Amid desperate food shortages Venezuelans are picking up new survival skills.
On the night of Jan. 9, for example, a hungry mob took just 30 minutes to pick clean a grocery store in the city of Puerto Ordaz.
By the time owner Luis Felipe Anatael arrived at the bodega he had opened five months earlier, the looters had hauled away everything from cold cuts to ketchup to the cash registers.
“It makes you want to cry,” Anatael said in an interview. “I think we are headed for chaos.”
Evidence for his prediction can be found in towns and cities across Venezuela that have been hit by an outbreak of looting and mob violence. Angry about empty supermarket shelves and skyrocketing prices, some people are breaking into warehouses, ransacking food trucks and invading outlying farms.
During the first 11 days of this month the Venezuelan Observatory for Social Conflict, a Caracas rights group, recorded 107 episodes of looting and several deaths in 19 of the 23 states.
Recent headlines from Venezuela read like notes from the Apocalypse: On Margarita Island dozens of people waded into the ocean and forced their way aboard a fishing boat, making off with its catch of sardines
In the city of Maracay, just west of Caracas, thieves broke into a veterinary school, stole two pregnant thoroughbred horses and slaughtered them for meat.
A recent video from the western state of Merida shows a group of people cornering a cow before stoning it to death as bystanders yell: “The people are hungry!”
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blames the country’s woes on an “economic war” against his government by rightwingers and foreign interests, but his critics say his government has disrupted domestic food production by expropriating farms and factories.
The government has less cash to import food because of its mismanagement of the oil sector, where production has fallen to a 29-year low. Hyperinflation and the collapse of the currency have put the prices of foodstuffs available on the black market beyond of the reach of many families.
However, rather than reforming the economy, the government has resorted to handouts and far-fetched schemes.
As they grow thinner some Venezuelans insist they have a right to take matters into their own hands. That was the case in Maracaibo, where residents recently swarmed into the streets, stopped two trucks filled with flour and candy, and emptied them.
“We either loot or we die of hunger,” one of the looters, Maryoli Corniele, told Diario la Verdad, the local newspaper.
Sometimes the looting has been spontaneous, but in other cases the targeting of shops and food trucks appears to have been coordinated via chat groups on Facebook and Whatsapp.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of