Cash crop: women sell their tresses

One day last year Crismary Gonzalez, 40, a mother of six, glanced in the mirror and decided that the time had come: she could not afford to keep her luxuriant brown hair.

She is one of thousands of women in Venezuela, a country famed for its obsession with beauty and a record six Miss World titles, who are selling their hair: a rare opportunity to earn hard currency in the midst of a near-total collapse of the economy. "It was a big sacrifice I made for my children," she said. "They come first, and then me."

Gonzalez, a laundry worker, described going to a "secret hairdressers" close to her home. "They made me stand with my back to them, and they took a photo."

Her home in Maracaibo, headquarters of Venezuela’s crippled oil industry, is barely 60 miles from Colombia, where beauty parlours have an insatiable demand for real human hair, which they use in extensions.

The image of Gonzalez’s hair was sent to a contact in Colombia and an offer was made: £7.50 for a metre of her deep brown tresses, a fraction of what it would have sold for in the Colombian capital of Bogota.

The local currency, the bolivar, has lost more than 99 per cent of its value against the dollar in the past four years. The minimum wage is £ 3.40 a month.

Last month Gonzalez, who is separated from her husband, sold her hair again. She admits to feeling jealous when she sees other women with the long, flowing coiffure she once had. "But it grows back," she said.

The most valuable hair in the market is known as "virgin hair", meaning it has never been dyed. Gonzalez’s 14-year-old daughter sold 60cm of her hair and received about £4. "If she has the opportunity she will do it again."

Some women cross the border themselves and head for makeshift salons in Colombia where they sell their hair, using the proceeds to buy nappies or baby milk formula or other goods now almost impossible to find in Venezuela.

Four years of mismanagement, corruption, low productivity and a dip in the price of oil have caused a calamitous recession in Venezuela. Inflation is predicted to hit 2,000 per cent next year. Gonzalez used to support the socialist government, now even a mention of President Maduro’s name makes her angry.

"This misery we are all going through now is his fault," she said.