This is an example of how manufacturing consent works. Ctrl + f "sanction" literally only 1 mention

Article:

AN DIEGO DE LOS ALTOS, Venezuela — The moment Johanna Guzmán, 25, discovered she was going to have her sixth child she began to sob, crushed by the idea of bringing another life into a nation in such decay. For years, as Venezuela spiraled deeper into an economic crisis, she and her husband had scoured clinics and pharmacies for any kind of birth control, usually in vain. They had a third child. A fourth. A fifth. Already, Ms. Guzmán was cooking meager dinners over a wood fire, washing clothing without soap, teaching lessons without paper. Already, she was stalked by a fear that she could not feed them all. And now, another child? “I felt like I was drowning,” she said.

As Venezuela enters its eighth year of economic crisis, a deeply personal drama is playing out inside the home: Millions of women are no longer able to find or afford birth control, pushing many into unplanned pregnancies at a time when they can barely feed the children they already have. Around Caracas, the capital, a pack of three condoms costs $4.40 — three times Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage of $1.50. Birth control pills cost more than twice as much, roughly $11 a month, while an IUD, or intrauterine device, can cost more than $40 — more than 25 times the minimum wage. And that does not include a doctor’s fee to have the device put in. With the cost of contraception so far out of reach, women are increasingly resorting to abortions, which are illegal and, in the worst cases, can cost them their lives.

The situation is a major departure from what Venezuela’s government once promised its women and girls. Hugo Chávez, the father of the country’s socialist-inspired revolution, declared that his government would grant women what others had not: full and equal participation in society. Mr. Chávez brought women into the halls of power and enshrined in the Constitution the right to “decide freely” how many children a couple wished to have. In a region where abortion is largely banned, he stopped short of legalizing the procedure. But birth control was subsidized and widely available. Mr. Chávez and his successor, President Nicolás Maduro, publicly declared themselves to be feminists. But as Mr. Maduro’s grip on the country has hardened into authoritarian rule, Venezuela’s economy has collapsed under the weight of corruption, mismanagement and American sanctions

The nation that was once Latin America’s wealthiest is mired in a crisis economists have called the world’s worst in decades, outside of war, with its population suffering from runaway inflation and widespread hunger. And Venezuelans now face a health system so broken that it can no longer reliably provide basic contraception. Today, amid the collapse of the country’s public health system, birth control is nearly absent from government clinics and available at private pharmacies only at prohibitive prices. The result has been life-changing for women, who shoulder the vast majority of child care responsibilities, just as the crisis has greatly expanded the challenge of being a parent. Many women who grew up believing that Mr. Chávez’s political movement, known as Chavismo, would springboard them out of poverty, offering them education and career opportunities, now face the task of raising four, six or 10 children at a time when the basics of family care — food, soap, diapers — arrive intermittently or not at all.

Anitza Freitez, a demographer with the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, said this dynamic could shape the country for decades, creating “a vicious circle of poverty.” As Venezuela’s maternity wards fell apart, maternal deaths surged 65 percent between 2015 and 2016, according to the country’s health ministry. And then the government stopped releasing data.

  • richietozier4 [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    under Maduro’s dictatorial regime women can’t get basic contraceptives! Oh yeah, and the fact that we block medicines from entering the country might have something to do with it