My Venezuela Nightmare
August 11, 2016 11:43 AM   Subscribe

A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land

Around midday, I swing by a bakery in search of bread. I’m greeted, impatiently, by a young woman. “We only sell bread at 5 p.m., señora.” On my way out, I notice a sign on the front door that I somehow missed on my way in: “NO BREAD.” As I get back in my car, I realize I’m low on cash. I head to a nearby ATM. It’s out of money.
posted by poffin boffin (16 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 


For anyone who is as out of the loop as I am on this, according to this article the crisis was precipitated by low international oil prices and has been exacerbated by the refusal of the Venezuelan government to request international aid.
posted by loquacious crouton at 12:11 PM on August 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


HECHO EN SOCIALISMO
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:17 PM on August 11, 2016


Oy.
posted by notyou at 12:26 PM on August 11, 2016


For anyone who is as out of the loop as I am on this

yeah, there's a link to a brief one-pager about the situation in the first paragraph of the article but it's on a random word and pretty easy to miss
posted by poffin boffin at 12:30 PM on August 11, 2016


Man, once you find yourself even considering price controls for the economy you supervise, it's too late, and you are already effed.

I know a venezolana stateside who sends care packages of nonperishable food and toilet paper to her relatives there every week--stuff that costs like $20 here and is so rare there as to be literally invaluable.
posted by radicalawyer at 12:33 PM on August 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


One can go too far in emulating Cuba...
posted by jim in austin at 12:37 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Would this be considered to be a case of running out of other people's money?
posted by acb at 2:36 PM on August 11, 2016


acb, it's a case of suddenly having half as much oil money as they used to have.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 3:11 PM on August 11, 2016


And right wing media has been gloating from day one and doing everything they can to blame socialism for the crisis.
posted by Beholder at 4:12 PM on August 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


The US govt has not been friend to to the Socialist regime. They've been trying to topple the government since day one. They financed the right wing opposition in several attempted coups. Only the total incompetence of the various right wing groups coupled with the high popularity of Hugo Chavez thwarted the moves. Maduro appears to be incompetent but a majority of the electorate would choose Socialism again if given the chance with a competent leader.

Note that the problems are caused by a glut of oil and who has flooded the market...

We harassed Cuba for over 50 years and caused huge suffering among it's people because Castro nationalized some US companies. These were companies that supported Battista's rape of the country. We are progressing down the same terrible path.
posted by shnarg at 4:45 PM on August 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


Piffle. This was the inevitable result of resource-extraction socialism. Plenty of people were predicting this, and documenting it as the wheels came off, but they were shouted down by the Chavistas.

Note that the problems are caused by a glut of oil and who has flooded the market...

Why does Venezuela not grow enough food? Why does it not produce other basic commodities? Did the US come in and secretly sabotage the toilet paper factories? The problems are Venezuelan.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:55 PM on August 11, 2016 [10 favorites]


Interesting bit about this whole mess is DolarToday which publishes the real Venezuelan exchange rates along with the various fake/government crony exchange rates they've cycled through. This has pissed off the gov't scumfucks greatly leading to frantic attempts to block the site and failed attempts to sue it into oblivion (site's under USG jurisdiction.)
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:57 PM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Authoritarian, unaccountable government tends not to work too well whatever economic philosophy you decide to pair it with. Especially when that government eagerly throws the entire country headlong into The Paradox of Plenty. There is a lot more to this crisis than the dichotomy of socialism or evil gringos strike again.

Took me a lot longer to get through that article than I thought it would - it's a hard thing to read at one sitting.
posted by AdamCSnider at 7:25 PM on August 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


she just sounds so numb. i already spend the majority of my life wholly prepared, like the most high-strung of tiny chihuahuas, to fly into a wild passion at the drop of a hat so it's especially striking that she seems so calm (resigned, i guess) about what is, in fact, a perfectly reasonable situation in which to panic and cry.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:49 PM on August 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


ADL ‘repulsed’ by anti-Semitic Venezuelan magazine cover
[...] The image emblazoned on the magazine’s cover featured a picture of an ultra-Orthodox Jew with a Star of David made of dollar bills, with the headline “The Rabbis of Cadivi” — refering to Venezuela’s government body which deals with currency exchange.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:48 PM on August 18, 2016


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