On the occasion of the 21st anniversary of the eviction of oil workers in Los Semerucos

The early morning of September 25, 2003 is a date that the oil families will never be able to erase from their memory, and neither will the Venezuelans, because it was perpetrated an unprecedented act of violencewhen hundreds of military personnel and groups forcibly evicted PDVSA workers and their families from the Los Semerucos housing estate in the state of Falcón, who had been legally living in the housing assigned to them by the company for decades. This procedure was the result of having opposed the politicization of the oil industry and diverting it from its original mission.

With disproportionate violence, state forces broke into the homes of hundreds of people, destroying their belongings and spreading panic. Children, the elderly and pregnant women were not respected. This act, far from being a simple eviction, was a clear violation of human rights and an abuse of power that marked a before and after in the lives of these families. They left children without schools and entire families without homes.

In Los Semerucos, 34 children and 19 adults were attacked and 26 members of civil society were arrested, in an overwhelmingly inhumane act that left deep wounds in the community and in the conscience of all Venezuelans.

The Los Semerucos urbanization was a community built during the democratic era of Venezuela with all services, close to the Cardón refinery, part of the Paraguaná Refining Complex, in Falcón. There lived 600 families and the children had schools, medical services, parks and a library. Today this oil field, like most of those built from the 1950s to 1990 in the oil areas to house their workers, looks abandoned, in an overwhelming decline, due to lack of maintenance, security and neglect.

Let us not forget that the oil community has always been a fundamental pillar for the development of the country and today its contribution is essential to rescue the country and its main industry, and to make possible the transition towards change, progress and full freedom for the benefit of the 28 million Venezuelans. It is fair and necessary.

With information from a press release from the civil association People of Oil.