Bernie Sanders said that he liked bread lines.
When asked about the food shortages provoked by the Sandinistas’ voodoo economic policy, Sanders claimed that bread lines were a sign of a healthy economy, suggesting an equitable distribution of wealth: “It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food: the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”
Sadly in Socialist Venezuela, the citizens don't seem to appreciate how good bread lines are. Not to mention fingerprint scanners for buying milk.
Venezuelan cities cleaned up from a night of looting and fiery protests Wednesday as government offices closed their doors for the rest of the week in the face of a worsening energy crisis that is causing daily blackouts.
The socialist administration began imposing a four-hour daily blackout around the country this week to save electricity. Then, Maduro announced that millions of officials will now work only Mondays and Tuesdays, taking the rest of the week off in a bid to save electricity.
Angry residents in darkened towns around the country took to the streets Tuesday night, setting up flaming barricades and raiding shops for bread and other scarce food.
“The crazy right wing doesn’t understand that in hard times, a family has to band together,” he said. “They’re trying to create a violent situation.”
Apparently two-thirds of Venezuelans are now crazy right-wingers.
About two-thirds of Venezuelans want Maduro to go, according to local polling.
Also they're not fond of how the government employees get bread line privileges.
When the police officers arrived, they walked right into the store, where they spoke with one of the employees. A few minutes later, the same employee started bringing out bags of corn flour. All the people waiting saw this and it made them angry.
Increasingly, people are standing up when they see the security forces acting in this way. People are angry because we are facing shortages of everything right now: sugar, milk, diapers, medicine, flour, bread, eggs, chicken, tomato sauce, mayonnaise, beans, spare car parts…
It’s also important to note that there are also informal agreements between the police, the National Guard and dealers who resell these food items at higher prices on the black market...
Socialism. It really works. And Power to the People.
On April 26, people took to the streets in three Venezuelan states, looting stores to find food.
Maracaibo, in the western state of Zulia, is the epicenter of thefts: on Tuesday alone, Venezuelans raided pharmacies, shopping malls, supermarkets, and even trucks with food in seven different areas of the city. There were people on the street shouting “we are hungry!”
The latest Survey of Living Conditions (Encovi) showed that more than 3 million Venezuelans eat only twice a day or less. The rampart inflation and low wages make it increasingly more difficult for people to afford food.
“Fruits and vegetables have disappeared from shopping lists. What you buy is what fills your stomach more: 40 percent of the basic groceries is made up of corn flour, rice, pasta, and fat”.
But not even that incomplete diet Venezuelans can live on because those food products are hard to come by. Since their prices are controlled by the government, they are scarce and more people demand them.
The survey also notes the rise of diseases such as gastritis, with an increase of 25 percent in 2015, followed by poisoning (24.11 percent), parasites (17.86 percent), and bacteria (10.71 percent).
The results of this study are consistent with the testimony of Venezuelan women, who told thePanAm Post that because “everything is so expensive” that they prefer to eat twice a day and leave lunch for their children. That way they can make do with the little portions they can afford.
Under Socialism, you too can live this way.
"With the money we used to spend on breakfast, lunch and dinner, we can now buy only breakfast, and not a very good one," said Gonzalez in her home, which on a recent day contained just half a kilo of chicken (about a pound), four plantains, some cooking oil, a small packet of rice, and a mango.
The family did not know when they would be able to buy more.
Either way, Venezuelans are tired and cross.
A minimum wage is now only around 20 percent of the cost of feeding a family of five, according to one monitoring group. Lines snake around state supermarkets from before dawn.
"You have to get into these never ending lines - all day, five in the morning until three in the afternoon - to see if you get a couple of little bags of flour or some butter," said taxi driver Jhonny Mendez, 58.
"It makes a person want to cry."
Natalia Guerra, 45, lives in a small home in Petare with eight relatives, only one of whom has a significant salary.
She remembers buying milk for her own kids but now cannot find any for her grandchildren. "We're a big family, and it's constantly getting harder for us to eat," she said.