The New York Times won’t admit that socialism is the direct cause of Venezuela‘s current turmoil, but at least the Gray Lady is publicizing the results of that turmoil.
Venezuela’s petroleum industry, whose vast revenues once fueled the country’s Socialist-inspired revolution, underwriting everything from housing to education, is spiraling into disarray.
To add insult to injury, the Venezuelan government has been forced to turn to its nemesis, the United States, for help.
“You call them the empire,” said Luis Centeno, a union leader for the oil workers, referring to what government officials call the United States, “and yet you’re buying their oil.” …
… Venezuela is racked by shortages of foods like corn and rice, which it once easily imported using the company’s vast foreign currency revenues. Essential medicines like antibiotics have disappeared. The economy is set to contract by 10 percent by the end of the year and has already seen triple-digit inflation.
The price of bread alone has doubled from month to month, now about 50 cents a loaf in many places, at a time when the oil workers here say they are making less than a dollar a day because of the inflation.
“We are practically working for free,” said Pedro Velásquez, a supervisor at an oil field in the town of Punta de Mata.
Whatever money the government can muster to improvise patchwork repairs in its oil fields and processing plants is now drying up.
With the state oil company hobbled by debts, two-thirds of its exports go to paying off Chinese and other lenders. The company is running out of resources to pay international technicians, or even its own people.
“The decline is speeding up, and that will continue to happen,” said Lisa Viscidi, a Latin America energy expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research institute. “Conditions are getting worse and worse; there’s less and less money to invest.”
