Dear Friends,
Greetings from the state of Aragua in Venezuela where we are concluding a small US delegation focused on grassroots solutions to the massive food crisis here.
I am reaching out to you to share my grave concerns about what is happening here in Venezuela, my home for over three decades where I worked for 21 years as a Maryknoll Catholic lay missioner, then as Latin America Coordinator for the School of the Americas Watch.
It is out of concern for the most vulnerable sectors in Venezuela, such as my neighbors, that I break my silence to write. As I watch their efforts to obtain food for their families become more desperate and more futile, and as I witness pounds dropping from their bodies, I think the time has come to do more than share from my own scarce cupboards and gardens as they share with me.
These people, my friends and neighbors and family, are literally being swallowed up by massive economic and political interests. A perfect storm of a collapse of global oil prices, combined with massive internal economic errors leading to unbridled corruption on all levels of society, has left these vulnerable sectors literally almost starving.
The reaction of the US and other global interests seems clearly based on Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves (the world’s largest). Those interests are circling our nation like vultures, ready to swoop in and devour.
I have spent countless hours leading delegations to Venezuela over the past 12 years to…