I'm taking a break from my usual posts for something I need to share with the world. This is where I live. This is actually happening and people are starving.
Those pictures above were taken by a family member yesterday in a supermarket nearby.
And you may be wondering... why are those shelves empty?
First of all, production of food in Venezuela became almost impossible. Years ago Venezuela nationalized many food factories and farms, and today almost every factory they own is BANKRUPT. They destroyed national production. Venezuela used to be a rich and attractive country with lots of opportunities and immigrants. It's still the country with the most oil reserves in the WORLD. There is no reason for this.
Second, last week, the SUNNDE (the supposedly "Consumer Protection" arm of the government) went to many supermarket chains and basically forced merchants to lower the prices to ridiculous amounts of money (even at a loss for the merchants), and these caused thousands of starving people to just raid the supermarkets to the point of leaving everything empty. Sort of the third world's version of Black Friday. A terrifying version.
Children are dying of hunger. People of all ages are dying in hospitals because there are no medicine. Not even penicillin to treat pneumonia. No insulin. Nothing. I have a friend who is a pediatrician working in a hospital, and he is absolutely devastated about children dying. I asked him how can he deal with emotions and do his work, and he told me "I can't."
Dictator Maduro doesn't care if people die if he's still in power. Everyone knows it and just accepts it.
Poor people just got used to getting free money, houses and food, so there are many people who still vote for the government because it's easier for them to depend all their lives in a government rather than working hard and earning their things. Soldiers are getting jailed because they are protesting that even they are starving.
In December the government offered to give all households in Venezuela subsidized ham, and many people never got it. So instead of protesting for the right to work in a free country and earning their food, and protesting about why all the nationalized food companies owned by the government are now bankrupt, they protested for ham. Which resulted in an armed response from the military, and an excuse from Maduro saying they didn't receive the ham because Portugal sabotaged everything.
This picture below is in a hospital in the country. By the way, many people got jailed because of the leak of this picture. That's how the government solves everything.
Who is running the country?
Maduro's nephews were convicted a month ago to 18 years in jail in the US for drug trafficking. THE PRESIDENTS FAMILY. No kidding here. And Diosdado Cabello (actual owner of Venezuela and the most dangerous man in the country) was sent to jail in 1981 for pedophilia, and is the one who actually gives the orders to assassinate whoever tries to impede the government in their way to take over what's left. Oscar Pérez, for example, who was fighting for the freedom of this country and last week was broadcasting live through Instagram as the "colectivos" ended with his life. Colectivos work for the government to assassin without the government being seen as guilty.
Maduro's regime is not afraid of killing anyone and the repercussions of it. Last year almost 150 people (mostly students) got killed by the government's soldiers while in protest. The picture below is a soldier pointing a gun at a student seconds before killing him.
So, you may now be thinking, why is Maduro still winning elections?
He is not. He has the Election Counsel doing everything that he wants, and yesterday the government prohibited opposition parties to participate from the next presidential election.
What I just told you is not even the 1% of the full story. But it gives you an idea of the kind of people we are dealing with. And I can bet there will be people commenting in this post saying Venezuela is heaven on Earth and that everything is caused by the US (Maduro's eternal bullsh*t excuse, one of the many).