Currents News Staff
Cross into Venezuela’s unending disaster, the world’s worst growing refugee crisis.
Oil once made them the richest in South America, but now the line is for three days and nights to get a full tank.
In the capital, there’s a queue for everything, everywhere and hunger breeds a special kind of anger.
This is how hyperinflation works: groceries cost $50 now but because of what’s happening with the local currency, they will be worth at least double next month from now – people paying tomorrow’s prices today.
[See More: Crisis in Venezuela: U.S. Now Backing Opposition Leader Juan Gualdo]
There’s no queuing for the youngest living off of what, even here, nobody wants. This isn’t play, it’s practice for self-defense.
“My brother got killed in July by another gang,” says 14-year-old Uzmaria. “They found the body in the river. We gather stuff, we beg, a piece of chicken skin to take home,โ he adds.
In the socialist utopia that now leaves nearly every stomach empty, this was the day when change was meant to come.
Hundreds of thousands flooding central Caracas, watching opposition leader Juan Guaido swear himself in as interim President.
But it fast turned sour. They’ve had this standoff, outside the military airfield here, for months.
This is the first time an opposition leader has claimed the presidency. All eyes were on the army, and whether it too would rise up.
This is the important question here, really, the army’s vote. They may be throwing stones at them here, but what they really need is the army to switch sides.
That didn’t happen. And the police tear gas and motorcycle charges sent us fleeing down side streets.
Some lightly wounded, although dozens reported dead during the day. Army defectors outside Venezuela called on soldiers to rise up.
But we hear from one junior officer that even when you can’t feed your family it’s more complicated.
“I would say 80 per cent of soldiers are against the government, some even go to demonstrations. But the big fishes – the senior officers – are the ones eating – getting rich – while at the bottom we have it hard. I get a dollar and a half every month, promptly, enough for one chicken,โ said one Junior Officer.
And as Washington says Maduro isn’t President, Moscow insists he is.