“This is so depressing,” said Maria Plaza, 30, a lawyer, an hour and a half into her wait. “Pathetic.” Depressing, in an otherwise bright, modern supermarket that sells $100 bottles of Spanish wine, Jack Daniel’s whiskey and organic rice puffs. Pathetic, in a country with the world’s largest petroleum reserves and oil prices at nearly $95 a barrel, yet unable to supply basic goods because of its crumbling local currency and a shortage of U.S. dollars. “Soon we’ll be using newspaper, just like they do in Cuba!” said an elderly man nearby, inching forward in line. “Yeah! Like Cuba!” others shouted. The fate of Venezuela’s revolution, it seems, will be decided at the supermarket. Nearly a year after Chávez’s death of complications from cancer at age 58, his handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, is struggling to contain food shortages, spiraling inflation and rampant crime. The arrival of basic staples such […]