Children’s Drawings Show What Hunger Looks Like in Venezuela

[Zorro]

Arepas are a staple food item among Venezuelan families. The flat cornmeal cakes, often stuffed with grilled meat, beans, or eggs, are found at nearly every meal. But for many children in Venezuela subsisting solely on arepas, what was once just part of their cultural identity is now a symbol of growing food shortages in the struggling country.

Primary school students in the capital city of Caracas are coming to school hungry, Reuters reports. After several students fainted from hunger, teachers at the Padre Jose Maria Velaz school in western Caracas asked them to draw what they’d eaten in recent meals and what they expected to eat soon. The simple drawings show days of eating arepas for every meal, dinners consisting of a mango, and breakfasts of bread and water. Several children left blank spaces, indicating that they had skipped meals.

Meat and vegetables are largely lacking from the kids’ meals. Diets made up entirely of fats and starches have left children malnourished. Health officials note that diets missing out on protein and dairy could negatively affect brain development. School director Maria Hidalgo told Reuters that a quarter of the 478 students are not getting enough to eat or are eating unbalanced meals.

Children aren’t the only ones struggling. Nearly 90 percent of Venezuelans said they do not have enough money to buy food because of the country’s economic conditions, a recent survey conducted by Simón Bolívar University found.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/children-drawings-show-hunger-looks-venezuela-144746198.html

[COLGATE4]

1. Obviously all the CIA and Colombia's fault

[Judi Lynn]

2. Did anyone say "Make the economy scream" again, and "Make sure our hand doesn't show?" n/t

[COLGATE4]

3. I think it's hilarious that, when faced with proof of the utter ineptitude and

calamitous performance of the Chavista's Bolivarian 'revolution' the best you can come up with is the tired allusion to Allende's Chile. How many years ago was that again?

[Judi Lynn]

4. Oh, now they don't destabilize and destroy governments? Is that right?

Did they decide to live like Christians?

How sweet.

They've stopped doing the things they always did.

Oh, my God! It's a new day, and you are the one to break that blessed news to us! Rejoice!

[center]

God bless us everyone. [/center]

[FBaggins]

5. Criminals have cut brake lines before to kill drivers on a mountainous road

But when the driver controls the road crews and tells them to remove the guardrail... and then sprays water to form an ice sheet... and then announces that he's going to keep driving straight at the hairpin turn... and then accelerates as he heads down the hill...

... speculating that someone else killed him by cutting the brake line is irresponsible and irrational.

We know what happens when the government more than quadruples the amount of currency in circulation in two years. You can't blame the inflationary impact from that on someone other than the government that's printing the currency (and which is almost certainly lying when pretending that it's only a 4-fold increase). We know what happens when governments implement price controls that set the price for good below the cost of production.

[Francis Booth]

6. Surely you're aware that the global glut in crude oil has hurt Venezuela especially hard,

since about 90% or more of their export income is from crude.

How their current economic state is the fault of the US or some sinister right-wing scheme is just beyond me. If you can explain in detail how we did this, I'd love to hear it. I believe they badly blundered when Chavez fired half the PDVSA workforce in 2003 and replaced competent workers and managers with loyalists cronies. And Maduro continues to blame foreign actors and will not address structural problems in the economic model, so the poor souls there, who are really absolutely lovely people and deserve competent leadership, won't be getting relief anytime soon, I fear. Stooges and useful idiots in the far-left press continue to give the bus driver a pass, so don't expect any help from them.

[Bacchus4.0]

7. Actually Maduro did blame the US for producing too much oil and hurting Iran, Ven, and Russia

No kidding. Chavez always wanted to dictate US policy. He still runs the country 3 years after his death.

The US is Venezuela's largest trading partner.

[Francis Booth]

8. "The US is Venezuela's largest trading partner."

Well, all us CIA agents gotta eat too.

[Marksman_91]

9. Venezuela's problems go well beyond low oil prices

Its government is actually run by narcs, and since Chavez's days, they've been arbitrarily taking away private businesses away without compensation and ruined entire industries by putting military and inexperienced managers to run them simply because they were loyal. They never diversified and developed the other aspects of their economy (on the contrary, they did all they could to destroy it while making themselves insanely wealthy) and now when oil prices are down, they're paying heavily. Oh, and price controls are a BIG no-no as well when it comes to economics. One need only look at the "humble" attires, vehicles, security, and residences of the top Chavista leaders and military personnel to see that the only ones who have become richer under chavismo is them and nobody else.