Latin America Has Carried Enough. Now It Needs Resources to Match Its Resilience.

Two weeks that reminded us that this work cannot wait: Between devastating earthquakes, a far-right election victory, and threats to peaceful Pride marches, Latin America has lived through an extraordinarily difficult fortnight. This is a moment that calls for bold, unwavering solidarity.

On June 24, 2026, two earthquakes struck Venezuela in rapid succession — a 7.2 magnitude foreshock followed 39 seconds later by a 7.5 magnitude mainshock, the strongest the country had experienced in over a century.

As of the latest official reports, the earthquakes have claimed 1,943 lives, left 10,571 people injured, and displaced 15,866 people across the affected states. These figures continue to evolve as rescue and recovery efforts remain underway and authorities work to assess the full scale of the disaster.

When the ground shook last week, our team has experienced first hand the scale of this new devastating crisis for the country.

Disasters Expose What Was Already Fragile

The earthquakes exposed the true face of Venezuela's crisis.

They dramatically revealed the depth of infrastracture fragility and exposed the size of the consequences to the world.

Again, the price the country needs to pay for this visibility is far too high.

Years of authoritarian governance have systematically dismantled the country's public infrastructure, healthcare system, and civic institutions. Hyperinflation, sanctions, and economic collapse have driven more than 7 million Venezuelans to leave the country in what has become one of the largest displacement crises in the world — leaving behind a population live in a country with fewer resources to weather a natural disaster like the one of June 24, 2026.

Venezuela is not an isolated case. Across Latin America, communities are navigating the compounding weight of political instability, weakened democracies, extractive economies, and shrinking civic space, while carrying the dignity and resilience to keep building, organizing, and demanding better. 

The crisis is a story of system failures, and a global community that has yet to resource the alternatives that local movements are already building.

In Colombia, far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won the presidential runoff on June 21 on a platform explicitly opposing abortion, LGBTIQ+ rights, and "gender ideology," with suggestions he would govern by executive decree if Congress resisted. The Center for Reproductive Rights has already raised the alarm, calling his positions "a warning we cannot afford to ignore."

In Guatemala, this same pattern of institutional hostility toward civil society plays out with particular intensity against LGBTIQ+ communities. This year's Pride march — held just days ago — took place in a context that our communities on the ground described as tense and heavily surveilled, with local authorities present in ways that felt designed to intimidate rather than protect.

This is not new. In 2024, Guatemala's Constitutional Court issued an order requiring police to enforce "good customs" at the annual Pride parade. People marched anyway, as they did again this year, in a context of escalating violence and hate crimes, with at least 37 killings of LGBTIQ+ people recorded in 2024 and 11 in the first months of 2025 alone. 

OUR WORK IN LATIN AMERICA

A Region Left Behind by Funding

We must look at global resource mobilization strategies and how the global funding agendas are overlooking the region.

For many local organizations across Latin America, sustaining this work is becoming increasingly difficult. Accessing funding opportunities tied to the United States is often impossible, as sanctions and financial restrictions prevent resources from reaching organizations in certain countries. As a result, direct philanthropic donations have become one of the few viable pathways for local civil society to continue delivering essential services and supporting communities on the ground.

The data on funding for Latin America and the Caribbean paints a stark picture. Philanthropic giving in the region is far lower than in any other part of the world, and only 6% of international grant funding from large US foundations reaches Latin America — with the Caribbean receiving even less.

Sexual and reproductive health funding has been hit particularly hard: the US, which until recently represented  40% of all global donor funding for family planning, has terminated over 80% of its USAID family planning grants — leaving a financing gap for contraceptives and maternal health medicines estimated at $1.5 billion in the world's poorest countries alone by 2030.

At Vitala, we see the impact of this data every day. Funding that supports the work in the region is becoming increasingly scattered and challenging to access. It should not take massive disasters to return our attention to the region.

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Reproductive Health Is the First to Go and the Last to Come Back

Women, girls, and gender-diverse people absorb the shock first and recover last, and reproductive health is the thread that runs through every crisis. In Venezuela right now, 64% of health facilities have suspended services — which means maternal care suspended, contraception suspended, post-violence support suspended.

An earthquake doesn't pause a pregnancy. A hostile election doesn't suspend the need for contraception. A court ruling doesn't make gender-based violence disappear. What these crises do is removing the infrastructures and access to support that communities need.

Crises do not suspend the need for sexual and reproductive healthcare, they make it more urgent.

As health systems fracture and people are displaced, access to contraception, abortion, maternal healthcare, and psychosocial support becomes harder to reach precisely when risks are highest. Failing to protect these services deepens existing inequalities and makes recovery longer, more difficult, and less equitable.

This is why Vitala built Aya Contigo to function precisely in these conditions: because crises are not interruptions to the need for reproductive care. They are the moments when that need becomes most urgent — and most deliberately ignored.

Stand With the Region — And With the Work Already Happening

The communities across Latin America resisting, organizing, and healing demonstrated enough resilience. What they need now are concrete resources.

At Vitala, we are committed to walking this road alongside communities, not ahead of them.

Our team of 11 Latinas based across Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, Argentina, Mexico carries this work every day — adapting Aya Contigo as laws shift, remaining resilient about changes and challenges, building partnerships with feminist accompaniment networks and trusted local health providers.

Despite a challenging ecosystem, we don’t stop our effort to advocate for sustained, flexible funding to local organizations in Latin America, to push for reproductive health to be treated as a non-negotiable pillar of emergency response, and to support the civil society actors who are being threatened, criminalized, and defunded for doing the work that democratic life depends on.

If you believe that reproductive health care cannot wait for a crisis to end — support Vitala's work. Help us keep Aya Contigo accessible, free, and trusted in the communities that need it most, especially now.

The earth may shake, but our commitment does not. Stand firm with us for Latin America.