VENEZUELA’S ‘BREAD WARS.’
Venezuela seizes bakeries as food crisis grows
CARACAS, VENEZUELA • For the past 25 years, Eduardo Dos Santos has taken care of the loyal clients at Mansion’s Bakery.
But now the Caracas corner store is in the hands of socialists, and Dos Santos is at least temporarily out of a job, as a result of the latest attempt by the government to reduce the sprawling food lines that have become the symbol of Venezuela’s descent into economic chaos.
Agents from the National Superintendent of Fair Prices raided Mansion’s last week and accused the owners of hoarding scarce sacks of government-imported flour, saying the subsidized goods should have been used to make price-regulated loaves instead of croissants and sweet rolls.
The government said it was taking over the shop for 90 days, turning control over to a pro-government neighbourhood committee.
“This group of scoundrels arrived and kicked me out,” said Dos Santos, 52.
“What the government is doing doesn’t solve the problems,” said Milagros Cabrera, a 57-year-old retiree who for more than 20 years has been visiting the bakery.
The goal of what President Nicolas Maduro has taken to calling the “bread war” is to enforce price controls that have become increasingly unwieldy amid triple-digit inflation and widespread shortages. As part of spot checks targeting some 700 bakeries, authorities even announced the arrest of two people for illegally making brownies.
To earn a profit amid spiralling costs, many business owners try to reduce to a minimum what they sell under a 2014 decree setting prices for many basic goods.
The difference in margins can be huge. While a loaf of “canilla” sells for 250 bolivars — about 28 cents at the lowest official rate and less than a dime on the black market — unregulated specialty products can fetch 10 times that amount.
Such prices are out of reach for most Venezuelans.
The most recent survey on living standards by three major universities found that 93 per cent of Venezuelans at the end of last year said they didn’t have enough money to buy food, making do instead by skipping meals and eating less.
To boost food supplies, Vice-President Tareck El Aissami last week ordered the nation’s bakeries to use 90 per cent of their flour to produce canilla and french bread. He also ordered every bakery to have bread available for sale by 7 a.m. Owners who refuse will suffer a similar fate to Mansion’s, he said.
“We’re going to distribute bread at a much cheaper price and in larger quantities than before,” said Jose Enrique Solorzano, who heads the socialist committee that assumed control of Mansion’s. “It’s no longer going to be about the exploited and exploiter, no more boss and chief. We’re all going to become productive, living and producing in equality.”
Economists doubt the tough tactics will work. Most blame the problems on price controls that have spread across industries since they were introduced by Chavez more than a decade ago to combat opposition-owned businesses that supported a national strike trying to force him from office.
The government has a monopoly on the importation of most food. But as oil revenues have collapsed, baking industry representatives say they are bringing in only about a quarter of the 120,000 metric tons of wheat a month that the country’s 10,000 bakeries need to satisfy demand.
“Seeing all this makes me want to cry,” Antonio Medina, a 77-year-old retiree, said. “I want to eat a sweet roll but there aren’t any and what products exist are too expensive,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to settle for a coffee.”