In Venezuela, it is customary to eat mostly fish during Easter. This is a tradition, not a decision based on religious conviction. Venezuelan Catholics are probably the most relaxed of the world when it comes to following their church's precepts.
In the last years, due to several factors, getting fish, a freshly procured product right in front of our noses, has become increasingly difficult. I was unable to buy any during the whole week. Most of the places near our house stopped selling and the few places in town where you can find them fresh and good are hard to access unless you have a car. I walked all the way to this popular fish market called La Boca (the mouth; named after the Manzanares River mouth meeting the Caribbean Sea).
Even though there were not many sellers today, they had a great variety of fish. The only problem was that it was expensive and they did not have a point of sale (POS) to allow people to pay with their debit cards.
They accept only cash (local currency and american $) and/or mobile payment via certain Apps.
Second complication: the app can be a problem in some areas, or at some times of the day. Mine never opened; I did not have enough cash with me either.
You go to an ATM machine here and you'll probably get a max of VEF 50 (about $10). In the fish market, you'd need probably twice as much to get decent fish for the family.
Like anywhere else in the world, there is of course a sector of the population for whom cash (local or foreign) is never a problem. They are the ones pushing the narrative that "Venezuela is getting fixed/or fixing itself".
The way I see it, we are as fucked as ever.
Today, being Easter Sunday, there were very few people buying. Most visitors were heading back home and locals were probably too drunk or tired of sun exposure.
Since I was not going to buy any fish, I decided to pay more attention to the pelicans and other sea birds, who seemed more accessible.
If the place were not so smelly and if there were not safety concerns, I could spend the whole day just looking at these fellas.
I walked back home thinking about the resurrection of the Christ and what the odds were of having our economy and our country ressurected. My guess, it would be more feasible to have the former than the latter (at least in the near future).
Luckily for these birds, they do not have to think about all that guano.