Venezuela: Tens of thousands march in anti-government protests

[Yo_Mama]

21. I'd like to see what would happen in this country

if we suddenly discovered that we couldn't reliably buy the basic necessities of life. We'd be demonstrating too!

Of course the scarcity is hardest on the poor that don't have workarounds.
http://www.eluniversal.com/economia/140213/venezuelas-food-shortage-in-january-the-highest-in-five-years

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-08/hunt-for-food-sends-venezuelans-to-colombian-border-towns.html
Nor is the government's rhetoric about capital strikes and plots helping any - food is being bought at subsidized prices and then being sold across the border.

Dozens of people take shifts to line up outside supermarkets in Maracaibo, a city of 2.1 million people located 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of the capital, waiting for the next delivery of regulated goods. The new stock is bought up as soon as it hits the shelves, leaving shops barren of products such as meat, grains and toilet paper.

The goods are then loaded onto trucks and taken to Colombia. Many of these professional shoppers are native Guajira Indians dressed in bright floral-print dresses who have double nationality and are exempt from border controls.

More than 300 trucks with everything from rice to car tires made the 130-kilometer drive from Maracaibo to the border through eight army and police checkpoints when a Bloomberg reporter did the journey on Nov. 10. Drivers of cars carrying food pay those staffing the checkpoints anywhere from 20 to 300 bolivars for quick passage, according to Sotomayor.

It's no surprise that there is so much conflict in Tachira - the shortages in the border states have been building for a while. With inflation so high, it's one of the few ways the poor can provide for themselves. This is from June of last year:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/food-rationing-begin-big-venezuelan-state-215524026.html

I think if the monetary issues could just be controlled, the protests would die down rather rapidly. But it remains to be seen if the administration is able to do that. Due to the inability to import components, the auto factories have shut down. The economy is crumpling under the strain of this.