The lines have never been worse.
In Venezuela, they’ve been around for years and begin in the wee hours—queues at supermarkets and department stores for basic goods like toilet paper and rice.
But this month, the lines have become longer and the waiting times have increased. People’s lives now revolve around standing in lines. They sleep on the streets to be the first in line to buy car batteries, laundry soap, tampons, and milk. They schedule their meals around being in line. Men and women of all ages now make their living by standing in line for others at 2am or earlier. They charge from $3 to $7 for each product they will buy on someone’s behalf.
Why so bad? Plunging oil prices only made inflation worse, and there’s a lack of foreign currency, among other issues.
“In terms of shortages, this is the worst I’ve seen,” says David Smilde, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, a US think tank that studies the region, in an interview from Caracas. “And what’s different this time around is that at this point the people that are most affected are the poor. ...
The situation has led to a rise in crime due to the exorbitant prices at which most goods are sold in the black market. The difference between official prices and market prices is currently more than 560%, according to a recent study. (Meat and poultry prices are well over 1,000% what they should be.)
On Jan. 9, an armed commando of four robbers stormed the Día a Día supermarket in La Vega, Caracas. They stole the money in the cash registers and fled on their motorcycles carrying as many tuna cans and bags of sugar and flour as they could carry. One day earlier, in the port city of Catia, an unknown number of assailants ransacked a truck and left the scene with 92 kg (203 lbs) of cold meats. Two days before, in the same city, 15 people stopped and looted two trucks filled with bread and other products from the Bimbo brand.
