I'm sorry to hear that. What has the experience been like for you to buy food? Are you stuck in the lines as well? How do restaurants obtain raw ingredients with which to cook?
Well, I've basically just been eating what I can find the easiest. I don't really go to the lines. I cannot afford to waste a whole day in a line where I don't even know what they are going to hand out or if I'm even going to be able to buy something.
I just came back from a friends place and he told me he almost got stuck in a dangerous looting situation because people got pissed because they've been in line for 10 hours and the food ran out. Plus the National Guard and the military are getting paid by black market gangs to let them cut in line and people notice that.
For example there have been long lines in every bakery to buy french bread, which is very common to eat here. I just don't eat it. Same thing with arepas, which is one of our main dishes. Since you can't get the flour (called Harina Pan) without waiting over 12 hours in line I just don't eat it. I've got some I bought from one of the black market guys some time ago but we are running out soon.
More and more stuff is getting more scarce. Rice disappeared some time ago, milk shows up every now and then. The food that you can get is extremely expensive. For example, ketchup had been missing for some time now. Suddenly it's everywhere. It used to cost around Bs.200 and now it costs Bs. 1500.
I wouldn't mind going without certain goods, but now with a baby I'm constantly worried. Diapers and formula are almost non-existent. We stocked up last year on diapers when they could still be found and the baby is doing OK right now because my wife managed to breastfeed exclusively. But not everyone is so lucky.
I don't really know how restaurants manage, I've got a friend that has a small fast food place and I know he pays some guys from a bakery for bread, and meat is already expensive so you can get that pretty easily.
But I know a hotel nearby that had to remove arepas from the breakfast menu (which was unthinkable here) because they cannot find the flour and I guess they don't want to pay black market rates.
This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a currency exchange control and price controls. Stuff gets locked in an artificial price for too long and the producers just give up.
The government tried to regulate the price of eggs. Next day, you could not find a single egg anywhere. The flour used to make arepas was regulated at an absurd price, something like Bs.30. Not even the packaging costs that.
One common misconception though, is that we cannot find any food. The basic things like rice, flour, bread, milk, etc are what's hard to find. If you've got the money and you want to go to a restaurant and get a lobster you can. But the basic stuff we used to eat every day for a reasonable price cannot be bought without going to the lines or paying black market prices. Medicines are hard to find for everyone.
Recently there was quite a commotion on the social networks because some dumbass from Europe came here to make a video for some pro-govt guys and said everything was peachy because he went to the liquor stores and found champagne, went to a gourmet market and saw foie gras, lobster and jamon serrano. But he forgot to mention he probably could not find a square of toilet paper to wipe his ass :)
Sorry for the huge wall of text and rambling. It's really hard to put my thoughts in order when I try to explain this stuff, especially in a foreign language.
Your account sounds eerily similar to what I saw happening in Zimbabwe not too-long ago. Long lines, exchange and price-controls causing shortages of basic, simple goods. Government officials getting kickbacks, then turning around and selling it on the black-market. Oh, and of course, the poor getting handouts simply so they wouldn't revolt or "vote" differently.
Really, that last part about the government-officials getting preferential treatment is probably what's playing a huge part in destabilizing the market there. They're quite-literally abusing their government-employee privilege in order to multiply their own-benefit, disregarding the fact that every time they do it, they dilute things for everyone else.
E.g. in Zimbabwe, foreign currency was very scarce. But government officials were given guaranteed monthly "allowances" at the ridiculous official (controlled) exchange rate. They then simply turned-around and sold it on the black-market at the highly-inflated rate (because of the scarcity). They "buy" at say 10 units per dollar, then turn around and sell at 100 units for each dollar. Oh, and the big reason people wanted dollars? So they could trade with the outside world. And since it was near-impossible to manufacture/create anything of value, then "buying" foreign currency with goods was next to impossible.
Have you considered leaving? Is there something tying you to staying there?
This is one of the most insightful, coherent and relevant piece of writing that I have recently read on the ground reality in Venezuela.
I found this particularly illuminating: One common misconception though, is that we cannot find any food. The basic things like rice, flour, bread, milk, etc are what's hard to find. If you've got the money and you want to go to a restaurant and get a lobster you can.
I think it's just plain old populism. They go on TV screaming about having to "defend the poor from the big bad private sectors that want to topple the government with their economic war with artificially induced high prices. The price of eggs has to be Bs.500 a carton!"
Meanwhile , just the cardboard for producing the packaging for the eggs costs Bs.200, chicken feed Bs. 300, the govt increases the minimum wage 4 times a year to fight "the economic war",etc.
Of course, anyone producing eggs is now working at a loss, so they just produce less and move part of the production to the black market.
I really have no idea what their endgame is. Maybe the idea is to actually try to finish off the private producers that are left in the country.
Thank you for sharing this. If it were up to me I'd open the boarder and let you all come to the US. Probably you just want your own country to work right though.
If that were to happen, the US border being open/closed wouldn't matter for too-long as Venezuela would close its own borders. To restrict the egress of productive citizens.
And anyway, it's not really a solution. Not everyone will ever be able to leave; if a country is going down, it will need to be fixed. And it can only really be fixed by the people of that country; the more of its people (those with skill, training, education and initiative) leave, the harder is it going to be for those who remain.
Unfortunately, people are already leaving at an alarming rate, mostly young people who see no future in the country.
The government already did a test, blocking our border with Colombia, with the excuse that products from Venezuela were being smuggled to Colombia. That does happen of course, but they also blocked the movement of people. And most international airlines are leaving the country because the government won't pay for them to repatriate their earnings in the country.
I'm trying to get my papers in order and see where I might be able to go. No one really wants to permanently leave their country, but unfortunately I don't see a future here. I don't want to be stuck here till I'm old hoping things will get better soon.
Vinegar was the only product available in most butcher/meat shops. Food, goods and petrol were rationed. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=https:/... You needed special cards to be allowed to buy, not that shops actually had anything to sell.
There were very few options:
-Pewex/Baltona, special shops accepting western currency only. Meant for elites and select few allowed to travel abroad (musicians, sailors, pilots, stewards), and to drain currency from black market (prostitution, smuggling).
-black market and connections. Empty shop shelves, but there was always something under the counter for the right people.
-barter, inflation made native currency meaningless, but you could exchange your petrol cards for some meat etc.
-farming family. Every holiday ended with cars full of eggs, meat, milk, honey and spirits travelling back home.
Do you have family in rural parts of the country? This is the cheapest option for surviving such nightmare :(
We didnt need twitter, mainstream TV series (subs, alternatywy 4) and movies (mis, co mi zrobisz jak mnie zlapiesz) pretty much celebrated Polish ingenuity in the face of economic reality :/ examples:
Thanks, those videos are really bewildering. Were they commonly watched by Poles back then? Weren't such direct depiction of how things were opposed by the establishment?
There was extreme media censorship (GUKPPiW 1946-1990), but directed almost exclusively towards dissident political statements and praise of western prosperity. You were still allowed to show foreign wealth as long as you showed for example how easily Polish creativity fleeced westerners out of it. Labelling everything as a comedy also helped, still for example 'Alternatywy 4'(same director as the clips below) spend 3 years being edited/censored. Those were prime time TV shows broadcast couple of years before fall of the Iron Curtain, maybe even slightly contributing to the growing unrest and eventual Polish exit from the Eastern Bloc.
TV was not allowed to show anything celebrating western lifestyle. We didnt get Miami Vice, Wonder Years, MacGyver, A Team or Dynasty until ~5 years after kicking Russians out of our country. Instead foreign tv shows we had were 'Escrava Isaura' and some old chestnuts from the fifties like Zorro. Cinema was a lot better, scifi movies had little trouble with censorship, we got 'New Hope' in 1979, 'Empire Strikes Back' in 1982, 'Terminator' in 1985. Toho Kaiju movies came out same year as in the west. Of course you could get censored for something entirely not in the movie. 1984 'NeverEnding Story' was delayed into 1987 because of directors earlier work 'Das Boot'.
