A Day of Tears After Chavez Death in Venezuela

[Catherina]

8. Not much

Last edited Sun Jul 21, 2013, 06:27 PM - Edit history (1)

Thanks for considering my point. I'm not much of a charts person, especially after working with corporations who paid people to make the charts say whatever they wanted.

I went to Venezuela several times in the last 2 years and never noticed any food shortages but my needs are very different than most Americans.

I remember being in Germany and listening to my fellow Americans moan that the Germans were backwards because they didn't stock this or that. Naaman, I lived all over the world growing up and several of those places were poor. Some were poor in everything, where people starved on the streets and others were *poor* in luxury goods but everyone was housed, clothed, fed and happy.

In the wealthier places, you could find Bloc of Goose Foie Gras on the supermarket shelves. In the places where people were well-fed and happy, such a thing was unheard of but you could find plenty of chicken, rice, pork....

So can you clarify what you mean by a food shortage on grocery store shelves?

If you're thinking of empty shelves with nothing on them, I assure you that's not the case in Venezuela. If you're looking for shelves stocked with caviar and other imported goods, then you would be in trouble but those are luxuries, not basic food items. Imported yoghurt and Skippy's Peanut Butter aren't basic food needs in my book either.

Plenty of plantains, rice, chicken, pork, beans, corn, beef (Evo Morales pays for his oil in beef believe it or not & Nicaragua sometimes paid for their oil with beef, sugar, coffee, mil). I suggest that if you need more than staples like that, the problem is with you and you're part of the reason this modern world, that flies water in pretty little bottles from Mount Fiji to California, is so messed up right now (I'm using "you" generally there).

Additionally, an often used tactic to destabilize countries and their economies in Latin America is to affect the flow of goods in and out so that a right-wing military coup can take place to "save" the country. That's how Pinochet got put into power in Chile.

Chavez found a way to get around all that and feed his people despite the business community's tricks. Read this article about the way they'd hoard food stuffs.

Think of all the shortages we have in our country. Most of them aren't even real but just a tactic to raise the prices. Remember the oil shortages in the US? The sugar shortages?

So basically, I don't buy the big hullaballoo about food shortages on grocery store shelves because it just wasn't there, the shelves were full when I went (see this article too http://www.democraticunderground.com/11089768) and most importantly, people were well fed. The poor were totally unconcerned with shortages of imports like Skippy's peanut butter. Instead, they bought peanuts at the market and ground them up themselves, cutting out the middleman and his profits.

Malnutrition has been eradicated in Venezuela. All the people crying about food shortages are crying about lost money making schemes, they want to go back to a time where they could squeeze the last drops from the little guy and point to their full shelves. Which would you prefer? Full shelves of fancy stuff you can't afford or real food for your children to grow healthy in a political system where they have a real say?