Friday, March 29, 2019

SOCIALIST SUCCESS: No Electricity, No Luxury Goods; Venezuela Returns to 'Middle Ages'

AFP reports:

Walking for hours, making oil lamps, bearing water. For Venezuelans today, suffering under a new nationwide blackout that has lasted days, it's like being thrown back to life centuries ago.

El Avila, a mountain that towers over Caracas, has become a place where families gather with buckets and jugs to fill up with water, wash dishes and scrub clothes. The taps in their homes are dry from lack of electricity to the city's water pumps.

"We're forced to get water from sources that obviously aren't completely hygienic. But it's enough for washing or doing the dishes," said one resident, Manuel Almeida.

Because of the long lines of people, the activity can take hours of waiting.

Elsewhere, locals make use of cracked water pipes. But they still need to boil the water, or otherwise purify it.

"We're going to bed without washing ourselves," said one man, Pedro Jose, a 30-year-old living in a poorer neighborhood in the west of the capital...

Better-off Venezuelans, those with access to US dollars, have rushed to fill hotels that have giant generators and working restaurants.

For others, preserving fresh food is a challenge. Finding it is even more difficult. The blackout has forced most shops to close...

For Kelvin Donaire, who lives in the poor Petare district, survival is complicated.

He walks for more than an hour to the bakery where he works in the upmarket Los Palos Grandes area. "At least I'm able to take a loaf back home," Donaire said.

Many inhabitants have taken to salting meat to preserve it without working refrigerators.

Others, more desperate, scour trash cans for food scraps. They are hurt most by having to live in a country where basic food and medicine has become scarce and out of reach because of rocketing hyperinflation.

The latest blackout this week also knocked out communications.

According to NetBlocks, an organization monitoring telecoms networks, 85 percent of Venezuela has lost connection.

In stores, cash registers no longer work and electronic payment terminals are blanked out. That's serious in Venezuela, where even bread is bought by card because of lack of cash.

Some clients, trusted ones, are able to leave written IOUs.

"People need to eat. We let them take food and they will pay us when bank transfers come back," explained shop owner Carlos Folache.

Underneath an office block of Digitel, one of the main cellphone companies, dozens of people stand around trying to get a signal...

With Caracas's subway shut down, getting around the city is a trial, with choices between walking for kilometers (miles), lining up in the outsized hope of getting on one of the rare and badly overcrowded and dilapidated buses or managing to get fuel for a vehicle.

Pedro Jose said bus tickets have nearly doubled in price. "A ticket used to cost 100 bolivares (three US cents) and now it's 1,500 (45 cents)," he raged.

As night casts Caracas into darkness, families light their homes as best they can.

"We make lamps that burn gasoline, or oil, or kerosene -- any type of fuel," explained Lizbeth Morin, 30.

"We've returned to the Middle Ages."



4 comments:

  1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but without the various U.S. interventions and threats of interventions, this would be a pure example of a socialist implosion. Thanks to the various U.S. interventions, the left is blaming everything on those interventions.

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    Replies
    1. Exactly sir. The Imperial "Capitalist" US Government gets the blame.

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  2. Well, at least poor people are properly starving instead of being fat -- a condition the leftists in this country deplore. I'm sure Bernie Sanders sees this as a total win.

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  3. Brings home a joke I saw:

    Q: What did socialists use for light before candles?

    A: Electricity

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