From: Caracas Chronicles <caracaschronicles@gmail.com> To: Feijoo Colomine <conafro@gmail.com> Sent: Wed, May 6, 2015 at 9:10 PM Subject: Su interesante artículo en Aporrea Estimado Sr. Colomine Leí con interés su artículo en Aporrea, donde narra su decepción al visitar el Gran Abasto Bicentenario de la Plaza Venezuela. Su experiencia no sorprende: anaqueles vacíos, poca variedad, colas…
The BBC is developing something close to an obsession with our country’s queues. Following on the heels of Daniel Pardo’s sublime video diary on what it takes to purchase eight items from a shopping list, we have the BBC Magazine going all Jane Goodall on the ins and outs of the country’s queues. The value added: Often…
There’s a huge shortage of meat across the land. Butchers are struggling to fill their inventories as national production has declined sharply and imports are taking longer to arrive. Public inspectors are forcing businesses to sell at a loss (because price controls). The choice that remains is to either sell what’s left or simply close shop until who…
Much has been said about our newfound ability to tell which items are hidden inside a white supermarket bag. It has been etched into dozens of cartoons by almost all of our satire cartoonists. A commonplace joke that describes the loony state of mind in which we are thanks to scarcity, and all the crazy campaigns by the government to have us in…
It’s MY day. It’s not my birthday. And Saint Anne’s Feast Day is July 26th. It’s my day because, on Tuesdays, Venezuelans with ID numbers ending in 2 and 3 can buy price-controlled products in a supermarket that I’ll call the No-Kwik-E-Mart. Since this is Holy Week holiday, I decide to venture out and stand in line,…
(A guest post from reader/journalist Arnaldo Espinoza) The Whys and Wherefores of the $20,000 iPhone Arnaldo R. Espinoza (@Naldoxx) Prices in Venezuela stopped making sense a while ago, and nowhere more so than at the Apple Store. Long gone are the days of Dame tu PIN and the bidding wars between carriers. It’s become pricey…
I loved Efecto Cocuyo’s via crucis through several government-owned Farmapatria drug stores. “In the Ipasme location, we read the list to the sales person and he did not even wait until hearing the entire list before blurting out: “we have nothing here. Here we only have what people do not want.” After listening to our…
(Día Día Practimercados is a small grocery store chain that caters to Venezuelans living in the country’s slums. Last week, they were taken over by the government. The firm put out a communiqué, and they reached out to us to ask if we would publish the English version. Here it is, in its entirety. Note…
Ever since scarcity began, Venezuelans were presented with a new phenomenon: “economic war.” Hazily defined and poorly communicated, economic war basically says that someone – the opposition, private industry, the CIA, the Mossad, Uribe – SOMEONE is responsible for the long lines and empty shelves in Venezuela’s stores. That someone is … anyone but the government.…
Farmatodo is one of the largest pharmacy chains in Venezuela. To our foreign friends, the Venezuelan equivalent to a Walgreens or a CVS. A productive family business that has been an example of intelligent growth during the past couple of decades (although it has a 96 year old story). Due to the large number of stores across the…
From Hugo Chávez’s 2012 campaign platform (emphasis is mine): “We wish to continue building XXIst Century Bolivarian socialism in Venezuela as an alternative to the savage capitalist model, and through this ensure the greatest sum of social safety, the greatest sum of political stability, and the greatest sum of happiness for our people.” “We wish to…
As Venezuelans’ desperation for basic staples boils over (watch the video above if you don’t believe me), today the government had a little PR meltdown, courtesy of Food Minister Carlos Osorio. Starting early in the morning, government bureaucrats started tweeting pictures of an apparently clean, orderly, well-stocked Bicentenario supermarket in Plaza Venezuela. As the day rolled on, though, a…
On Tuesday January 6th, we had yet another case of “I can’t believe he tweeted that”. Here’s what happened… The news that McDonald’s might stop selling its famous fries in Venezuela has been circling around for a couple of days now. The company claims a labor dispute in West Coast ports is slowing down exports. McDonald’s Japan actually…
(It was starting to get lonely being the only zuliano on the blog, so I did something about it. Meet Roberto Torres Luzardo, a talented journalist based in Maracaibo, and the newest contributor to Caracas Chronicles.) “I’m a bachaquero” Roberto Torres Luzardo One effect of economic chaos has been to create a new class of Venezuelan…
Nicolás Maduro raised the minimum wage by 15% last night, starting December 1st. Quickly, government news agencies began spewing the lie – there really is no other way to characterize it – that this was the highest minimum wage in Latin America, equivalent to US$ 776. The rub lies in the fact that this conversion…
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