Earthquake in Venezuela: Socialism Exposes Its Utter Failure

The images coming from Venezuela after the earthquake are shocking. Shortages. Hospitals without resources. Lack of basic supplies. Desperate pleas for the world to send whatever it has. A nation that, in the face of a natural tragedy, seems to have lost even the basic ability to assist its own people.

And so it is worth asking an uncomfortable question. Is capitalism to blame for this striking scarcity? Was democratic capitalism responsible for a country immensely rich in natural resources now being unable to respond to an emergency of such magnitude?

Was democratic capitalism the one that drove out thousands of doctors, nurses, and health professionals who fled Venezuela seeking a place where they could simply practice their profession and live with dignity? Was democratic capitalism the one that plunged the country into such devastating poverty that it is now incapable of facing the consequences of a natural disaster? The answer is so obvious that it is embarrassing to have to state it.

No. What destroyed Venezuela was not capitalism. What destroyed Venezuela was the communism implanted by Hugo Chávez, continued by Nicolás Maduro, and politically and ideologically sustained by the Cuban dictatorship. A model that did not invent any of its miseries: it simply copied the same hardships it had already produced in every place where it was applied.

History never changed its script. The names change, the flags change, the speeches change. But the result is always the same: poverty, scarcity, persecution, mass emigration, and dependence on the rest of the world to survive.

Today the planet again contemplates, with pain, what peoples obtain when they choose a system of social and economic organization based on the destruction of freedom.

Because political systems are not an academic matter. They translate into hospitals that work or collapse. Into stocked supermarkets or empty shelves. Into professionals who stay or flee. Into countries capable of rising after a tragedy or condemned to beg for international aid to get the most basic things.

The saddest thing is to see how resentment and envy toward those who prosper in a system that offers opportunities for all can lead entire societies to embrace political projects that border on immorality. The idea is installed that no one should stand out, that the success of others constitutes an injustice, and that the State must take charge of equalizing everyone… even if it means cutting off heads at the same height so that no one stands out.

That is not an ideal of justice. It is a philosophy of failure. Naturally, we all hope that Venezuela can overcome this natural tragedy with as few victims and suffering as possible. That should not even be debated.

But that is not the true desire that should occupy us. What we really must wish is that Venezuela stops offending itself by believing that a dictatorship that crushes merit, destroys individual initiative, eliminates economic freedom, and turns citizens into dependents of power constitutes a system worthy of governing a nation.

As long as that political and cultural disease does not disappear, any earthquake will be just one more episode within an infinitely greater tragedy.

Because buildings can be rebuilt. Roads can be reopened. Hospitals can be rebuilt again. What is truly difficult to rebuild is a society that has been convinced that freedom is the enemy and that servitude constitutes an ideal.

Until Venezuela recovers that elementary conviction, natural disasters will continue to be just a detail compared to the immense suffering to which socialism will continue to condemn it.

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