Afshin Rattansi@afshinrattansi
🇻🇪Despite one of the most aggressive sanctions regimes in modern history, the Bolivarian Revolution’s staggering achievements are not mentioned in mainstream media:
Before the escalation of US sanctions (1999–2013), Venezuela cut overall poverty from around 49% to 27%, and extreme poverty from roughly 23% to under 8%. During the same period, income inequality fell sharply, with the Gini coefficient dropping from about 0.49 to 0.39, one of the largest reductions in Latin America.
Venezuela achieved a literacy rate of around 98%, and in 2005 UNESCO officially declared the country free of illiteracy. More than 2.8 million adults learned to read and write through Mission Robinson. University enrolment more than doubled between 1999 and 2014, expanding access to higher education for working-class and poor communities for the first time.
In healthcare, the Bolivarian government built around 13,000 primary care clinics under the Barrio Adentro programme, deploying tens of thousands of doctors, many in underserved rural and urban areas that previously had none. Infant mortality fell from about 21 per 1,000 births in 1998 to around 13 by 2012, and life expectancy rose to roughly 72 years, a figure maintained even during years of economic siege. In some US counties life expectancy is in the 50s.
On food security, Venezuela reduced malnutrition by around 40% between 1999 and 2012 and was removed from the FAO hunger map in 2013. Mass subsidised food programmes later became critical buffers preventing mass hunger once sanctions began to restrict imports and financial transactions.
Housing is one of the most striking achievements. Since 2011, over 4.5 million homes have been built under the Gran Misión Vivienda programme, providing free or near-free housing to millions of low-income families. This is one of the largest public housing programmes in the world, prioritising women-headed households and the poorest sectors.
Social security was massively expanded. Pension coverage rose from around 20% of the population to over 70%, including informal workers and homemakers who had previously been excluded entirely.
Politically, Venezuela has held over 30 national elections and referenda since 1999, alongside the creation of around 45,000 communal councils, embedding mass participation at the local level.
These achievements and the example it provided of an alternative to disastrous neoliberalism made Washington put Venezuela under siege. Since 2017, Venezuela has faced over 900 unilateral sanctions, $30–40 billion in frozen or seized assets, restrictions on oil exports, blocked access to international banking, and severe obstacles to importing food and medicine.
Despite the unprecedented economic attack, the state did not collapse. Free education and healthcare continued. Millions of pensions continued to be paid. Now threatened with an imperialist war, over 8 million Venezuelans voluntarily registered for the national militia.
