Category: Latin America

People queue to buy staple items outside a state-run Bicentenario supermarket in Caracas, August 4, 2015. See Also As dawn breaks over the scorching Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, smugglers, young mothers, and a handful of kids stir outside a supermarket where they spent the night, hoping to be first in line for scarce rice, milk, or whatever may be available. Some of the people in line are half-asleep on flattened cardboard boxes; others are drinking coffee. Almost all are bemoaning their situation. With shortages of basic goods and looting on the rise, more Venezuelans say they are resorting to nighttime waits in front of closed stores. "I can’t get milk for my child. What are we going to do?" said Leida Silva, 54, breaking into tears outside the Latino supermarket in northern Maracaibo, where she arrived at 3 a.m. on a recent day. The food shortages in Venezuela, a […]

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Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a meeting with representatives of the countries from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) in Caracas, in this handout picture provided by Miraflores Palace on August 10, 2015. Cash-strapped Venezuela is pushing for an emergency OPEC meeting and joint coordination with Russia to stem a tumble in oil prices, President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday night. "We’re working towards a special OPEC meeting, in coming days we’ll announce …. We’re making contacts with OPEC governments," Maduro said during an hours-long televised broadcast. "We’re evaluating the possibility that a very high ranking OPEC meeting be called, and that in coordination with the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin, we can advance in taking a series of actions to defend the oil market in the face of this latest fall," he added. Further details were not immediately available. While members including Venezuela and Algeria are […]

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As Venezuela’s economy continues to worsen — its currency having entered “free fall mode,” according to the Financial Times — the desperate Maduro government has taken the extreme measure of nationalizing the nation’s food industry. Venezuelan farmers and food producers are now required to sell anywhere from 30 percent to 100 percent of their products to state-owned stores. The order covers staple foods such as rice, milk, oil, sugar and flour. Shortages and long lines in stores have become common since Venezuela’s economy began sliding into inflation — a situation that placed them at the top of the list in the world for inflation in 2014. The official inflation rate was 65 percent last year, and in the last month the currency has lost another 43 percent of its value. Oil prices once again have dropped, causing further strain on Venezuela’s struggling economy. The recent free fall of the […]

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Lake Maracaibo, a 5,097 square mile body of water, is a graveyard for everything from abandoned pipeline to tires. Photographer: Pietro Pitts/Bloomberg From the moment the diver in red nylon coveralls and blue Chuck Taylor sneakers resurfaces after replacing rusted pipeline on the bed of South America’s largest lake, it’s a race against time. Coated head to toe in dark-black oil, he clambers aboard the service boat, rips off his makeshift uniform and scrambles to hose himself down with a special compound to wash away the contaminants. For nearly a century, the petroleum deposits beneath giant Lake Maracaibo served as a cash cow for successive Venezuelan governments. In return, especially in the years since the company’s energy industry was nationalized by former President Hugo Chavez, it has received little back but neglect. The Maracaibo basin is where Venezuela’s enormous energy bounty, including oil reserves that dwarf even those of […]

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AP Photo/Fernando Llano CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A man was killed and dozens were arrested Friday as a mob looted a supermarket in an industrial Venezuelan city, Bolivar state authorities said. In announcing the looting, Gov. Francisco Rangel pushed back against opponents of Venezuela’s socialist government who attributed the unrest to widespread scarcities of basic goods across the oil-rich nation. He said more than two dozen people were arrested in connection with the looting in the southeastern city of Ciudad Guyana and added that there was no excuse for the behavior. "No one is starving," he said. Rangel also suggested to the television station Globovision that the looting might have been driven by people with "political motives." Tensions are running high in Venezuela as the country gears up for December legislative elections. Local newspaper Correo del Caroni said the dead person was a 21-year-old vendor had been shot in […]

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