landlordism, greatly improved the living standards of the peasantry and agricultural workers, and increased the bargaining power of the workers. The working-class movement has played a crucial role in Kerala’s wages being the highest in the country, and has served as the most important factor behind the state having the most wide-ranging social security measures for workers, through the welfare fund boards.

The Left has long championed democratic decentralisation. The biggest effort in that direction was the People’s Plan Campaign, initiated by the LDF government in 1996. The LSGIs were greatly strengthened by the People’s Plan Campaign, which led to much higher devolution of funds and powers to the local bodies. This has significantly expanded the capacity of the LSGIs to intervene effectively in times of need, and now they are spearheading the relief efforts in the state. Kudumbashree was also initiated by the LDF government in 1998 and strengthened in the subsequent tenures of the LDF.

Public healthcare in Kerala has received its biggest boost over the tenure of the present LDF government, which came to power in 2016. This is in large part due to the Aardram Mission, an ambitious programme launched in 2017 to upgrade the state’s public healthcare facilities. Kerala has long had the best system of primary healthcare in the country, centred on Primary Health Centres (PHCs). The present LDF government has carried forward and significantly expanded upon this legacy. Now according to official rankings, the top twelve PHCs in India are in Kerala. As part of the Aardram Mission, all PHCs are being upgraded to Family Health Centres (FHCs) with extended timings (FHCs have outpatient services from morning to evening, compared to morning to noon in PHCs) and more doctors. Facilities in all government hospitals have improved greatly. This is what has enabled the healthcare system to stand up to the challenge posed by COVID-19. At the same time, efforts by the central government led by the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to push privatisation in the healthcare sector have been resisted by the LDF government of Kerala. In February of this year, the central government proposed that the district hospitals in Indian states should be privatised, and Kerala flatly refused.

The Very Best of Human Possibilities

CoronaShock reveals a deep divide between capitalist and socialist countries. This divide can be best understood, as we have shown, along four axes:

Socialism

1. Science
2. Public sector
3. Public action
4. Internationalism

Capitalism

1. Hallucination
2. For-profit sector
3. Atomisation and paralysis of the population
4. Jingoism and racism

There are, of course, exceptions to these reactions among the capitalist states. Several states in East Asia – such as Japan and South Korea – as well as Australia and New Zealand had been prepared by the SARS outbreak of 2003, and they did not destroy their public health infrastructure in the decades that followed; based on the experience of SARS, they did not scoff at the WHO reports.

By and large, however, it is the socialist states that have confronted the virus with resolve and intelligence; this is even though they face the brunt of US imperialism and an increasingly aggressive hybrid war (especially in the case of Cuba and Venezuela). These societies and their states have acted with determination and tenacity to break the chain of the pandemic and to avoid creating individual and social trauma and an economic desert for their peoples. Capitalism is unable to confront a disaster that it has in many ways created; socialism, on the other hand, brings out the very best of human possibilities.

CoronaShock is a term that refers to how a virus struck the world with such gripping force; it refers to how the social order in the bourgeois state crumbled, while the social order in the socialist parts of the world appeared more resilient.

This is the second in a multiple-part series of studies on CoronaShock. It is based on a number of articles researched and written by Ana Maldonado (Frente Francisco de Miranda, Venezuela), Paola Estrada (Secretariat of the International Peoples Assembly and member of the Brazilian chapter of ALBA Movements), Zoe PC (Peoples Dispatch), and Vijay Prashad (director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research).

We carry on resisting. San Juan, Caracas. 2010.
Comando Creativo

But even the president of the United States
sometimes must have to stand naked.

[Bob Dylan, It’s Alright, Ma, 1965.]

The Folly of Hybrid War

Swiftly moves the Coronavirus and COVID-19, dashing across continents, skipping over oceans, terrifying populations in every country. The numbers of those infected continue to rise, as do the numbers of those who have died. Hands are being washed, tests are being done, physical distance is being observed. It is unclear how devastating this pandemic will be or how long it will last.

On 23 March, twelve days after the World Health Organisation declared a global pandemic, the UN Secretary General António Guterres said, ‘The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. That is why today I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world. It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives’. Secretary General Guterres talked about silencing the guns, stopping the artillery, and ending the airstrikes. He did not refer to a specific conflict, leaving his plea to hang heavily in the air. After six weeks of deliberation and delay caused by Washington, in the first week of May, the United States government blocked a vote in the UN Security Council on a resolution that called for a global ceasefire.

The United States blocked this resolution, but even this resolution did not turn its attention to the kind of war that the US is prosecuting against Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela – among others. Instead, it has imposed a hybrid war. The US military complex has advanced its hybrid war programme, which includes a range of techniques to undermine governments and political projects. These techniques include the mobilisation of US power over international institutions (such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the SWIFT wire service) in order to prevent governments from managing basic economic activity; the use of US diplomatic power to isolate governments; the use of sanctions methods to prevent private companies from doing business with certain governments; the use of information warfare to render governments and political forces to be criminals or terrorists; and so on. This powerful complex of instruments is able – in the plain light of day – to destabilise governments and to justify regime change (for more on this, see the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research dossier no. 17, Venezuela and Hybrid Wars in Latin America).

During a pandemic, one would expect that all countries would collaborate in every way to mitigate the spread of the virus and its impact on human society. One would expect that a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude would provide the opportunity to end all inhumane economic sanctions and political blockades against certain countries. On 24 March, the day after UN Secretary General Guterres’s plea, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet agreed that ‘at this crucial time, both for global public health reasons, and to support the rights and lives of millions of people in these countries, sectoral sanctions should be eased or suspended. In a context of [a] global pandemic, impeding medical efforts in one country heightens the risk for all of us’.

A few days later, Hilal Elver, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, said that she was gratified to hear both Guterres and Bachelet call for an end to the sanctions regime. The problem, she indicated, lies with Washington: ‘The US, under the current administration, is very keen to continue the sanctions. Fortunately, some other countries are not. For instance, the European Union and many of the European countries are responding positively and easing sanctions during this time of the coronavirus. They are not completely lifting sanctions but interrupting them, and there are some communications going on, but not in the US, unfortunately’.

On 6 May, three other UN Special Rapporteurs – Olivier De Schutter (on extreme poverty and human rights), Léo Heller (on human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation), and Koumbou Boly Barry (on the right to education) – said that ‘in light of the coronavirus pandemic, the United States should immediately lift blanket sanctions, which are having a severe impact on the human rights of the Venezuelan people’. Nevertheless, the Trump administration has brushed aside all concern and continued with its agenda of hybrid war towards regime change.

Habits of Regime Change

As COVID-19 moved toward South America, the US government increased pressure on the Venezuelan government. In February 2020 at the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the US seeks to ‘oust Maduro’. The following month, on March 12, the US tightened sanctions against Venezuela, and then the US Treasury Department put pressure on the International Monetary Fund not to allow Venezuela access to emergency funds to tackle the global pandemic. None of this worked. Despite the lack of support from the IMF, the Venezuelan government mobilised the people to break the chain of infection, with international assistance from China, Cuba, and Russia, as well as the World Health Organisation.

At this point, the US government shifted its focus. It suggested that President Nicolás Maduro and his senior leadership are involved in narco-trafficking. No evidence was offered for this hallucinatory claim, although there is substantial evidence of the culpability of senior Colombian politicians in the drug trade. US President Donald Trump authorised a naval detachment to sit off the coast of Venezuela, threaten its government, and intimidate its population. On April 30, to increase pressure on Venezuela, the Trump administration activated parts of the Selected Reserve of the Armed Forces to assist the US armed forces in a mission named ‘Enhanced Department of Defense Counternarcotic Operation in the Western Hemisphere’. All signs point to mischief by the US and its Colombian allies against the Venezuelan people.

The United States government has been entirely candid about its goal to overthrow the Venezuelan government, currently led by President Maduro, and to reverse the Bolivarian Revolution. In August 2017, Trump spoke openly about the ‘military option’ at the same time as the United States, Canada, Colombia, and a list of other countries governed by the far-right and subordinated to Washington formed the Lima Group. The Lima Group tried to maintain a liberal patina around their objective, stating in their declaration that they wished to ‘facilitat[e] … the restoration of the rule of law and constitutional and democratic order in Venezuela’. Trump ripped aside the fig leaf of this kind of liberal language and interpreted the phrase ‘restoration of democratic order’ quite rightly as a call for a military coup or an armed intervention to overthrow the government.

In January 2019, the United States government deepened its hybrid war with a clever diplomatic manoeuvre. It declared that Juan Guaidó, an insignificant politician, was the president of Venezuela and turned over substantial Venezuelan assets outside the country to him. An attempted uprising led by Guaidó and the far-right in Venezuela to oust Maduro and claim power failed to materialise, and Guaidó found himself with more friends in Washington, DC and amongst Colombia’s oligarchy than at home in Venezuela. However, this failed attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government did not deter the United States. In fact, the failure deepened US intervention in the region.

In May 2019, Senator Lindsey Graham took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to make the case that the ‘US must be willing to intervene in Venezuela the way we did in Grenada’. In 1983, the US marines landed in Grenada to overthrow the legitimate government and to uproot the New Jewel Movement. Should certain measures not be taken, Senator Graham wrote that the United States ‘should move military assets to the region’. The United States attempted to create a phalanx of allies in the Brazilian and Colombian militaries to prepare for an invasion of Venezuela. Fortunately, at the Lima Group meeting in February 2019, Brazil’s vice president Hamilton Mourão told the press that Brazil would not allow the US to use its territory for a military intervention into Venezuela. The plans of a full-scale invasion had to be put on hold.

‘This is our great homeland’ / Tenemos Patria Grande. La Candelaria, Caracas. 2013.
Passersby in front of a mural that references the vision of a free and united Latin America, following the vision of José Martí and the Bolivarian Revolution.
Comando Creativo

Collective Punishment

On 10 March, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza told us that the ‘illegal and unilateral coercive measures that the United States has imposed on Venezuela are a form of collective punishment’. The use of the phrase ‘collective punishment’ is significant; under the 1949 Geneva Convention, any policy that inflicts damage on an entire population is a war crime. The US policy, Arreaza told us, has ‘resulted in difficulties for the timely acquisition of medicines’.

On paper, the unilateral US sanctions say that medical supplies are exempt. But this is an illusion. On 26 March, eleven US Senators sent a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to say: ‘We understand that the administration has stated that humanitarian and medical needs are exempt from U.S. sanctions, but our sanctions regime is so broad that medical suppliers and relief organizations simply steer clear of doing business in Iran and Venezuela in fear of accidentally getting caught up in the U.S. sanctions web’. Neither Venezuela nor Iran can easily buy medical supplies, nor can they easily transport them into their countries, nor can they use them in their largely public sector health systems. The embargo against these countries – even more so in this time of COVID-19 – is not only a war crime by the standards of the Geneva Convention (1949); it is also a crime against humanity as defined by the United Nations International Law Commission (1947).

In 2017, Trump enacted tight restrictions on Venezuela’s ability to access financial markets. Two years later, the US government blacklisted Venezuela’s Central Bank and put a general embargo on Venezuelan state institutions. If any firm trades with Venezuela’s public sector, it could face secondary sanctions. The US Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in 2017, which tightened sanctions against Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The next year, Trump imposed a raft of new sanctions against Iran, which suffocated the country’s economy. Once more, access to the world banking system and threats to companies that traded with Iran made it almost impossible for Iran to do business with the world. In particular, the US government made it clear that any business with the public sector of Iran and Venezuela was forbidden. The health infrastructure that provides for the mass of the populations in both Iran and Venezuela is run by the state, which means it faces disproportionate difficulty in accessing equipment and supplies, including testing kits and medicines.

Venezuela and Iran have relied on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to obtain medicines and tests. Nonetheless, the WHO faces its own challenges with sanctions, particularly when it comes to transportation. These harsh sanctions forced transportation companies to reconsider servicing both Iran and Venezuela. Some airlines stopped flying there, and many shipping companies decided not to anger Washington. When the WHO tried to get testing kits for COVID-19 from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) into Iran, it faced difficulty ‘due to flight restrictions’, as the WHO’s Christoph Hamelmann put it. The UAE sent the equipment via a military transport plane.

Likewise, Arreaza told us, Venezuela has ‘received solidarity from governments of countries such as China and Cuba’. In late February, a team from the Red Cross Society of China arrived in Tehran to exchange information with the Iranian Red Crescent and with WHO officials. China has also donated testing kits and supplies. The sanctions, Chinese officials told us, should be of no consequence during a humanitarian crisis such as this; they are not going to honour them.

Meanwhile, the Iranians developed an app to help their population during the COVID-19 outbreak. Google decided to remove it from its app store, a consequence of the US sanctions.

What kind of moral fibre holds together an international system where a handful of countries can act in a way that goes against all the highest aspirations of humanity? When the United States continues its embargoes against thirty-nine countries – but with greater intensity against Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela – when there is a global pandemic afoot, what does this say about the nature of power and authority in our world? Sensitive people should be offended by such behaviour, its mean-spiritedness evident in the unnatural deaths that it provokes.

When then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked in 1996 about the half million Iraqi children who died because of US sanctions, she said that those deaths were ‘a price worth paying’. They were certainly not a price that the Iraqis wanted to pay, nor now the Iranians or the Venezuelans, or indeed most of humankind.

The IMF Takes Orders from the US Treasury

On 16 March 2020, the chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva wrote a blog post on the Fund’s website; it represents the kind of generosity necessary in the midst of a global pandemic. ‘The IMF stands ready to mobilize its $1 trillion lending capacity to help our membership’, she wrote. Countries with ‘urgent balance-of-payments needs’ could be helped by the IMF’s ‘flexible and rapid-disbursing emergency response toolkit’. Through these mechanisms, and against its own history of structural adjustment conditions, the IMF said that it could provide $50 billion to developing countries and $10 billion to low-income countries at a zero-interest rate – without the usual strings attached.

The day before Georgieva made this public statement, Venezuela’s foreign ministry sent a letter to the IMF asking for funds to finance the government’s ‘detection and response systems’ for its efforts against the coronavirus. In the letter, President Nicolás Maduro wrote that his government is ‘executing different highly comprehensive, strict and exhaustive control measures … to protect the Venezuelan people’. These measures require funding, which is why the government is ‘turning to your honorable [organisation] to request your evaluation about the possibility of granting Venezuela a financing facility of USD 5,000 million [5 billion] from the emergency fund of the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI), resources that will contribute significantly to strengthen our detection and response systems’.

Georgieva’s policy to provide special assistance to countries should have been enough for the IMF to provide the assistance that the Venezuelan government had requested. But, very quickly, the Fund declined the request from Venezuela.

It is important to underline the fact that the IMF made this denial at a time when the coronavirus had begun to spread in Venezuela. On 15 March, the day that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government sent the letter to the IMF, Maduro also met with senior government officials in Caracas. The state-owned Venezuelan pharmaceutical body (CIFAR) and the Venezuelan medical equipment companies said that they would be able to increase the production of machines and medicines to stem the crisis; but, they said, they would need key raw materials that have to be imported. The Venezuelan government went to the IMF in order to be able to pay for these imports. The denial of the loan directly impacted the Venezuelan health apparatus and impeded Venezuela from properly tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

‘This is the most dire situation we have ever faced’, said President Maduro as he put new measures in place. The Venezuelan government imposed an indefinite national quarantine and has implemented processes to distribute food and key supplies, building on the local self-government (communes) that developed with the Bolivarian Revolution. All of the institutions of the state are now involved in doing their part to help ‘flatten the curve’ and ‘break the chain’ of contagion. But, because of the IMF loan denial, the country has had a harder time producing testing kits, respirators, and key medicines for those infected with the virus.

Venezuela is a founding member of the IMF. It has, despite being an oil-rich state, come to the IMF several times for various forms of assistance. The cycle of IMF interventions in Venezuela in the 1980s and early 1990s led to an uprising in 1989 that delegitimised the Venezuelan elite; it was on the back of the popular protests against the IMF that Hugo Chávez built the coalition that propelled him to office in 1998 and that started the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999. By 2007, Venezuela paid off its outstanding debts to both the IMF and the World Bank; the country cut its ties to these institutions, hoping to build a Bank of the South – rooted in Latin America – as an alternative. But before this Bank could be set up, a round of crises struck Latin America, forced by a fall in commodity prices from 2014-15.

Venezuela’s economy relies upon foreign oil exports to generate the revenue necessary to import goods. With the fall in oil prices between 2014 and 2018 came a directed attack on Venezuela by the United States, who imposed a new round of unilateral sanctions. These sanctions prevented oil companies and transportation firms from doing business with Venezuela; international banks seized Venezuela’s holdings in their vaults (including $1.2 billion in gold in the Bank of England) and stopped doing business with Venezuela. This sanctions regime, tightened further by Donald Trump’s administration, deeply hurt Venezuela’s ability to sell its oil and buy products, including supplies for its state health sector.

In January 2019, after the US supported Guaidó’s attempt to usurp power, US banks hastily seized the Venezuelan state assets that they held and turned them over to the self-proclaimed president. Then, in a startling move, the IMF said that the Venezuelan government would no longer be allowed to use its $400 million in special drawing rights (SDRs), the currency of the IMF. It said that it had taken this action because of the political uncertainty in Venezuela. In other words, because of the attempted coup – which failed – the IMF said that it would not ‘take sides’ in Venezuela; by not ‘taking sides’, the IMF refused to allow the government of Venezuela to access its own funds. Strikingly, Guaidó’s adviser Ricardo Hausmann, a former IMF development committee chair and Guaidó’s representative at the Inter-American Development Bank, said at that time that he expected that when the regime change occurs, the money will be available to the new government. This is the IMF directly interfering in Venezuelan politics.

Neither at that time nor now has the IMF denied that the government of Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate government in Venezuela. The IMF continues to acknowledge on its website that the representative of Venezuela in the IMF is Simón Alejandro Zerpa Delgado, the minister of finance in Maduro’s government. One of the reasons why this is so is that Guaidó could not prove that he had the support of most of the member states of the IMF. Since Guaidó could not prove his standing, the IMF – again, extraordinarily – has instead denied the Maduro government its legitimate right to its own funds and to borrow against facilities provided by the Fund to its members.

History is watching us. Bellas Artes, Caracas, 2011.
Comando Creativo

Normally, the IMF takes time when it gets a request for funds. The request must be studied by the analysts, who look at the situation in the country and see whether the request is legitimate. In this case, the IMF responded immediately. It said no.

A spokesperson for the Fund, Raphael Anspach, would not answer specific questions about this denial; in 2019, he had been similarly cautious about saying anything about the denial of access to the $400 million in SDRs. This time, Anspach sent us a formal statement that the IMF had released to the media. The statement said that, while the IMF sympathises with the predicament of the Venezuelan people, ‘it is not in a position to consider this request’. Why is this so? Because, the IMF says, its ‘engagement with member countries is predicated on official government recognition by the international community’. ‘There is’, the statement says, ‘no clarity on recognition at this time’.

But there is clarity. The IMF listed the Venezuelan minister of finance on its website at least until mid-March. The United Nations continues to recognise the Venezuelan government, led by President Nicolás Maduro. That should be the official standard for the IMF to make its determination. But it is not. It is taking dictation from the US government. In April 2019, US Vice President Mike Pence went to the UN Security Council, where he said that the UN should accept Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela; he turned to the Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada Acosta, and said, ‘You shouldn’t be here’. This is a moment of great symbolism, the United States acting as if the UN is its home and that it can invite and uninvite whomsoever it wants. The IMF denial of the $5 billion request from Venezuela follows Pence’s sentiment. It is a violation of the spirit of international cooperation that is at the heart of the UN Charter.

There are signs of weakness in the US position. On 18 December 2019, the United Nations General Assembly adopted – without a vote – a resolution that accepted the credentials of the diplomats appointed by Maduro’s government. The fact that there was no vote taken reveals that the United States does not want to reveal in plain sight the minority support in the world for its position of isolating the government of Venezuela. The US would rather forego a vote in the interest of fabricating and upholding a smoke and mirrors narrative allegedly held by the ‘international community’ than allow the actual international community to vote openly and show that it accepts the Maduro government as the legitimate government of Venezuela.

The Hallucinatory Accusations of Narco-Trafficking

At a press conference on 26 March, it was almost comical how little evidence the US Department of Justice provided when it indicted Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and several of the leaders of his government of narco-trafficking. The US offered $15 million for the arrest of Maduro and $10 million for the others. Maduro, US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said dramatically, ‘very deliberately deployed cocaine as a weapon’. Evidence for this? Not presented at all. An indictment is not a verdict of guilt, merely a note – in this case – prepared by the US government against an adversary; there is nothing in the indictment that proves the case that any of the individuals mentioned in it have anything to do with narcotics smuggling. It was apparent from the press conference at the US Department of Justice that this was political theatre, an attempt to further delegitimise Maduro’s government.

It is surreal that the United States – during the COVID-19 global pandemic – chooses to put its efforts into this ridiculous, evidence-free indictment against Maduro and other members of the government. Already, there is pressure on the United States to lift the sanctions not only against Venezuela but also against Iran (even The New York Times came out on 25 March to call for an end to sanctions on Iran). The World Health Organization has made it clear that this is just not the time to hamper the ability of countries to get precious supplies in to tackle the pandemic. Out of desperation, the US tried to change the conversation – no longer about COVID-19 and sanctions, but about narco-terrorism.

When asked about these indictments during the COVID-19 pandemic, US Attorney General William Barr tried to say that the fault lay not in Washington but in Caracas. He said, absent any evidence, that Venezuela is blocking aid from coming into the country. Nothing could be further from the truth, since Venezuela has welcomed medical supplies and medical personnel from China, Cuba, and Russia, as well as from the WHO. In fact, the WHO has pressed the US to allow it freer rein to bring goods into the country – a request that the US has not allowed. Barr can so easily say the very opposite of truth because none of the media outlets at the press conference would challenge him based on matters that are clearly in the public record.

In 1989, the US used the accusation of narco-trafficking – specifically cocaine trafficking – to taint the reputation of its former asset, then-president of Panama Manuel Noriega. Based on this accusation and an indictment in Florida, the US eventually invaded the country, seized Noriega, planted Washington’s puppet in Panama City, and threw Noriega into a Florida prison. The shadow of how the US dealt with Noriega hangs over Caracas.

The bounty on the heads of Maduro and his leadership suggests that the US government has essentially put a mafia-type hit out on these Venezuelans. This is a very dangerous move by the United States. It essentially gives gangsters a green light to attempt assassination inside Venezuela. The refusal to allow Maduro to travel outside of Venezuela is a violation of a series of international conventions that promote diplomacy over belligerence. But, given the lawless way that the US has formulated its regime change strategy against Venezuela – and throughout history – it is unlikely that anyone is going to criticise this move.

A few hours before the announcement in Washington, word began to spread that the United States was going to place Venezuela’s government on the ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ list – the very highest condemnation of a government. But they had to pause. And the pause itself came for absurd reasons. If the US government accused Maduro’s government of being a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’, then it would be tacitly acknowledging that the Maduro government is indeed the government of Venezuela. Since January 2019, one of the attempts at destabilisation had been to deny that Maduro’s government is the legitimate government of Venezuela, indeed, to deny that it is any kind of government. It would be impossible to say that the Maduro government is a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ without acknowledging that it is the government of Venezuela. So, the United States had to stay its hand, caught out by its own logic.

The statement released by the US Department of Justice reads like a thriller, and the lack of evidence lends it to comparison with fiction. It lists names and accusations, makes constant references to ‘narco-terrorism’, and claims that the Venezuelan government wants to ‘flood’ the United States with cocaine. It would take a superhuman effort of blindness to believe this baseless ranting and raving. But the problem is that the people of Venezuela must take this seriously, since it is a deepening of the United States government’s belligerence. The people of Venezuela are aware of the dangers of a Panama-type situation. It’s hard to blame them. This is the track record of the United States government.

The comparison to a Panama-type situation cannot be written off as paranoia. On April’s Fools Day, Trump gave a press conference in which he announced a new ‘counter-narcotics effort’ by US Southern Command. ‘We’re deploying additional Navy destroyers, combat ships, aircrafts and helicopters; Coast Guard cutters; and Air Force surveillance aircraft, doubling our capabilities in the region’, he said. The point of this mission – which will be joined by other countries – is to ‘increase surveillance, disruption, and seizures of drug shipments’. ‘We must not let the drug cartels exploit the pandemic to threaten American lives’, he added.

Coming less than a week after the US indictment, it became clear that the point is not actually to disrupt the cocaine trade, but to put pressure on Venezuela. No evidence was provided during the Department of Justice press conference when the United States charged Maduro with narco-trafficking, and no evidence was presented at Trump’s press conference when he announced that a naval carrier group would enter the Caribbean. There was no evidence presented at either high-profile event, because no evidence is either available or necessary. It is not available because even the US government’s own agencies say that Venezuela is neither the originator of narcotics nor the trafficker of narcotics; it is not necessary because the United States has consistently used its position to invent increasingly hallucinatory stories about the Venezuelan government in order to delegitimise and overthrow it.

In December 2019, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) released its ‘National Drug Threat Assessment’. This study offers the most detailed look at the movement of drugs into the United States. At several points in the study, the DEA says that Colombia is the ‘primary source for cocaine seized in the United States’. According to the DEA’s Cocaine Signature Program, in 2018 ‘approximately 90 percent of cocaine samples tested were of Colombian origin, six percent were of Peruvian origin, and four percent were of unknown origin’. As far as the US government’s own drug agency is concerned, there is no cocaine or any other narcotic that comes from Venezuela.

Both at the US Department of Justice press conference and at Trump’s press conference, maps were shown that indicated cocaine traffic from Venezuela to the United States. This is simply not true, based on the information from the US DEA: ‘The majority of the cocaine and heroin produced and exported by Colombian TCOs [Transnational Criminal Organizations] to the United States is transported through Central America and Mexico’, write the DEA officials in their 2019 report. However, there are suggestions in the report that Colombian narco-traffickers sometimes ‘store large quantities of cocaine in remote areas of Venezuela and Ecuador until maritime or aerial transportation can be secured’.

It is important to recognize that the cocaine and heroin are hidden in ‘remote areas’ of Colombia’s neighbours, with Colombia being the focus of the entire drug trade. At no point in the entire 146-page DEA document, and in documents from previous years, do the US drug officials make any statement that implicates the Venezuelan government in either the production, storage, or transportation of the cocaine and heroin. The only time Venezuela enters the picture is when Colombian narco-traffickers hide their cocaine and heroin in ‘remote areas’ of Venezuela before they traffic them into Central America and Mexico and then onwards to the United States.

There is significant evidence, however – as presented by the Colombian journalist Gonzalo Guillén in La Nueva Prensa on 3 March 2020 – that Colombia’s president Iván Duque and his patron, the former president Álvaro Uribe, had close ties with the narco-trafficker José Guillermo Hernández Aponte, alias Ñeñé. The previous day, Duque was in the Oval Office as Trump chided him for not doing enough to eradicate cocaine production in Colombia. ‘Well, you’re going to have to spray’, Trump told Duque. ‘If you don’t spray, you’re not going to get rid of them. So, you have to spray, with regard to the drugs in Colombia’.

Trump was talking about glyphosate-based fumigation, which the government of Colombia halted in 2015 because the WHO said that such sprays caused cancer. Despite this, Duque said that he will restart spraying. There was no mention of the accusations that Duque himself is linked to the narco-traffickers; since he is pliant towards Washington, his own alleged crimes do not amount to much. Duque’s patron Uribe, the former Colombian president and current Senate member, is currently implicated in more than 270 legal cases in Colombia with charges including illegal wiretapping, organised crime, selective assassinations, and forced disappearances. Uribe and members of his family have proven links with the paramilitary group Bloque Metro (‘Metro Block’) of Antioquia, which was responsible for thousands of assassinations of Colombian civilians and was deeply involved in the narco-trafficking.

Strangely, in that press conference, both Trump and Duque talked about Venezuela, but neither of them mentioned drugs or narco-trafficking. It was all about regime change.

On 31 March, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Venezuela must have a transitional government; this itself is bizarre because Pompeo is neither Venezuelan nor a United Nations official, and yet he felt emboldened to speak for the Venezuelan people. His plan, ‘Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela’, called upon President Maduro to resign and for Washington’s favoured replacement Juan Guaidó to continue his imaginary claim to power. Members of the four main parties, including Maduro’s Socialist Party, would form a council and be led by an ‘interim president’. If this plan is accepted, Washington would lift its unilateral coercive sanctions that it had imposed from 2014.

The previous weekend, Guaidó announced on Twitter that Venezuela needed an ‘emergency government’ that had the participation of all parties and would govern until new elections could be held. After Pompeo’s announcement, Guaidó took credit for it and thanked Pompeo publicly. Other far-right politicians, such as Leopoldo López, Carlos Vecchio, and Julio Borges, saluted Pompeo’s plan and thanked the United States for backing Guaidó’s ‘emergency government’. When she heard that gunboats are coming towards the Venezuelan coast, Maria Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela Party tweeted, ‘That’s the way to build a credible threat’. It is credible because the gunboats have done this before.

‘This is our homeland’ / Tenemos patria. Macuro, Sucre. 2014.
Comando Creativo

The Organization of American States (OAS), which behaved as the long-arm of the US State Department during the coup against the government of Evo Morales in Bolivia last November, joined in the chorus begun by Pompeo and Guaidó. In a statement, the OAS declared that it ‘considers that the plan presented constitutes a valid proposal for a path to end the usurping dictatorship and restore democracy in the country’.

The Venezuelan government led by President Maduro rejected the plan. But it was not alone. Maduro’s main opponent in the 2018 presidential election, Henri Falcón of the Avanzada Progresista (‘Progressive Advance’) party, also rejected the Pompeo-Guaidó plan and the deployment of US warships off the Venezuelan coast. The removal of Maduro, he wrote, ‘is a process and not an imposition; it requires agreements between adversaries for it to be successful. The solution in Venezuela is between Venezuelans’. ‘The pandemic’, he wrote, ‘is wreaking havoc in the world. Venezuela is one of the most vulnerable. It would be humanitarian and very great if ships came with aid and medicine, and it would be very inhumane if they came loaded with weapons and threats’.

Most of the opposition in Venezuela, like Falcón, did not approve of Guaidó’s submission to Trump and Pompeo. Claudio Fermín of the Partido Soluciones para Venezuela (‘Solutions for Venezuela Party’) attacked the ‘irresponsible and fanciful thesis’ of Guaidó and his supporters, which is reliant upon the ‘fantasy cloud of instructions sent to them by their bosses Elliot Abrams, Pompeo, and Trump’. Henrique Capriles Radonski, who twice ran unsuccessfully to be president, said that Maduro has ‘internal control’ while Guaidó’s people have ‘international alliances’.

So much of this is déjà vu. On 7 October 1963, US President John F. Kennedy gathered his advisors in the White House to discuss how to overthrow the democratically elected government of João Goulart in Brazil. Kennedy asked frankly, ‘Do you see a situation coming where we might be – find it desirable to intervene militarily ourselves?’ His ambassador in Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, said that he had worked on a plan with US Southern Command – then based in Panama – and with his contacts in the Brazilian military. A US invasion, Gordon told Kennedy, would require a ‘massive military operation’, which ‘all depends on what the Brazilian military do’. Any coup without major military support would lead to ‘the beginnings of what would amount to a civil war’.

Rather than risk a civil war, Gordon said the military had to act, and the United States had to provide them with diplomatic and military support. By March 1964, Gordon said that the ‘most significant development is the crystallizing of a military resistance group under the leadership of General Humberto Castelo Branco’. Washington gave the green light. Operation Brother Sam was put in motion, which included egging on the Generals and sending a massive naval task force to sit off the coast of southern Brazil. An aircraft carrier, two guided missile destroyers, and other support vessels left Aruba and made their very public journey to Brazil. General Castelo Branco moved against Goulart; that coup created a military dictatorship – backed by Washington – that lasted 21 years and killed, detained, and tortured tens of thousands of people.

The US carrier group that sits off the coast of Venezuela seems to be mimicking Operation Brother Sam of 1964. Rather than focus attention on the pressing problem of controlling the coronavirus in the United States – or even amongst its military forces – Trump has begun manoeuvres that could very well lead to a serious and dangerous clash in the Caribbean Sea.

The Colombian People Reject the Hybrid War Against Venezuela

On 21 November 2019, the Colombian people took to the streets in massive numbers to reject the policies of the government led by President Iván Duque. In particular, the people voiced two main demands. First, they wanted Duque’s right-wing government to advance the 2016 Peace Accords between the government and the left-wing FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). These Accords, negotiated in good faith, would have ended a war that has lasted for six decades (70 percent of Colombian society has been born during this war). Second, the people wanted to end the harsh austerity policies driven by Duque’s government, which includes cuts to public universities, the pension system, and broad social spending. The main trade union federation, the Central Trade Union of Workers in Colombia (CUT), called for that protest, which then broadened into a mass uprising against Duque and the system of Colombian politics.

The general secretary of the CUT and spokesperson of the People’s Congress (Congreso de los Pueblos), Edgar Mojica, was on the barricades daily helping shape the mass upsurge that suggested that Colombian society no longer wanted to be held hostage to the whims of its sclerotic oligarchy and to the United States government. This was the mood. It was clear in the slogans and graffiti that emerged in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, and then outwards to its smaller cities and towns. The two demands – to implement the Peace Accords and to end austerity – are related. The Colombian oligarchy fears that if it contributes to building a comprehensive and genuine peace, the arrival of the FARC onto the political stage will strengthen the left, and a stronger left will have the power to annul not only the austerity agenda but also the pro-US orientation of the ruling classes of Colombia (for more on this, see the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research dossier no. 23, Peace, Neoliberalism, and Political Shifts in Colombia).

The other left organization – the National Liberation Army (ELN) – has in good faith tried to negotiate with Duque’s government, but has seen the door slammed in its face repeatedly, as Pablo Beltrán, an ELN leader, told Argentine journalist and educator Claudia Korol last year. Duque has intensified the military campaign against the ELN. If the Peace Accords with the FARC and the talks with ELN deepen, it would undermine the power of the oligarchy and of Washington. As Olimpo Cárdenas of the People’s Congress said two years ago, ‘There is a sector of the Colombian oligarchy that benefits from the war’.

There are days when it seems as if President Duque cannot make decisions without consulting the US government and his mentor, Álvaro Uribe. The advice he gets is to burrow deeper into an alliance with the United States, even at the cost of public opinion in Colombia. It would be fitting to call Duque’s policy toward the United States a ‘doormat policy’ – a policy where he offers Colombia as the doormat for the United States to wipe its feet before it marches into neighbouring Venezuela. When we spoke to Mojica recently, he said, ‘The Colombian government is a submissive government. It is inclined toward the decisions of the North American government’.

This is not a new development. At the start of the 20th century, Colombia’s foreign policy was defined by the principle of Respicium Polum (‘Look toward the North’). More recently, in the 1990s, US foreign policy shifted its gaze from Central America to Colombia; Plan Colombia, developed in 1999, drove a militarised agenda of the US and the Colombian oligarchy in the ‘War on Drugs’, which was in essence a bid to defeat any revolutionary insurgency and consolidate control over the Andean-Amazon territory. What is indeed new, Mojica says, is that Duque has done everything to facilitate both the blockade against Venezuela and the potential military intervention into Venezuela.

When the governments of Canada and the United States urged their partners in Latin America to create a platform against Venezuela, which became the Lima Group in 2017, Colombia was an eager participant. In February 2019, Duque welcomed the Lima Group to Bogotá during a high-stakes gamble by the United States to overthrow the Venezuelan government of President Maduro. At that time, Mojica and other social movement leaders criticised the way their country was being used by the Colombian oligarchy and the United States for narrow purposes, against the interest of the Colombian people. Mojica told us, ‘We have been denouncing this for the past year, beginning when President Duque lent himself to legitimise Guaidó and to legitimise the positions that the Lima Group has had with respect to Venezuela’. Heightened military tension with Venezuela suits the Duque government’s agenda. It means that it can put off any talk of full implementation of the Peace Accords and cast aside any criticism of its austerity policies. Since 2016, hundreds of social movement leaders have been assassinated across Colombia; this violence is obscured by the attention being paid by the media to the Colombian-Venezuelan border.

With the US government absurdly saying that Venezuela is the source of narco-trafficking – even though all evidence pointing to narco-trafficking is rooted in Colombia – the pressure on Colombia to deal with its drug problem is now lifted. Indeed, the intimate links between the oligarchy and the narco-traffickers are now hidden by the hallucinatory claim that Maduro is himself involved in this trade.

Mojica told us that the entire narco-policy is a ‘distraction’ because it fails to grasp the real problem. ‘We reject the policies of crop dusting and the blackmailing of the Colombian government’ by the US, he said, which uses its international power to force policy changes on the country.  Mojica explained that, because the production of coca leaves by small farmers is the ‘first step of production’, and because the farmers have no other source of revenue to support their families, the farmers serve as ‘the weakest link in the chain’ and an easy target for cocaine eradication programs.

These small farmers, whose farms and bodies will be saturated by toxic chemicals, are not the main culprits behind the drug trade, nor is their wellbeing the main concern of Duque’s government; but they do provide a convenient scapegoat to mask the actions of those who really pull the strings. The responsibility for the colossal drug trade about which the Trump administration and his cronies are allegedly so concerned instead lies mainly with the large Colombian narco-cartels, who traffic the drugs through Mexico and Central America to North America; the drug mafia in North America itself; and the immense demand – largely in the US and Europe – by consumers for South American cocaine.

But none of the main culprits face the brunt of the drug eradication policy, reserved instead for the ‘weakest link’ – coca growers. ‘The coca growers and their families’, Mojica said, ‘are not presented with any alternative in terms of financial support for the eradication of their crops’. Despite this, they have unfairly become the frontline of the war. The 2016 Havana Peace Accords did provide a mechanism to assist farmers in transitioning from the cultivation of illicit crops. However, as with much else in the peace process, the protocol has not been respected; peasant communities have repeatedly denounced incidents of forced eradication by the army. The assassination of the leaders of these communities is often carried out by paramilitary groups, cartels, and a section of the armed forces known as the Fuerza Pública (‘Public Force’).

Morale and lights. Chapellín, Caracas. 2014.
Comando Creativo

The US and the Duque administrations, Mojica says, are using the question of drugs to move an agenda for regime change in Venezuela. Matters are so grave that the Colombian government has allowed US troops to enter its territory – both on the Caribbean coast and on the Venezuelan-Colombian border, such as in the area of Catatumbo. ‘We think that from there they are preparing a land invasion’, says Mojica. These are tense times, with the imminent possibility of military manoeuvres turning into a war.

The Colombian Senate has been vocal in its opposition to the use of Colombian territory to destabilise Venezuela. In April 2020, a group of Colombian congressmen wrote a public letter to Duque saying that their country must not participate in regime change in Venezuela. If Duque wants to pursue any such agenda, he must seek permission from Congress. Mojica told us that the Colombian social movements ‘completely reject’ Trump’s agenda. ‘We are not its backyard’, he said of the United States, and therefore not its doormat either. ‘We do not condone its anti-drug policies; we do not condone its policies of looting our natural resources and our environment’.

The Bay of Piglets

In the early morning hours of Sunday, 3 May, speedboats left the Colombian coastlines and headed toward Venezuela – though they had no authorization to cross the maritime border – and landed on the Venezuelan coastline at La Guaira. This was clearly a hostile action, since the boats carried heavy weaponry, including assault rifles and ammunition. The people on the boats possessed satellite phones as well as uniforms and helmets with the flag of the United States of America. The incursion was intercepted by Venezuelan military (FANB), who fought them off; eight of the belligerents were killed, while two were intercepted, and several temporarily escaped. One of those who was arrested says that he is an agent of the US government’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Early Monday May 4, Venezuelan security forces, aided by the fishermen and fisherwomen of the Bolivarian Militias in the coastal town of Chuao, arrested eight additional mercenaries on a speed boat who were attempting to enter the country. Two others were captured by Venezuelan Security Forces the same day in the town of Puerto Maya. During the arrests, more weaponry and military intelligence equipment was seized by Venezuelan security forces.

Néstor Reverol, the minister of internal affairs of Venezuela, told Venezuelan television stations hours after the thwarted incursion that the government received information about the attack from sources in Colombia and from its own regular patrols of the Venezuelan coastline. ‘We cannot take any of their threats lightly’, said senior Venezuelan politician Diosdado Cabello. ‘What happened today’, he said, ‘is an example of the desperation’ of the United States and its allies.

Such plots surround Venezuela, the plotters a cast of characters from the seediest quarters of the military and the drug world, as well as of US intelligence and Colombian paramilitaries. The plot for a small invasion in 2019 that unravelled is now documented by Joshua Goodman of the Associated Press. That plot was led by Jordan Goudreau, who served in the US Army as a medic in Iraq and Afghanistan and then became a private security contractor; he worked with Cliver Alcalá, a former Venezuelan military officer, who brought together a few hundred Venezuelan military deserters to conduct the raid. Alcalá is now in prison in the United States for his involvement in the drug trade. Goudreau and Alcalá were backed by Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller and Roen Kraft of Kraft Foods. The entire operation sniffs of a madcap CIA adventure, akin to the 1961 CIA failed invasion of Cuba at the Playa Girón.

One of the ugliest aspects of the 2020 military incursion was that – in the name of combatting narco-trafficking – the entire operation seems to have been financed by drug dealers. José Alberto Socorro Hernández (alias Pepero), who was captured during the invasion, admitted that the La Guajira cartel of Colombia offered them $2 million for their actions. Pepero confessed that the operation was financed by Elkin Javier López Torres (alias La Silla, ‘The Chair’, or Doble Rueda, ‘Double Wheel’), a relative of Alcalá’s wife, Marta González.

It is likely that this most recent invasion in May 2020 emerged out of the military deserter camp set up by Alcalá in Colombia. One of the men involved in the raid was Captain Robert Levid Colina, also known as Pantera (‘Panther’). Colina had been involved in the attempted coup on behalf of Juan Guaidó on 30 April 2019 and is a close associate of Alcalá’s. Antonio Sequea, former Venezuelan National Guard member, who had last been seen on April 30, 2019 during the failed coup d’état led by Leopoldo López and Juan Guaidó, was among those arrested. Sequea is believed to have led the operation. The arrest of two US military officials from Texas, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, who are members of the US mercenary company Silvercorp was also noteworthy. The US government has denied all participation in the operation, and has largely ignored it, but, according to one of the detained mercenaries, the pair has a relationship with Trump’s head of security.

Silvercorp is the company of Jordan Goudreau, to whom Guaidó promised to pay $212.9 million to ‘capture, detain, or “remove” President Nicolás Maduro and install him in his place’, as reported by journalist Alan MacLeod. In February 2019, Goudreau and his company provided security to the Venezuelan right-wing during the provocative Humanitarian Aid concert. Videos and photos have also emerged on social media showing a contract signed between Goudreau and right-wing opposition leader Guaidó. The former US special operative expressed frustration because Guaidó did not hold up his end of the bargain, however, and Silvercorp has yet to receive payment for their work.

The operation, which has been under investigation by Venezuelan authorities for the past couple of months, is believed to be organised, planned, and financed by the Venezuelan opposition and its diverse allies with the objective of assassinating constitutional president Nicolás Maduro and other high-level leaders of the Venezuelan government. It is likely that the US government’s bounty on Maduro and on other leaders played a role in this attempted invasion.

However, as Hernán Vargas, a member of the Movimiento de Pobladoras y Pobladores (‘the Settlers’ Movement’) and the Secretary of ALBA Movements explained, it is likely that the mission of this group ‘was not to take over the country, it was not to take over the government. It was simply to carry out a series of activities that would be coordinated with other forces, which all depended on a chain of events that did not occur… They really expected maybe a response from the Armed Forces, a street mobilisation, or that another armed group that was going to join, and that didn’t happen’.

The mercenaries playing freedom fighters, however, ‘did not expect the response of the people’, Vargas said, and they vastly underestimated the skill of the Venezuelan intelligence. He explained that they likely had it in their heads that they could be ‘received with applause and with cheers. They thought people were going to support this or an Armed Force was going to support this… but there are no people in Venezuela willing to do that. The majority of Venezuelans want it to be resolved in peace. There are no sectors that are willing to take that gamble or not enough for what they need at this moment’.

The threat, however, remains. Vargas calls for a close study of the Silvercorp contract with Juan Guaidó and Juan José Rendón – a right-wing political consultant and former advisor to Guaidó –where he states that there is, ‘a whole series of clauses that allow or agree to actions of human rights violations, the execution of civilians, or the use of heavy weapons, which introduce another dimension. In other words, this is an equally dangerous situation because these groups can easily carry out terrorist actions, and they also set strategic civilian and military objectives in Venezuela’.

Vladimir Padrino López, the minister of defence of Venezuela, said that the government and the people had defeated this attack and would remain vigilant against other such plots. One of the characteristic features of the Bolivarian process has been the mobilisation of the population to defend itself – from the attempted coup against Chávez in 2002 to today. ‘We declare ourselves in rebellion’, Padrino said, adding that Venezuela is now under a state of ‘permanent vigilance’. Despite the global pandemic, the old playbook of the CIA and the US government as a whole – currently led by the Trump administration – with their dirty coups and hybrid wars, remains operational. Much like the Cubans who thwarted the attempted US-backed invasion at the Playa Girón, or Bay of Pigs (1961), the Venezuelan people defeated this Bay of Piglets plot in La Guaira (2020).

The Weakness of US Power

Five Iranian tankers – each laden with gasoline – moved swiftly with their flags flying and their radar open to detection from Bandar Abbas (Iran) into the Caribbean Sea. One of them, serendipitously named ‘Fortune’, broke through the feverish US naval blockade to enter El Palito, Venezuela on 24 May. That the US was unable to force a confrontation with the Iranian vessels signals the weakness of the US position. A new sea bridge opens between two countries under immense US pressure; this demonstrates the limitations – but not the end – of US power and of the hybrid war.

Chávez lives. Puente Llaguno, Caracas. 2015.
Comando Creativo

About the pictures

The Comando Creativo (‘Creative Command’) is a collective that brings together workers from the fields of visual communication, social scientist specialists and researchers, and people who – from many other professions – see themselves as the producers of meaning, stories, and symbols. Since 2007, the Comando Creativo has been dedicated to the production of popular, counter-hegemonic communications. Currently, the collective is sharing its work on the platform utopix.cc.

《请战书·红手印》Volunteer medical workers – all hands on deck.
Li Zhong

CoronaShock is a term that refers to how a virus struck the world with such gripping force; it refers to how the social order in the bourgeois state crumbled, while the social order in the socialist parts of the world appeared more resilient.

This is the first in a multiple part series of studies on CoronaShock. It is made up of three articles on how China identified the novel coronavirus and then how the Chinese government and Chinese society fought against its wider diffusion. The report is researched and written by Vijay Prashad (Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), Du Xiaojun (a translator and linguist from Shanghai), and Weiyan Zhu (an attorney from Beijing). These articles first appeared through the Globetrotter service of the Independent Media Institute. The paintings in this booklet have been done by Li Zhong, an artist from Shanghai. At the end of the booklet is an interview with Li Zhong conducted by Tings Chak (Lead Designer at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research).

Growing Xenophobia Against China in the Midst of CoronaShock

On 25 March, the foreign ministers of the G7 states failed to release a statement. The United States – the president of the G7 at this time – had the responsibility of drafting the statement, which was seen to be unacceptable by several other members. In the draft, the United States used the phrase ‘Wuhan Virus’ and asserted that the global pandemic was the responsibility of the Chinese government. Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump had used the phrase ‘Chinese Virus’ (which he said he would stop using) and a member of his staff was reportedly heard using the slur ‘Kung Flu’. On Fox News, anchor Jesse Watters explained in his unfiltered racist way ‘why [the virus] started in China. Because they have these markets where they eat raw bats and snakes’. Violent attacks against Asians in the United States have spiked as a consequence of the stigma driven by the Trump administration.

Quite correctly, the World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for ‘solidarity, not stigma’ in a speech given on 14 February, long before the virus hit Europe or North America. Ghebreyesus knew that there would be a temptation to blame China for the virus, in fact, to use the virus as a weapon to attack China in the most repulsive way. His slogan – ‘solidarity, not stigma’ – was intended to sharply demarcate an internationalist and humanist response to the global pandemic from a narrow bigoted and unscientific response to the virus.

Origins

SARS-CoV-2, which is the official name for the virus, developed in the way that many viruses develop: through the transmission between animals and humans. There is as yet no firm consensus about this particular virus. New pathogens arise in various animal reservoirs and these cross over to the human population, which gives rise to new diseases and can cause epidemics. For example, in the recent period, we have seen a range of viruses such as H1N1, H5Nx, H5N2, and H5N6.

Even though H5N2 was known to have originated in the United States, it was not known as the ‘American virus’, and no one sought to stigmatize the United States for it. The scientific name was used to describe these viruses, which are not the responsibility of this or that nation; the arrival of these viruses raises the fundamental question of human encroachment into forests and the balance between human civilisation (agriculture and cities) and the wilds.

The naming of a virus is a controversial matter. In 1832, cholera advanced from British India toward Europe. It was called ‘Asiatic Cholera’. The French felt that since they were democratic, they would not succumb to a disease of authoritarianism; but France was ravaged by cholera, which was as much about the bacteria as it is about the state of hygiene inside Europe and North America. (When cholera struck the United States in 1848, the Public Bathing Movement was born.)

The ‘Spanish Flu’ was only named after Spain because it came during World War I when journalism in most belligerent countries was censored. The media in Spain, not being in the war, widely reported the flu, and so that pandemic took the name of the country. In fact, evidence showed that the Spanish Flu began in the United States in a military base in Kansas where the chickens transmitted the virus to soldiers. It would then travel to British India, where 60 percent of the casualties of that pandemic took place. It was never named the ‘American Flu’ and no Indian government has ever sought to recover costs from the United States because of the animal-to-human transmission that happened there.

China and the Coronavirus

In an important article published in the medical journal The Lancet, Professor Chaolin Huang wrote, ‘The symptom onset date of the first patient [with COVID-19, the disease from the virus] identified was December 1, 2019’. Initially, there was widespread confusion about the nature of the virus, and whether it could be transmitted from human to human. It was assumed that the virus was one of the known viruses and that it was mainly transmitted from animals to humans.

Dr. Zhang Jixian, director of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of Hubei Province Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, was one of the first doctors to sound the alarm about the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak. On 26 December, Dr. Zhang saw an elderly couple who had a high fever and a cough – symptoms that characterize the flu. Further examination ruled out influenza A and B, mycoplasma, chlamydia, adenovirus, and SARS. A CT scan of their son showed that something had partially filled the interior of his lungs. That same day, another patient – a seller from a seafood market – presented the same symptoms. Dr. Zhang reported the four patients to China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of the Jianghan District of Wuhan. Over the next two days, Dr. Zhang and her colleagues saw three more patients with the same symptoms who had visited the seafood market. On 29 December, the Hubei Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention sent experts to investigate the seven patients at the hospital. On 6 February, Hubei Province recognised the valuable work done by Dr. Zhang and her team in the fight to identify and reveal the virus. There was no attempt to suppress her work.

《快递小哥》Deliveryman.
Li Zhong

The provincial authorities knew about the new virus by 29 December. The next day, they informed China’s Centre for Disease Control, and the following day, on 31 December, China informed the World Health Organization (WHO), a month after the first mysterious infection was first reported in Wuhan. The virus was identified by 3 January; a week later, China shared the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus with the whole world. They uploaded it on public databases and shared it with the WHO.

It is because China released the genomic sequence so quickly that scientific work immediately took place across the planet. Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the leading centre for medicine in Germany, used this genome sequence data to create the first test kit outside of China for the virus, which the WHO adopted and made available to all countries. The protocol was published in Berlin on 17 January. The search for a possible vaccine also immediately began and there are now at least 71 candidates, four in very early testing stages.

Two other doctors – Dr. Li Wenliang (an ophthalmologist from Wuhan Central Hospital) and Dr. Ai Fen (chief of the department of emergency treatment at Wuhan Central Hospital) – raised issues outside the channels for reporting such information. In the early days, when everything seemed fuzzy, Dr. Li and seven others were reprimanded by the authorities on 3 January. Dr. Li died of the coronavirus on 7 February. Major medical and government institutions – the National Health Commission, the Health Commission of Hubei Province, the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, and the Wuhan government – expressed their public condolences to his family. On 19 March, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau admitted that it had inappropriately reprimanded Dr. Li, and it chastised its officers. Dr. Ai Fen was criticised by the hospital on 2 January, but in February she received an apology and was later felicitated by Wuhan Broadcasting and Television Station.

China’s National Health Commission assembled a team of experts from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences; they conducted a series of experiments on the virus samples. On 8 January, they confirmed that the novel coronavirus was indeed the source of the outbreak. The first death from the virus was reported on 11 January. On 14 January, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said that they did not have evidence of human-to-human transmission, but they could not say with certainty that human-to-human transmission was not possible.

A week later, on 20 January, Dr. Zhong Nanshan said that the novel coronavirus could be spread from human to human (Dr. Zhong, a member of the Communist Party of China, is a famous respiratory expert and a leading person in the fight against SARS in China). Some medical workers were infected by the virus. That day, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier of the State Council Li Keqiang instructed all levels of government to pay attention to the spread of the virus; the National Health Commission and other official bodies were told to begin emergency response measures. Wuhan went into full lockdown on 23 January, three days after human-to-human transmission of this virus was established. The next day, Hubei province activated its Level-1 alert. On 25 January, Premier Li assembled a coordinating group. He visited Wuhan two days later.

Some local Hubei government officials understated certain aspects of the virus in early January and they were quickly removed. As we have shown, that did not impact the breakneck speed of scientific investigation, nor did it slow down the decisive measures taken by all levels of the Chinese government and within Chinese society.

It is unclear if China could have done anything differently as it faced an unknown virus. A WHO team that visited China from 16 to 24 February praised the government and the Chinese people in its report for doing their utmost to stem the spread of the virus; thousands of doctors and medical personnel arrived in Wuhan, two new hospitals were built for those infected by the virus, and various civic bodies went into action to assist families under lockdown. What the Chinese authorities did to stem the rise of the infections – as a major study shows – was to put those infected in hospitals, intensively trace those who had been in contact with them, quarantine those who had been in contact with them, and closely monitor the population. Lockdowns were not enough. This targeted policy was able to identify those who had been in the chain of infection and thereby break the chain.

The World and China

The Indian state of Kerala’s Health Minister K. K. Shailaja followed the rise of the cases in Wuhan and began emergency measures in this state of 35 million people in India. She did not wait. Nor did the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc and his government, which immediately took measures to break the chain of infection. What China was doing taught Shailaja and Phúc and their teams how to respond. As a result, they were able to contain the virus in this part of India and in Vietnam.

The United States was informed about the severity of the problem early on. On New Year’s Day, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CDC) officials called Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, while he was on vacation. ‘What he heard rattled him’, wrote The New York Times. Dr. George F. Gao, the head of the Chinese CDC, spoke to Redfield days later, and Dr. Gao ‘burst into tears’ during the conversation. This warning was not taken seriously. A month later, on 30 January, U.S. President Donald Trump took a very cavalier position: ‘We think it’s going to have a good ending for us’, he said of the coronavirus. ‘That I can assure you’. He did not declare a national emergency till 13 March, by which time the virus had already begun to spread in the United States.

Other heads of state around the world were just as cavalier. They were like the French politicians of 1832 who felt that France would not be affected by ‘Asiatic cholera’. There was no such thing as Asiatic cholera in 1832 – only cholera that would harm people with poor hygienic systems. In the same way, there is no such thing as a Chinese virus; there is only the SARS-CoV-2. The Chinese people showed us the way to confront this virus, but only after some trial and error on their part. It is time to learn that lesson now. As the WHO says, ‘test, test, test’, and then carefully calibrate lockdowns, isolations, and quarantine. Chinese doctors who developed expertise in fighting the virus are now in Iran, Italy, and elsewhere, bringing the spirit of internationalism and collaboration with them.

On 4 March, Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led the WHO team to China, was interviewed by The New York Times. When asked about the Chinese response to the virus, he said, ‘They’re mobilised, like in a war, and it’s fear of the virus that was driving them. They really saw themselves on the frontlines of protecting the rest of China. And of the world’.

《披战袍斩病魔》
Medical workers putting on their gowns to fight the ‘evil’ virus.
Li Zhong

How China Learned About SARS-CoV-2 in the Weeks Before the Global Pandemic

The WHO declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the WHO, said at the press conference on that day that this was ‘the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus’. He said, ‘In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled’. From 11 March onward, it became clear that this virus was deadly and that it had the capacity to tear through human society with ease. But this was not always so clear.

On 17 March, Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute (USA) and his team showed that the new coronavirus strain, SARS-CoV-2, had a mutation in its genes known as a polybasic cleavage site that was unseen in any coronaviruses found in bats or pangolins, and that there is a likelihood that the virus came to humans many years ago, and indeed not necessarily in Wuhan. Dr. Chen Jinping of the Guangdong Institute of Applied Biological Resources, along with colleagues, had earlier published a paper on 20 February noting that their data did not support the claim that the new coronavirus in humans evolved directly from a pangolin coronavirus strain. Zhong Nanshan, a noted epidemiologist, said that ‘although the COVID-19 first appeared in China, that does not necessarily mean it originated here’.

The Western media has consistently made scientifically unfounded claims about the source of the virus, even when Western scientists were urging caution. They were certainly not listening to the doctors in Wuhan or to public health experts in China.

When doctors in Wuhan first saw patients in their hospitals in December, they believed that the patients had pneumonia, although CT scans showed severe lung damage and the patients were not responding to the typical medical treatment. Doctors were alarmed by the situation, but there was no cause to imagine that this was going to escalate into a regional epidemic and then a global pandemic.

The doctors and hospitals in Wuhan eventually came to grips with the evidence before them, and as soon as it became clear that this was an unfamiliar virus and that it spreads rapidly, they contacted China’s national Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and then the WHO.

You would not know this if you only read Western newspapers, notably The New York Times, which suggested in a widely circulated report that the Chinese government had suppressed information about the epidemic and that the Chinese warning system did not work.

Our investigation finds neither of these arguments to be true. There is no evidence that the Chinese government systematically suppressed information; there is only evidence that a few doctors were reprimanded by their hospitals or by the local police station for divulging information to the public and not using the established protocols. There is also no evidence that the Chinese direct reporting system was faulty; instead, there is only evidence that the system, like any system, could not easily adjust to unknown or unclassified outbreaks.

The Chinese medical system, like other systems, has a rigorous procedure to report such things as health care emergencies. Medical personnel report to their hospital administration, which then reports to the various levels of CDC and the Health Commissions; they can also use the internet-based direct reporting system. It did not take long for the medical personnel to report the problem, and even less time for a high-level investigation team to arrive in Wuhan. This is what our investigation found.

Did the Chinese Government Suppress Information?

Dr. Zhang Jixian, director of Respiratory and Critical Medicine at the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, saw an elderly couple on 26 December. Their ailment bothered her. She arranged CT scans of the lungs of the couple’s son who otherwise appeared healthy; the result, however, ‘showed ground glass opacity’. Uncertain about the causes, Dr. Zhang reported the situation to Dr. Xia Wenguang, the vice president of the hospital, as well as other departments of the hospital; the hospital promptly told Jianghan District Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This took place within 24 hours.

More patients arrived at the Hubei Provincial Hospital on 28 and 29 December. The doctors still did not know more than that these patients presented symptoms of pneumonia, and that they had significant lung damage. It became clear to them that the immediate location for the spread of the virus was the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. On 29 December, as the cases increased, the hospital’s vice president Dr. Xia Wenguang reported directly to the disease control department of the provincial and municipal Health Commissions. That day, the disease control department of the municipal and provincial Health Commissions instructed the Wuhan CDC, Jinyintan Hospital, and the Jianghan District CDC to visit the Hubei Provincial Hospital for an epidemiological investigation. On 31 December, an expert group of the National Health Commission arrived in Wuhan from Beijing. In other words, officials from Beijing arrived in Wuhan within five days of the first sign of a problem.

《疫情下的卫士》Warriors fighting against the epidemic.
Li Zhong

The day before the expert group arrived from Beijing, one doctor – Dr. Ai Fen – expressed her frustration at the mysterious virus with some medical school classmates. Dr. Ai Fen saw a test report of unidentified pneumonia. She circled the words ‘SARS coronavirus’ in red, photographed it, and passed it on to a medical school classmate. The report spread among doctors in Wuhan, including Dr. Li Wenliang (a Communist Party member) and seven other doctors who were later reprimanded by the police. On 2 January, the head of Wuhan Central Hospital Supervision Department warned Dr. Ai Fen not to release information outside the channels of the hospital.

The reprimands received by these doctors are offered as evidence of high-level suppression of information about the virus. This is not logical. The reprimands took place in early January. By 31 December, a high-level team arrived from Beijing, and on that day, the WHO had been informed; China’s CDC and the WHO had been informed before these two doctors were reprimanded.

On 7 February, the National Supervision Commission decided to send an investigation team to Wuhan to investigate the situation. On 19 March, the team published the results of their investigation and held a press conference to share their findings. As a result of the investigation, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau issued a circular to withdraw the letter of reprimand issued to Dr. Li Wenliang. On 2 April, Dr. Li Wenliang, and 13 others who died in the fight against the virus, were honoured by the government as martyrs (this is the highest honour given by the Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China to its citizens).

There is no evidence that local officials were afraid to report the epidemic to Beijing. There is no evidence that it took ‘whistleblowers’, as The New York Times put it, to shine a light on the issue. Dr. Zhang was not a whistleblower; she followed the established protocol, which led to information being passed on to the WHO within days.

China’s Early Warning System

In mid-November 2002, a SARS outbreak spread throughout Foshan (Guangdong Province, China). Doctors could not easily understand what was going on. Eventually, in mid-February, China’s Ministry of Health wrote an email to the WHO Beijing office ‘describing “a strange contagious disease” that has “already left more than 100 people dead”’ in one week. Also mentioned in the message was ‘a “panic” attitude, currently, where people are emptying pharmaceutical stocks of any medicine they think may protect them’. It took eight months to contain this SARS outbreak.

In its aftermath, the Chinese government set up a direct reporting system to catch any health emergencies before they spiral out of control. The system works very well for clearly defined infectious diseases. Dr. Hu Shanlian, a professor of health economics at Fudan University, describes two such incidents. As part of the polio eradication expert group, his team found two cases of polio in Qinghai. The local government reported the cases to the central government, and it began emergency immunisation and gave children a sugar cube vaccine to effectively control the disease and its spread. As well, he reports about the two cases of the plague in Beijing that came from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. ‘Diseases like these’, he wrote, ‘can be quickly absorbed from the direct reporting system’.

Well-known ailments such as polio and plagues can easily be entered into an early warning system. But if the doctors are confounded by the virus, the system cannot easily work. Dr. Ai Fen, who forwarded some clinical records to her colleagues, said that the direct reporting system is very effective if the ailment is commonplace, such as hepatitis and tuberculosis. ‘But this time it was unknown’, she said. Dr. Zhang Wenhong of Shanghai said that the direct reporting system ‘is more powerful than those in most countries in the world for known pathogens [such as MERS and H1N1] or pathogens that do not spread quickly and have limited human transmission [such as H7N9]’. If confronted with a new virus, the medical personnel and the direct reporting system are bewildered.

The most effective way to proceed when there is no clarity about the infection is to inform the disease control department in the hospital. This is exactly what Dr. Zhang Jixian did, and her superior, the head of the hospital, contacted the local CDC, who contacted China’s national CDC and the National Health Commission of China. Within five days of Dr. Zhang’s alarm, the WHO was informed about a mysterious virus in Wuhan.

Since 21 January, the WHO has released a daily situation report. The first report highlights the events from 31 December to 20 January. The first bullet point of that report says that on 31 December, the WHO China Country Office was informed that there were ‘cases of pneumonia unknown aetiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China’. The Chinese authorities isolated a new type of coronavirus on 7 January, and then on 12 January they shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus for use in developing diagnostic kits. Precise information about the virus’s form of transmission would not come until later.

The direct reporting system was updated on 24 January with the information about the novel coronavirus. It has now learned from experience.

Facts and Ideology

Florida Senator Marco Rubio accused the WHO of ‘servility to the Chinese Communist Party’. He wrote that the United States will open ‘investigations into the WHO’s unacceptably slow decision-making on whether to declare a global pandemic and into how China has compromised the integrity of the WHO’. Characteristically, Rubio offered no facts. US President Donald Trump mirrored Rubio’s accusation, and then said that his administration would cut the annual $400 million that the US contributes to the WHO. Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made unfounded allegations that the virus came from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology.

Was the WHO slow in declaring a global pandemic? In 2009, the first known case of H1N1 was detected in California on 15 April; the WHO declared a global pandemic on 11 June, two months later. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the first known cases were detected in January 2020; the WHO declared a global pandemic on 11 March – one and a half months later. In the interim, the WHO sent in investigation teams to Wuhan (20-21 January) and to Beijing, Guangdong, Sichuan, and Wuhan (16-24 February); their investigation, before the declaration, was thorough. The timeframe for the WHO declaration is similar to, and even faster, in 2020 than it was in 2009.

Whether it is The New York Times or Marco Rubio, there is an urgency to conclude that China’s government and Chinese society are to blame for the global pandemic, and that their failures not only compromised the WHO but caused the pandemic. Facts become irrelevant. What we have shown in this report is that there was neither wilful suppression of the facts nor was there a fear from local officials to report to Beijing; nor indeed was the system broken. The coronavirus epidemic is mysterious and complex, and the Chinese doctors and authorities hastily learned what was going on and then made rational decisions based on the facts available.

《水星家纺在行动》Mercury textile company in full production.
Li Zhong

How China Broke the Chain of Infection

On 31 March, a group of scientists from around the world – from Oxford University to Beijing Normal University – published an important paper in Science magazine. This paper – ‘An Investigation of Transmission Control Measures During the First 50 Days of the COVID-19 Epidemic in China’ – proposes that if the Chinese government had not initiated the lockdown of Wuhan and the national emergency response, then there would have been 744,000 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of Wuhan. ‘Control measures taken in China’, the authors argue, ‘potentially hold lesso[n]s for other countries around the world’.

In the World Health Organization’s February report after a visit to China, the team members wrote, ‘In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history’.

In part 3, we detail the measures taken by the different levels of the Chinese government and by social organizations to stem the spread of the virus and the disease at a time when scientists had just begun to accumulate knowledge about them and were working in the absence of a vaccine and a specific drug treatment for COVID-19.

The Emergence of a Plan

In the early days of January 2020, the National Health Commission (NHC) and the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began to establish protocols to deal with the diagnosis, treatment, and laboratory testing of what was then considered a ‘viral pneumonia of unknown cause’. A treatment manual was produced by the NHC and health departments in Hubei Province and sent to all medical institutions in Wuhan City on 4 January; city-wide training was conducted that same day. By 7 January, China’s CDC isolated the first novel coronavirus strain, and three days later, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and others developed testing kits.

By the second week of January, more was known about the nature of the virus, and so a plan began to take shape to contain it. On 13 January, the NHC instructed Wuhan City authorities to begin temperature checks at ports and stations and to reduce public gatherings. The next day, the NHC held a national teleconference that alerted all of China to the infectious novel coronavirus strain and announced the need to prepare for a public health emergency. On 17 January, the NHC sent seven inspection teams to China’s provinces to train public health officials about the virus, and on 19 January the NHC distributed nucleic acid reagents for test kits to China’s many health departments. Zhong Nanshan – former president of the Chinese Medical Association – led a high-level team to Wuhan City to carry out inspections on 18 and 19 January.

Over the next few days, the NHC began to understand how the virus was transmitted and how this transmission could be halted. Between 15 January and 3 March, the NHC published seven editions of its guidelines. A look at them shows a precise development of its knowledge about the virus and its plans for mitigation; these included new methods for treatment, including the use of ribavirin and a combination of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and modern medicine. The National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine would eventually report that 90 percent of patients received a traditional medicine, which was found to be effective in 90 percent of them.

By 22 January, it had become clear that transport in and out of Wuhan had to be restricted. That day, the State Council Information Office urged people not to go to Wuhan, and the next day the city was essentially shut down. The grim reality of the virus had by now become clear to everyone.

The Government Acts

On 25 January, the Communist Party of China (CPC) formed a Central Committee Leading Group for COVID-19 Prevention and Control with two leaders – Li Keqiang and Wang Huning – in charge. China’s President Xi Jinping tasked the group to use the best scientific thinking as they formulated their policies to contain the virus, and to use every resource to put people’s health before economic considerations. By 27 January, Vice Premier of the State Council Sun Chunlan led a Central Guiding Team to Wuhan City to shape the new aggressive response to control the virus. Over time, the government and the Communist Party developed an agenda to tackle the virus, which can be summarized in four points:

1. Prevent the diffusion of the virus by maintaining not only a lockdown on the province, but by minimizing traffic within the province.This was complicated by the Chinese New Year break (originally from 24 January to 30 January), which had already begun; families would visit one another and visit markets (this is the largest short-term human migration, when almost all of China’s 1.4 billion people gather in each other’s homes). All of this had to be prevented. As part of the effort to stop the spread of the virus, the break was extended to 2 February. Local authorities had already begun to use the most advanced epidemiological thinking to track and study the source of the infections and trace the route of transmission. This was essential to shut down the spread of the virus.
2. Deploy resources for medical workers, including protective equipment, as well as hospital beds, equipment, test kits, and medicines for the patients.This included the building of temporary treatment centres – including two full hospitals(Huoshenshan Hospital and Leishenshan Hospital). Increased screening required more test kits, which had to be developed and manufactured.
3. Ensure that during the lockdown of the province, food and fuel were made available to the residents.
4. Ensure the release of information to the public that is based on scientific fact and not rumours.To this end, the team investigated any and all irresponsible actions taken by the local authorities, from the reports of the first cases to the end of January.

These four points defined the approach taken by the Chinese government and the local authorities through February and March. A joint prevention and control mechanism was established under the leadership of the NHC, with wide-ranging authority to coordinate the fight to break the chain of infection. Wuhan City and Hubei Province remained under virtual lockdown for 76 days until early April.

On 23 February, President Xi Jinping spoke at a teleconference for 170,000 officials and Communist Party cadres and military officials from every part of China; ‘this is a crisis and also a major test’, said President Xi. All of China’s emphasis would be on fighting the epidemic and putting people first, and at the same time China would ensure that its long-term economic agenda would not be damaged.

《义务送药者》A volunteer delivers medicines.
Li Zhong

Neighbourhood Committees

A key – and underreported – part of the response to the virus was in the public action that defines Chinese society. In the 1950s, urban civil organizations – or juweihui – developed as a way for residents in neighbourhoods to organise their mutual safety and mutual aid. In Wuhan, as the lockdown developed, it was members of the neighbourhood committees who went door to door to check temperatures, to deliver food (particularly to the elderly), and to deliver medical supplies. In other parts of China, the neighbourhood committees set up temperature checkpoints at the entrances to the neighbourhoods to monitor people who went in and out; this was basic public health in a decentralised fashion. As of 9 March , 53 people working in these committees lost their lives; 49 of them were members of the Communist Party.

The Communist Party’s 90 million members and the 4.6 million grassroots party organizations helped shape the public action across the country at the frontlines of China’s 650,000 urban and rural communities. Medical workers who were party members travelled to Wuhan to be part of the frontline medical response. Other party members worked in their neighbourhood committees or developed new platforms to respond to the virus.

Decentralization defined the creative responses. In Tianxinqiao Village (Tiaoma Town, Yuhua District, Changsha, Hunan Province), the village announcer Yang Zhiqiang used 26 loudspeakers to urge villagers not to pay New Year visits to each other and not to eat dinner together. In Nanning (Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region), the police used drones to play the sound of trumpets as a reminder not to violate the lockdown order.

In Chengdu (Sichuan Province), 440,000 citizens formed teams to do a range of public actions to stem the transmission of the virus: they publicised the health regulations, they checked temperatures, they delivered food and medicines, and they found ways to entertain the otherwise traumatised public. The Communist Party cadre led the way here, drawing together businesses, social groups, and volunteers into a local self-management structure. In Beijing, residents developed an app that sends registered users warnings about the virus and creates a database that can be used to help track the movement of the virus in the city.

Medical Intervention

Li Lanjuan was one of the early medical doctors to enter Wuhan; she recalled that when she got there, medical tests ‘were difficult to get’ and the situation with supplies was ‘pretty bad’. Within a few days, she said, more than 40,000 medical workers arrived in the city, and patients with mild symptoms were treated in temporary treatment centres, while those who had been seriously impacted were taken to the hospitals. Protective equipment, tests, ventilators, and other supplies were rushed in. ‘The mortality rate was greatly reduced’, said Dr. Li Lanjuan. ‘In just two months, the epidemic situation in Wuhan was basically under control’.

From across China came 1,800 epidemiological teams – with five people in each team – to carry out surveys of the population. Wang Bo, a leader of one of the teams from Jilin Province, said that his team conducted ‘demanding and dangerous’ door-to-door epidemiological surveys. Yao Laishun, a member of one of the Jilin teams, said that within weeks their team had carried out epidemiological surveys of 374 people and traced and monitored 1,383 close contacts; this was essential work in locating who was infected and treated as well as who needed to be isolated if they had not yet presented symptoms or if they tested negative. Up to 9 February, the health authorities had inspected 4.2 million households (10.59 million people) in Wuhan; that means that they inspected 99 percent of the population, a gargantuan exercise.

The speed of the production of medical equipment, particularly protective equipment for the medical workers, was breath-taking. As of 28 January, China made fewer than 10,000 sets of personal protective equipment (PPE) a day; by 24 February, its production capacity exceeded 200,000 per day. As of 1 February, the government produced 773,000 test kits a day; by 25 February, it was producing 1.7 million kits per day; by 31 March, 4.26 million test kits were produced per day. Direction from the authorities moved industrial plants to churn out protective gear, ambulances, ventilators, electrocardiograph monitors, respiratory humidification therapy machines, blood gas analysers, air disinfectant machines, and haemodialysis machines. The government focused attention on making sure that there was no shortage of any medical equipment.

《抗疫日记·憩》Diary on the fight against the virus: taking a short break.
Li Zhong

Chen Wei, one of China’s leading virologists who had worked on the 2003 SARS epidemic and had gone to Sierra Leone in 2015 to develop the world’s first Ebola vaccine, rushed to Wuhan with her team. They set up a portable testing laboratory by 30 January; by 16 March, her team produced the first novel coronavirus vaccine that went into clinical trials, with Chen being one of the first to be vaccinated as part of the trial.

Relief

To shut down a province with 60 million inhabitants for more than two months and to largely shut down a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants is not easy. The social and economic impact was always going to be very great. But, the Chinese government – in its early directives – said that the economic hit to the country was not going to define the response; the well-being of the people had to be dominant in the formulation of any policy.

On 22 January, before the Leading Group was formed, the government issued a circular that said that medical treatment for COVID-19 patients was guaranteed and that it would be free of cost. A medical insurance reimbursement policy was then formulated, which said that expenses from medicines and medical services needed for treating the COVID-19 would be completely covered by the insurance fund; no patient would have to pay any money.

During the lockdown, the government created a mechanism to ensure the steady supply of food and fuel at normal prices. State-owned enterprises such as China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation, China Grain Reserves Group, and China National Salt Industry Group increased their supply of rice, flour, oil, meat, and salt. The All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives helped enterprises connect directly with farmers’ cooperatives; other organizations like the China Agriculture Industry Chamber of Commerce pledged to maintain supply and price stability. The Ministry of Public Security met on 3 February to crack down on price gouging and hoarding; up to 8 April, the prosecutorial organizations in China investigated 3,158 cases of epidemic-related criminal offenses. The state offered financial support for small and medium-sized enterprises; in return, businesses revamped their practices to ensure a safe working environment (Guangzhou Lingnan Cable Company, for instance, staggered lunch breaks, tested the temperature of workers, disinfected the working area periodically, ensured that ventilators worked, and provided staff with protective equipment such as masks, goggles, hand lotion, and alcohol-based sanitizers).

Lockdown

A study in The Lancet by four epidemiologists from Hong Kong shows that the lockdown of Wuhan in late January prevented the spread of the infection outside of the Hubei Province; the major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Wenzhou, they write, saw a collapse in the number of infections within two weeks of the partial lockdown. However, the scholars write, as a consequence of the infectiousness of COVID-19 and the absence of herd immunity, the virus might have a second wave. This is something that worries the Chinese government, which continues to be vigilant about this novel coronavirus (a cluster of cases in Harbin, near the China-Russia border, reinforces the need for vigilance).

Nonetheless, the lights of celebration flashed across Wuhan as the lockdown was lifted. Medical personnel and volunteers breathed a sigh of relief. China had been able to use its considerable resources – its socialist culture and institutions – to swiftly break the chain.

Painting an Epidemic: An Interview with Li Zhong

9 April 2020, Shanghai

We sat down with Li Zhong (李钟) at a small open-air tea house run by a friend of a friend; Zhong is a painter of the Shanghai Academy of Painting and Calligraphy and president of the Fengxian District Artist Association. A man in his forties, Zhong wore a navy blue blazer and jeans, and, of course, a face mask. Even three months after the COVID-19 epidemic began, in Shanghai – a city relatively sheltered from the virus that has resumed daily life – 100% of people still wear masks while outside of their homes. The masks may prevent us from recognising each other in the streets, but still we can smile behind them.

And there is reason to smile – the 76-day lockdown of the hardest-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan had been lifted just over 24 hours before we met. ‘This is a very exciting moment for the Chinese people’, reflects Zhong. ‘This means that China has defeated the virus and people all over China trust science. But we cannot stop being vigilant or all our previous efforts will be for nothing’. He is referring to the worries over the recent rise of imported cases of the virus and the fears of a second wave of the virus in China.

We came to know of Zhong through a series of paintings he made in solidarity with the workers fighting COVID-19 in Wuhan. The scenes portray sensitive, everyday moments in a traditional Chinese ink painting style – shades of black ink with colour accents, most prominently the blues and reds of medical outfits. A traffic officer slurping down his cup of instant noodle, still in uniform. A security guard catching a brief nap during the intensive work nights and days. Workers taking temperatures, sewing personal protective equipment, clearing garbage, and delivering supplies. Workers who, behind masks, become anonymous and, in a series, become whole. Zhong began posting these images on his WeChat ‘moments’ (similar to ‘stories’ on other social media platforms), which were circulated and eventually reached some news outlets. Little has been told, however, about the origins of the paintings and who was behind them, so Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research went to speak with Li Zhong in Shanghai.

‘Well, this was a special year’, Zhong told us. After briefly introducing himself, Zhong dives into the sequence of events of the COVID-19 epidemic, which moved him to paint: ‘I was recording the process of how the Chinese people fought the virus; it’s a kind of record of the Chinese people’s bravery’. He is an artist who deeply believes in science. He categorised his work meticulously: Raging Epidemic, Frontline Warrior, Grassroots Perseverance, Logistical Support, Suspension of Classes, and Anti-Epidemic Sketches. But he is reluctant to speak about himself as a protagonist in this story. Instead, he talks about socialist values. He commends the government’s decisive actions; over the past two months, millions of people have been mobilised across the country to do frontline work, with most of the 1.4 billion population in some form of lockdown.

‘The reason why I created the paintings was to show the benefits of a socialist country, and this is different from capitalism in the West. As an example, Chinese people are a people for whom solidarity is key; we are a hardworking people. During New Year’s Eve, Chinese families gather together. However, many people sacrificed this precious time with their families to help fight the virus. Many medical staff went to Wuhan. I was very touched by these actions. They are so noble, but they are just ordinary people like us. They are not only the medical staff, but also grassroots staff and officials, community staff, many people who gave up their traditional festival. And this is difficult for other countries to do’.

《致敬天使·不一样的年夜饭)》Tribute to an angel – a different New Year’s Eve dinner.
Li Zhong

Tribute to an angel – a different New Year’s Eve dinner (致敬天使·不一样的年夜饭) features two medical staff hastily eating a meal while squatting, still in medical gear. A ‘different’ meal is also portrayed in a different style. He deploys a traditional Chinese style of painting in service of the contemporary moment, to ‘develop the new from the old’, as Mao Zedong himself might have called it. Ink wash painting emerged during the Tang Dynasty and is common throughout East Asia. Its characteristic black ink, diluted to various concentrations and shades, is painted onto a highly absorbent and delicate rice paper. Once a stroke is painted, it cannot be modified or undone. Its ability to capture a moment is not measured by its realism but by its essence – it is a snapshot that already begins to fade once the brush meets the paper, as if changing with the speed of the virus itself.

In the tradition of socialist painting, Zhong turns our gaze to the workers – the subjects who have consistently been excluded from bourgeois painting and who are now absent in the Western media’s portrayals of China’s response to the pandemic. ‘Across the world, people may say bad things about China, but this experience has changed their view totally. They surprisingly never considered the solidarity of Chinese people […] but right now across the globe, everyone is asking China for help and we are the only ones helping. China has helped 120 countries, both with supplies and staff’.

《停课不停学》Stop class, but don’t stop learning.
Li Zhong

In celebrating those who labour, Zhong himself also went to work. During his self-quarantine of one and half months, he created 129 paintings – creating more than two new paintings a day. His social commitment is clear, both as an artist and as a member of the Communist Party of China. Zhong studied and referenced images from the online and televised reporting in China, ‘which showed a lot of the workers’ perspective’. The paintings have also gone back to the workers themselves, such as the twenty medical staff from his community who went to Wuhan. The paintings gave them courage and encouragement; ‘They told me that my paintings reflect the truth of the outbreak. In the future when they see my paintings, we will not forget’, Zhong explained.

At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research we are engaged in a battle of ideas, which we understand is also a battle over the visual. Zhong made art that contests in this battle. He made art ‘to show the soldiers who are fighting against the virus, and these soldiers don’t just include medical staff. This includes the people staying at home, they are also fighters’. He invited us to see a different representation.

One of his paintings features a child at a drawing board, colouring in block letters. It reads Stop class, but don’t stop learning (抗击疫情停课不停学). ‘Because of the virus children cannot go to school’, Zhong explains. ‘The experts say that the virus can be transmitted from person to person. So, the schools had to be closed. Students must remain in quarantine, so the students are drawing comics in support of the medical workers’. It is a drawing within a drawing, a record of a record being made.

As for artists, what can we do? ‘They can reflect the situation positively. They should be true. Don’t blame other countries or spread misinformation, because the biggest challenge is to defeat the virus, which requires our unity’. As soldiers in this international battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, whether working on the frontlines or behind the scenes, quarantined at home or out of a home, caregiving or being cared for, at your computers or at your easels, Zhong reminds us to be scientists, to learn, and to be true.

Li Zhong, painting an epidemic.
Tings Chak

International Assembly of the Peoples and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Introduction

The global pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 disease has paralyzed large parts of the world. In this context, on March 21, we launched a Declaration in which we urged all the people of the world to put Life before Capital. We proposed the opening up of a debate on an international political platform with 16 concrete proposals of actions to confront the pandemic.

The Declaration was launched jointly by the International People’s Assembly (IPA) – an international articulation of anti-imperialist movements and organizations from 87 countries – and by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. We have since invited organizations and individuals to endorse the Declaration.

To date, we have received a total of 479 endorsements from 70 countries on all continents, including 8 international platforms, 233 organizations and 238 persons, mainly intellectuals.

The reaction of people to the Declaration is very positive. It indicates that there is a great popular will to give concrete answers to the crisis produced by this pandemic; our movements, and those not in our movements, wish to produce deep changes in the capitalist, neoliberal, and patriarchal system in which we live; this system is the root of the economic crisis; its destruction of the public systems of social and health protection generated the health crisis. All of these are elements that precede the pandemic and that aggravate the situation of the workers in the face of the contagion and lethality of this new disease.

At the same time, we have received important contributions and questions as part of the dialogue with the 16 points in the Declaration. We have systematized some of them below, because we consider that these aspects are essential for any future discussion.

1. The Gendered Impact of the CoronaShock. Without a doubt, the question of gender must be central to our assessment of the CoronaShock and of any policy framework of the left that emerges out of it.

1. 1. In the health field itself, three-quarters of the front-line workers are women, many of them working without union protection, without protective equipment, and without any leadership role in their fields. We put on the table the importance of building power for women workers.
   2. In the lockdown around the world, as a consequence of the overwhelming evidence that care works sits on the shoulders of women, patriarchal gender roles have asserted themselves. We believe fundamentally that the patriarchal understanding of ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’ must be challenged and the structures must be put in place – such as universal childcare and the fight for equity inside households – that undermine these distinctions.
   3. There is already evidence of an increase in domestic violence during the quarantine, where the main victims are women, especially poor and black working women. We urge all peoples of the world to denounce and combat violence by demanding that the State provide legal, social and economic protection to all women victims of violence.

2. The Question of the Dollar-Wall Street Complex. We had called upon the United Nations to rethink the question of the dollar being essential the global fiat currency. What we want to amplify is that the institutions of finance for trade and development are utterly dominated by the United States and by the European states – whether the banking networks, the money transfer networks, the ratings agencies, the currency used to reconcile international trade. We want to make the case that this biased institutional system needs to be democratised, with the emergence of truly international financial systems for both development and trade.

3. Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism. Despite decolonization, the states that became newly independent struggle for lack of capital and investment. They had to borrow from the old colonial powers, and often went into debt. When they tried to finance their debt, they were told to ‘structurally adjust’ their governmental policy to favour international capital rather than the social needs of their population. What needs to be on the table are reparations for colonialism – the vast amount of resources stolen from the formerly colonised states – and are new proposals to deal with the toxic debt and for further financing.

Finally, we cannot fail to mention that the pandemic clarified something about the social orders in which we live: on the one side, states with a socialist orientation (China, Cuba, Venezuela) mobilised whatever resources that they had available – regardless of economic losses – to contain the pandemic; the states of the bourgeois order utterly failed to use their considerable resources and failed to prepare a rational plan for these resources (the death rates from Italy to the United States of America have been catastrophic, a political crime against humanity).

The example of the Venezuelan people, the Cuban people, and the Chinese people fill our hearts with hope that another world is possible, where relations between peoples are based on solidarity, integration, cooperation and complementarity, as dreamed of by Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Berta Cáceres and other internationalists who preceded us.

Declaration

SARS-CoV-2 or COVID19, now declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation, has begun to wreak havoc in large parts of the world, with other parts waiting in anticipation. We are in a real struggle, which needs total mobilisation; a struggle that needs to put life before profit. We will only win this struggle – as China has already done – if our people are united and disciplined, if governments earn our respect by their actions, and if we act in solidarity across the globe.

Global debt is at $250 trillion, with corporate debt already enormous. On the other hand, there are trillions of dollars swirling around stock markets and in tax havens. As economic activity contracts, corporations will line up for bailouts; this is not the best use of precious human resources in this time. In the midst of this, that financial markets remain open is a failure of imagination. The drop in the value of stocks – in the markets from the Hang Seng to Wall Street – is merely a way to intensify global social anxiety, since the health of the stock market has come to be seen – erroneously – as an indicator of economic health in general.

Long-term quarantines and shutdowns have taken place in large parts of the world, certainly in Europe and North America, but increasingly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Economic activity has already begun to shudder to a halt. Estimates of the net losses are not possible to make, and even the major international institutions are adjusting their numbers every day. An UNCTAD study on 4 March, for instance, said that the slowdown of manufacturing in China will by itself disrupt the global supply chain and decrease exports by $50 billion; this is only one part of the loss. The total losses are – as yet – beyond calculation.

The IMF has pledged to use $1 trillion to help countries stave off economic disaster. Already about twenty countries have come to the IMF to request assistance; Iran, which had stayed away from the IMF for the past three decades, has now requested IMF help. It would be an auspicious change in the IMF’s policy, unprecedented in history, if not for the shameful refusal to help the people of Venezuela under the pretext of not recognizing the Venezuelan government. The IMF must not require any adjustments or strings for the provision of these bridge loans. The rejection of a loan to Venezuela is a sign of great political failure by the IMF.

International solidarity from China and Cuba is exemplary. Chinese and Cuban doctors have been in Iran, Italy, and Venezuela, while they have offered their services and expertise around the world. They have developed salves and medical treatments that prevents the fatality rate for those afflicted with COVID19, and they want to distribute this – without any patent or profit – to the world’s people. The example of the Chinese and Cubans in this period must be taken seriously; thanks to this example, it is easier to imagine socialism in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic, than it is to live under the heartless regime of capitalism.

European countries, now the focus of the pandemic, are seeing their weakened health systems collapse after decades of under-funding and neo-liberal austerity. European governments, as well as the European Central Bank and the EU, allocate the bulk of their resources on trying to safeguard the financial and business sectors from a sure economic debacle. The adoption of timid actions aimed at strengthening the capacities of States in the face of the crisis – targeted renationalisations, temporary public control of health service providers – or of palliative measures – limited exemptions from the payment of rent and housing mortgages – do not represent a decisive commitment to provide for basic guarantees for labour and safeguarding the health of the working class that is most exposed to the devastating effects of the pandemic: healthcare workers, women that are caregivers, employees of the food industry and basic services companies, etc.

This is a partial repudiation of the neoliberal prescriptions that have dominated the world for the past fifty years. The IMF must take cognizance of this, since it has otherwise participated actively in cannibalising resources in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and creating institutional deserts in country after country. Strengthening the state and redistributing wealth in favour of the masses should be the global orientation.

Scientists tell us that this struggle against the virus could last for the next thirty or forty days. That is why it is essential that each country and each government take measures to prevent the death of multiple thousands of people.

The movements, unions, and parties that make up the International Assembly of Peoples propose that a programme of structural change be formulated and implemented to allow us to win this struggle and reshape the world. This programme must include:

1. Immediate suspension of all work, except essential medical and logistical personnel and those required to produce and distribute food and necessities, without any loss of wages. The State must assume the cost of the wages for the period of the quarantine.
2. Health, food supply, and public safety must be maintained in an organised manner. Emergency grain stocks must be immediately released for distribution amongst the poor.
3. Schools must all be suspended.
4. Immediate socialization of hospitals and medical centres so that they do not worry about the profit motive as the crisis unfolds. These medical centres must be under the control of the government’s health campaign.
5. Immediate nationalization of pharmaceutical companies, and immediate international cooperation amongst them to find a vaccine and easier testing devices. Abolishment of intellectual property in the medical field.
6. Immediate testing of all people. Immediate mobilization of tests and support for medical personnel who are at the frontlines of this pandemic.
7. Immediate speed-up of production for materials necessary to deal with the crisis (testing kits, masks, respirators).
8. Immediate closure of global financial markets.
9. Immediate gathering of the finances to prevent the bankruptcy of governments.
10. Immediate cancellation of all non-corporate debt.
11. Immediate end to all rent and mortgage payments, as well as an end to evictions; this includes the immediate provision of adequate housing as a basic human right. Decent housing must be a right for all citizens guaranteed by the state.
12. Immediate absorption of all utility payments by the State – water, electricity, and internet provided as part of a human right; where these utilities are not universally accessible, we call for them to be provided with immediate effect.
13. Immediate end to the unilateral, criminal sanctions regimes and economic blockades that impact countries such as Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and prevent them from importing necessary medical supplies.
14. Urgent support for the peasantry to increase the production of healthy food and supply it to the government for direct distribution.
15. Suspension of the dollar as an international currency and request that the United Nations urgently call a new international conference to propose a common international currency.
16. Ensure a universal minimum income in every country. This makes possible to guarantee support from the state for millions of families who are out of work, working in extremely precarious conditions or self-employed. The current capitalist system excludes millions of people from formal jobs. The State should provide employment and a dignified life for the population. The cost of the Universal Basic Income can be covered by defence budgets, in particular the expense of arms and ammunition.

ENDORSERS:

INTERNATIONAL PLATFORMS

1. International Peoples’ Assembly
2. Tricontinental – Institute for Social Research
3. ALBA Movimientos – Articulación Continental de Movimientos Sociales y Populares hacia el ALBA
4. Central Governing Council of the Red Nation
5. Delphi Initiative for Defending Democracy
6. La Vía Campesina
7. Red de Intelectuales y Artistas en Defensa de la Humanidad
8. World March of Women

AFRICA

• Organizations

9. Ghana – SFG – Socialist Forum of Ghana
10. Kenya – Revolutionary Socialist League
11. South Africa – Abahlali BaseMjondolo
12. South Africa – Economic Research on Innovation – Tshwane University of Technology
13. South Africa – NUMSA – National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa
14. South Africa – SRWP – Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party
15. Tanzania – TASOFO – The Tanzania Socialist Forum
16. Uganda – Ruth Fund – Rural Women and Youth Fund Uganda
17. Zambia – Socialist Party of Zambia
18. Zambia – Young Cheetahs Movement
19. Zimbabwe – SPZ – Socialist Platform of Zimbabwe
20. Zimbabwe – UFAWUZ – The United Food and Allied Workers Union of Zimbabwe

• Individuals

21. Nigeria – Minna Salami, writer
22. South Africa – Antonater Tafadzwa Choto
23. South Africa – Ebrahim Ghoor
24. South Africa – Rasigan Maharajh
25. Zambia – Macleod Lunkoto
26. Zimbabwe – Ady Mutero

AMERICAS

• Organizations

27. Argentina – Colectivo Teología de la Liberación Pichi Meisegeier
28. Argentina – Federación de Inquilinos Nacional
29. Argentina – Frente Patria Grande
30. Argentina – Frente Popular Dario Santillán
31. Argentina – GEAL – Grupo de Estudios sobre América Latina y el Caribe – UBA
32. Argentina – IEALC – Instituto de Estudios de América Latina y el Caribe – UBA
33. Argentina – Movimiento Popular la Dignidad
34. Argentina – OLP – Resistir y Luchar
35. Argentina – Red de Intelectuales y Artistas en Defensa de la Humanidad – Capítulo Argentina
36. Argentina – Vamos
37. Brazil – Articulação Por uma Educação do Campo, Indígena e Quilombola no Semiárido Mineiro
38. Brazil – CEBRAPAZ – Centro Brasileiro de Solidariedade aos Povos e Luta pela Paz
39. Brazil – CMP – Central de Movimentos Populares do Brasil
40. Brazil – CNM/CUT – Confederação Nacional dos Metalúrgicos da CUT
41. Brazil – Comitê Carioca de Solidariedade a Cuba
42. Brazil – CTB – Central dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadoras do Brasil
43. Brazil – CUT – Central Única dos Trabalhadores
44. Brazil – Frente de Evangélicos pelo Estado de Direito do Brasil
45. Brazil – FUP – Federação Única dos Petroleiros
46. Brazil – IPDMS – Instituto de Pesquisa Direito e Movimentos Sociais
47. Brazil – Levante Popular da Juventude
48. Brazil – MAB – Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens
49. Brazil – MAM – Movimento pela Soberania Popular na MIneração
50. Brazil – Marcia Sanches Venturi
51. Brazil – MCP – Movimento Camponês Popular
52. Brazil – MPA – Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores
53. Brazil – MST – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra
54. Brazil – MTD – Movimento de Trabalhadoras e Trabalhadores por Direitos
55. Brazil – NESAF – Núcleo de Estudos em Agricultura Familiar da UFSM
56. Brazil – Via Campesina Brasil
57. Canada – People’s Health Movement
58. Chile – Fundación Constituyente XXI de Chile
59. Colombia – CEISAFROCOL – Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Sociales Afrocolombianas
60. Colombia – CIPAZ – Fundacion Ciudadanía Integral para la Paz
61. Colombia – Congreso de los Pueblos
62. Colombia – Coordinadora Política y Social Marcha Patriótica
63. Cuba – Centro Martin Luther King
64. Ecuador – ABPTAI – Asociación Bolivariana de Productores Textiles y Afines
65. Ecuador – ACCUMHB – Asociación Civil de Comerciantes Unidos del Mercado Bolivariano la Hoyada
66. Ecuador – ALBA Movimientos- Capítulo Ecuador
67. Ecuador – FEDAEPS – Fundación de Estudios, Acción y Participación Social
68. Ecuador – MEAB – Movimiento Ecuatoriano Alfarista Bolivariano
69. Ecuador – MIREDES Internacional
70. Ecuador – Movimiento Jubileo 2000 Red Ecuador
71. Ecuador – Red de Intelectuales y Artistas en Defensa de la Humanidad – Capítulo Ecuador
72. Ecuador – Red de Mujeres Transformando la Economía – Ecuador
73. Guatemala – CUC – Comité de Unidad Campesina
74. Guatemala – Fundación Guillermo Toriello
75. Guatemala – FUNDEBASE – Fundación para el Desarrollo y Fortalecimiento de las Organizaciones de Base
76. Guatemala – APSM – Alianza Política Sector de Mujeres
77. Guatemala – Asamblea Social y Popular
78. Guyana – Red Thread
79. Haiti – Association Tèt Kole
80. Mexico – Comité 68 Pro Libertades Democráticas
81. Mexico – Comité de Solidaridad Mons. Romero
82. Mexico – Coordinadora de Pueblos en Defensa del Río Atoyac – Veracruz
83. Mexico – Frente Popular Francisco Villa
84. Mexico – Jóvenes ante la Emergencia Nacional
85. Mexico – MLN – Movimiento de Liberación Nacional
86. Mexico – Movimiento de Solidaridad Nuestra América
87. Mexico – Mujeres para el Diálogo
88. Mexico – Nueva Constituyente Ciudadana Popular
89. Mexico – Nuevo País
90. Mexico – SICSAL – Servicio Internacional Cristiano de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de América Latina
91. Nicaragua – UCANS – Unión de Cooperativas Agropecuarias del Norte de Las Segovias R.L.
92. Panama – Confederación Nacional de Unidad Sindical Independiente
93. Panama – Frente Amplio por la Democracia
94. Panama – Frente Estudiantil FER 29
95. Panama – Frente Nacional por la Defensa de los Derechos Económicos y Sociales
96. Panama – Movimiento Comunal Nacional Federico Britton
97. Panama – Sindicato Único Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de la Construcción y Similares
98. Panama – Union Campesina Panameña
99. Peru – Acción Política Socialista
100. Peru – Juventud Comunista Patria Roja
101. Peru – La Junta
102. Peru – Movimiento Comunitario Alfa y Omega
103. Peru – Mundo Verde
104. Peru – Norte Progresista
105. Peru – Todas Somos Micaelas
106. Puerto Rico – COMUNA Caribe de Puerto Rico
107. United States – (Fem)Power
108. United States – AFROAMERICAS Network
109. United States – ANSWER Coalition – Act Now to Stop War and End Racism
110. United States – Anti-Racist Action Los Angeles
111. United States – Asian Communities Together
112. United States – Border Agricultural Workers
113. United States – Code Pink
114. United States – Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)
115. United States – Community Movement Builders
116. United States – Dream Defenders
117. United States – Earth Evolution
118. United States – Facilitating Thriving
119. United States – Four Winds American Indian Council Denver
120. United States – Global Justice Ecology Project
121. United States – Massachusetts Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
122. United States – Mississippi Immigrants’ Rights Alliance
123. United States – PEP – Popular Education Project
124. United States – Put People First – Pennsylvania
125. United States – PWF – The Perennial Wisdom Foundation
126. United States – Southern Anti-Racism Network
127. United States – Unión de Vecinos
128. United States – University of the Poor
129. United States – Vermont Worker’s Center
130. Uruguay – Izquierda en Marcha – Frente Amplio
131. Venezuela – Colectivo Diversidad UBV
132. Venezuela – Comuna Cacique Guaracarima
133. Venezuela – Consejo comunal “Acacias IV”
134. Venezuela – Consejo Presidencial de Gobierno Popular de Comunas
135. Venezuela – Corriente Revolucionária Bolívar y Zamora
136. Venezuela – CTC – Coalición de Tendencias Clasistas
137. Venezuela – Equipo Coordinador del FPC-UNASUR VENEZUELA
138. Venezuela – Equipo de Terra TV
139. Venezuela – Escuela Popular y Latinoamericana de Cine, Televisión y Teatro
140. Venezuela – Frente Bicentenario de Mujeres 200
141. Venezuela – Frente Francisco de Miranda
142. Venezuela – Fundación O’Leary
143. Venezuela – Izquierda Unida Venezuela
144. Venezuela – Movimiento de Mujeres por la Vida
145. Venezuela – Movimiento de Pobladoras y Pobladores
146. Venezuela – Organización Social Sures
147. Venezuela – Plataforma de Lucha Campesina
148. Venezuela – Semanario por Ahora, medio alternativo venezolano
149. Venezuela – Surgentes – Colectivo de DDHH

• Individuals

150. Argentina – Alberto Rabilotta, periodista internacional
151. Argentina – Atilio Boron, Escritor
152. Argentina – Claudio Katz, Académico
153. Argentina – Cristina Mancini
154. Argentina – Damian Loreti
155. Argentina – José Javier Capera Figueroa, director de la Revista FAIA
156. Argentina – Marcos Teruggi, periodista
157. Argentina – Mario Hernandez, periodista y escritor
158. Argentina – Norberto Alayón, profesor de la UBA
159. Argentina – Patricio Germán Lo Prete
160. Argentina – Paula Klachko, socióloga
161. Argentina – Rafael Villegas
162. Argentina – Stella Calloni, periodista
163. Bolivia – Hugo Moldiz, periodista
164. Brazil – Alonso Bezerra de Carvay, UNESP
165. Brazil – Ana Raquel
166. Brazil – Andrea Foresti Lanzoni
167. Brazil – Andréa Pinto Lucas de Oliveira, teacher
168. Brazil – Aniura Milanés Barrientos, académica
169. Brazil – Bluette Fortes Santa Clara
170. Brazil – Breno Bringel, profesor de la UERJ
171. Brazil – Carlos Alberto (Beto) Almeida, periodista
172. Brazil – Carmen Lúcia Diniz dos Santos
173. Brazil – Daniel Lima Costa Muniz
174. Brazil – Daniele Melo da Costa
175. Brazil – Edmerson dos Santos Reis, professor da UNEB
176. Brazil – Jamil Murad
177. Brazil – Leonardo Nogueira, professor
178. Brazil – Luís Costa, periodista
179. Brazil – Lumie de Oliveira Zanazi
180. Brazil – Marcia Sanches Venturi
181. Brazil – Marco Alexandre de Souza Serra
182. Brazil – Maria Alice Motta
183. Brazil – Mariana Lacerda Gonçalves, cineasta
184. Brazil – Marilia Guimaraes, Escritora
185. Brazil – Nadia Bambirra, directora audiovisual
186. Brazil – Olivia Gonçalves Janequine
187. Brazil – Palloma Dreher Farias
188. Brazil – Paula Marcelino, socióloga
189. Brazil – Raissa Almeida Corbagi
190. Brazil – Sirio López Velasco, filósofo y docente universitario
191. Brazil – Tamara Siemann Lopes, economista
192. Brazil – Thiago Barison de Oliveira
193. Brazil – Vanessa Witcel Homerding
194. Brazil – Vicente Aurelio Laner
195. Brazil – Wálmaro Paz, periodista
196. Canada – Arnold August, escritor
197. Canada – Claudia Chaufan
198. Canada – Errol Sharpe
199. Canada – Peter Gose
200. Chile – Andrés Figueroa Cornejo, periodista
201. Chile – Esteban Silva
202. Chile – Florencia Lagos, promotora cultural
203. Chile – Javiera Olivares, periodista
204. Chile – Pablo Sepúlveda Allende, médico y activista social
205. Colombia – Aura Molano
206. Colombia – Jorge Eliecer Carrillo Espinosa
207. Colombia – Juan Alberto, periodista
208. Costa Rica – Carlos Madrigal Tellini
209. Costa Rica – Etienne Somogyi
210. Cuba – Ángel Guerra, escritor
211. Cuba – Ariana López, filósofa
212. Cuba – Enrique Ubieta, ensayista e investigador
213. Cuba – Fernando León Jacomino, poeta y crítico teatral
214. Cuba – Omar González, escritor
215. Ecuador – Ana María Larrea, socióloga
216. Ecuador – Andrés Arauz, economista
217. Ecuador – Argentina Chiriboga
218. Ecuador – Cachito Vera, Gestor cultural
219. Ecuador – Carlos Viteri, político
220. Ecuador – Cristian Orosco, economista
221. Ecuador – David Chávez, sociólogo
222. Ecuador – Erika Silva, socióloga
223. Ecuador – Fidel Narváez, diplomático
224. Ecuador – Gabriela Córdova Brito
225. Ecuador – Gabriela Rivadeneira, política
226. Ecuador – Galo Chiriboga, abogado
227. Ecuador – Galo Mora, escritor y político
228. Ecuador – Ilonka Vargas, artista
229. Ecuador – Irene Léon, socióloga
230. Ecuador – Jenny Londoño, escritora
231. Ecuador – Jorge Nuñez, historiador
232. Ecuador – José Agualsaca, legislador
233. Ecuador – José Regato, escritor
234. Ecuador – Juan Paz y Miño, historiador
235. Ecuador – Julio Peña y Lillo, sociólogo
236. Ecuador – Kintto Lucas, periodista
237. Ecuador – Luis Nawel, gestor cultural
238. Ecuador – Marco Antonio Pintado López
239. Ecuador – Mario Ramos, sociólogo
240. Ecuador – Melania Mora, economista
241. Ecuador – Miguel Ruiz, economista
242. Ecuador – Omar Ospina, periodista
243. Ecuador – Orlando Pérez, periodista
244. Ecuador – Oscar Bonilla, político
245. Ecuador – Osvaldo León, periodista
246. Ecuador – Pablo Guayasamin, gestor cultural
247. Ecuador – Pavel Eguez, pintor y muralista
248. Ecuador – Pedro Páez, economista
249. Ecuador – Pedro Sassone, sociólogo
250. Ecuador – Pilar Bustos, artista
251. Ecuador – Rafael Quintero, sociólogo
252. Ecuador – Ricardo Patiño, economista
253. Ecuador – Ricardo Sánchez, economista
254. Ecuador – Ricardo Ulcuango, dirigente indígena y diplomático
255. Ecuador – Sally Burch, periodista
256. Ecuador – Tania Hermida, cineasta
257. Ecuador – Xavier Lasso, periodista
258. Guatemala – Héctor Alfredo Nuila Ericastilla, médico
259. Haiti – Camille Chalmers, economista
260. Honduras – Anarella Vélez, escritora
261. Honduras – Gilberto Ríos, dirigente social
262. Honduras – José Antonio Carballo
263. Mexico – Alfonso Anaya
264. Mexico – Angeles González
265. Mexico – Bertha Vallejo
266. Mexico – Carmen Mendoza
267. Mexico – Claudia Sandoval
268. Mexico – Cristina Steffen
269. Mexico – Elizabeth Alejandre
270. Mexico – Felipe Echenique March, historiador
271. Mexico – Fernando Buen Abad, filósofo
272. Mexico – Gabriela Hernández
273. Mexico – Gilberto López y Rivas, profesor investigador
274. Mexico – Graciela Tapia
275. Mexico – Héctor Díaz Polanco, antropólogo
276. Mexico – Hildelisa Preciado
277. Mexico – Julieta Paula Mellano
278. Mexico – Leonor Aída Concha
279. Mexico – Leticia Gutiérrez
280. Mexico – Lourdes del Villar
281. Mexico – Luis Hernández Navarro, periodista
282. Mexico – Lylia Palacios
283. Mexico – María Elena López
284. Mexico – Mariana Gómez
285. Mexico – Maricarmen Montes
286. Mexico – Marisa Rodríguez
287. Mexico – Martín Hernández
288. Mexico – Nayar López, académico
289. Mexico – Norberto Pérez
290. Mexico – Roberto Benavides
291. Mexico – Rosa Barranco
292. Mexico – Teresa Olvera
293. Mexico – Walter Martínez
294. Paraguay – Ricardo Flecha, cantautor
295. Peru – Andrés Luna Vargas
296. Peru – Hildebrando Pérez Grande, poeta
297. Peru – Juan Panay
298. Peru – Leonel Falcón Guerra, vocero político
299. United States – Adán García
300. United States – Alicia Jrapko, activista social
301. United States – Catherine Liu, professor
302. United States – Dakotah Lilly, member of Students and Youth for a new America
303. United States – Don Mee Choi
304. United States – Eric Patel, artist and organizer living
305. United States – Gloria Osborne Springwater
306. United States – Marie-Josée Lavallée
307. United States – Patricia Rodney
308. United States – Paul Edwards
309. United States – Phil Nichols
310. United States – Rose M. Brewer, professor
311. United States – Steven Sugarman
312. United States – Vickiana Valdez
313. Uruguay – Antonio Elías, economista
314. Uruguay – Gabriela Cultelli, economista
315. Uruguay – Luna Zurdo Ríos
316. Venezuela – Arthur Rondón
317. Venezuela – Carmen Bohórquez, historiadora
318. Venezuela – Cecilia Todd
319. Venezuela – Geraldina Colotti, periodista y escritora
320. Venezuela – Gisela Gomez
321. Venezuela – Glenys Nahomi Palomares Mendoza
322. Venezuela – Gustavo Rafael Sanoja Flores, diputado regional
323. Venezuela – Ismael Morales, diputado de la ANC
324. Venezuela – Iván Torcat
325. Venezuela – José Alejandro Delgado Paiva
326. Venezuela – José Félix Rivas Alvarado, economista, ex-director Banco Central
327. Venezuela – José Rafael Núñez
328. Venezuela – Luis Britto García, escritor
329. Venezuela – Luisana Millé Muñoz Martínez
330. Venezuela – Molina Peñaloza
331. Venezuela – Pasqualina Curcio, economista
332. Venezuela – Pedro Calzadilla, historiador
333. Venezuela – Rafael Febles Fajardo
334. Venezuela – Sergio Arria, productor audiovisual
335. Venezuela – Thierry Deronne

ARAB MAGHREB

• Organizations

336. Algeria – National Committee to Defend the Rights of the Unemployed
337. Egypt – SPA – Socialist People’s Alliance Party
338. Iraq – General Federation of Syndicates
339. Iraq – Information Center for Reshearch and Development
340. Iraq – Iraq Social Forum
341. Iraq – Workers-Communist Party of Iraq
342. Jordan – JCP – Jordanian Communist Party
343. Jordan – Jordanian Democratic Youth League
344. Jordan – Jordanian Democratic Youth Union UJDY
345. Jordan – Jordanian People’s Party
346. Lebanon – Lebanese Communist Party
347. Mauritania – CLTM – Free Confederation of Mauritanian Workers
348. Mauritania – Movement We Can
349. Mauritania – The Future Party
350. Mauritania – The Liberation and Emancipation of the Haratin Movement
351. Morocco – All for The Right to Health
352. Morocco – DW – Democratic Way
353. Morocco – Moroccan Association for Human Rights
354. Morocco – Moroccan Association of Progressive Women
355. Morocco – National Federation of The Agricultural Sector
356. Morocco – National University of Education Democratic Orientation
357. Morocco – Progressive Left Students
358. Morocco – The Women’s Sector of the Democratic Way
359. Morocco – Youth of the Democratic Way
360. Palestine – DFLP – Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
361. Palestine – NADA – Palestinian Democratic Women Organization
362. Palestine – Palestinian Democratic Youth Union
363. Palestine – Palestinian Working Women Committees Union
364. Palestine – PPP – Palestinian People’s Party
365. Palestine – UAWC – Union of Agricultural Work Committees
366. Palestine – UPWC – Union of Palestinian Women Committees
367. Palestine – Youth of the Palestinian People’s Party
368. Sudan – SCP – Sudanese Communist Party
369. Syria – Alliance Syrian Women to activate Security Council Resolution 1325 in Syria
370. Syria – CDF – Committees for the Defense of Democracy Freedoms and Human Rights in Syria
371. Syria – ICWOSY – Syrian Institution for Care of Widows and Orphans Rights
372. Syria – Syrian youth alliance to activate security council resolution 2250
373. Tunisia – Democratic Patriots Unified Party
374. Tunisia – Democratic Women’s Association
375. Tunisia – Musawah Organization
376. Tunisia – Nomad 08 Association
377. Tunisia – Parti des Travailleurs/Tunisie
378. Tunisia – The Democrat Patriots Youth Union
379. Tunisia – The Socialist Democratic National Party – Tunisia
380. Tunisia – Tunisian Human Rights League
381. Tunisia – Union Communist Youth of Tunisia
382. Western Sahara – CODESA – Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders

• Individuals

383. Tunisia – Khraifi Cherif

ASIA

• Organizations

384. Bangladesh – Jatio Krishak Samity (National Peasant Organisation)
385. Bangladesh – Jatio Sramik Federation (National Labour Federation)
386. Bangladesh – Krishi Farm Sramik Federation
387. Bangladesh – Nari Mukti Sangsad
388. Bangladesh – Students Unity of Bangladesh
389. Bangladesh – Workers Party of Bangladesh
390. Bangladesh – Youth Unity of Bangladesh
391. East Timor – CNRM – Conselho Nacional da Revolução Maubere
392. India – All India Kisan Mahasabha
393. India – Communist Party of India, Marxist-Leninist (Liberation)
394. India – Food Sovereignty Alliance
395. India – LeftWord Books
396. India – PSF – Progressive Students’ Forum
397. Indonesia – PRP – Partai Rakyat Pekerja (Working People’s Party)
398. Malaysia – PSM – Parti Sosialis Malaysia
399. Nepal – Nepal Communist Party
400. Pakistan – Crofter Foundation,
401. Pakistan – Labour Education Foundation
402. Pakistan – Lahore Left Front
403. Pakistan – Mazdoor Kisan Party
404. Pakistan – Pakistan Kissan Rabta Committee
405. Philippines – Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino
406. Philippines – Laban ng Masa
407. Philippines – SANLAKAS 
408. Sri Lanka – Left Voice
409. Sri Lanka – MOLAR – Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform
410. Thailand – Chulalongkorn University
411. West Papua – AMP – Aliansi Mahasiswa Papua (The West Papua Student Alliance in One Comunity)

• Individuals

412. Australia – Madeleine Lawler
413. Australia – Tim Anderson, Académico
414. India – Hiren Gohain
415. India – Karen Gabriel, professor in Delhi University
416. India – Pratip Kumar Datta
417. India – Ram Chandran
418. India – Sangita Tanaji Ghodake, professor
419. India – Sankar Krishnan
420. India – Saumya Chakrabarti, professor of Economics
421. India – Sudhanva Deshpande
422. India – Tabish Khair, professor
423. Japan – Shinako Oyakawa
424. Malaysia – Jeevindran
425. Nepal – Balaram Banskota, CCM, NCP and deputy chief of central department of Consumer Rights protection
426. Nepal – Pramesh Pokharel, ICC member (youth) South Asia of La Via Campesina
427. Sri Lanka – Anuka vimukthi de Silva-Amali Wedagedara
428. Sri Lanka – Molnar
429. Thailand – Patchanee Kumnak – Labour activist – Socialist Workers Thailand

EUROPE

• Organizations

430. Austria – BOEM* Association for Art, Culture, Science and Communication
431. Basque Country – Centro de Estudios Francisco Bilbao
432. Cyprus – Union of Cypriots
433. Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine/Europe
434. France – News Net
435. Italy – Potere al Popolo
436. Norway – LAG – Latin-amerikancan Group Norge
437. Serbia – Social Democratic Union
438. Slovenia – raum AU
439. Spain – Asamblea Provincial Marchas de la Dignidad Ciudad Real
440. Spain – Asociación GOGARA
441. Spain – CUT – Colectivo Unitario de Trabajadores
442. Spain – Foro Pacifista de Ciudad Real
443. Spain – Intersindical de Aragon – CO.BAS
444. Spain – Intersindical Valenciana
445. Spain – Izquierda Unida
446. Spain – MDM – Movimiento Democrático de Mujeres
447. Spain – PCE – Partido Comunista de España
448. Spain – Plataforma de Usuarios y Pacientes em Defensa de la Sanidad Publica y del Hospital Universitario de Diego de León 62 en Madrid
449. Spain – REAS – Red de Economía Alternativa y Solidaria de Murcia
450. Spain – Red Roja
451. Switzerland – Bureau de Crise

• Individuals

452. Basque Country – Katu Arkonada, Politólogo
453. Basque Country – Roberto Muñoz Albuerno
454. Canarias – José (Pepe) Villalba Pérez
455. Estonia – Jekaterina Saveljeva
456. France – Hernando Calvo Ospina, Periodista
457. Greece – Aliki Bonia
458. Greece – Aris Tolios
459. Greece – Martina Kaika
460. Greece – Panagiotis Morakis
461. Italy – Elena Hileg Iannuzzi
462. Italy – Gianfranco Santoro
463. Italy – Guido Schiozzi
464. Italy – Laura Corradi, académica
465. Italy – Leonardo Bargigli, Assistant Professor of Economics
466. Italy – Mario Eustachio De Bellis
467. Russia – Marcus Guest
468. Spain – Ángeles Maestro
469. Spain – Arantxa Tirado, Politóloga
470. Spain – Cesar Ruiz Plaza
471. Spain – Gonzalo Vázquez Solana
472. Spain – Javier Couso, Militante político
473. Spain – Joan Manuel Cabezas, doctor in social anthropology
474. Spain – José Luis Centella, president of the PCE
475. United Kingdom – Efstathia Filippaki
476. United Kingdom – Joanna Hughes
477. United Kingdom – Miroslav Spasov
478. United Kingdom – Neil Singh, Senior Clinical Teaching
479. United Kingdom – Rajmil Fischman, Emeritus professor in Keele University