Written by Sabrina Ponce
“Hey Mom there’s no more toilet paper… did you get some?”
“There wasn’t any at the shop today, we’ll have to wait till next week”
Most people haven’t ever heard of the Latin American country and much less heard of their social, political, and economical issues. Venezuela is one of the most beautiful countries of South America with Angel falls, the La Gran Sabana, and the Amazon Rain Forest all in it. It has an abundance of breath taking nature and tourist sights. Venezuela also has become one the most dangerous countries to live in the world, it has gone from a first world to a third world country, and is now becoming a communistic government after the late president Hugo Chavez was elected.
Growing up in Venezuela has not been easy in the last 25 years. In 2013 there was a total of 24,000 homicides. The crime rate in Venezuela is the second highest in the world. A person is murdered every 21 minutes. Women cannot go out at night in Venezuela especially not alone. If you are a person of wealth you cannot wear anything that shows you have money, because kidnap is likely. When landing in Venezuela in an airport you need to make sure you don’t bring any gold jewelry or any thing of a lot of worth because it most likely will get stolen or you’ll get gunned down or killed for it. Having a car is almost impossible, when you have a car you have to make sure to park it in a safe area, because you’ll either wake up without car or without tires. And the worst part people’s trust in others has been broken, you can not stop to help someone if their car is broken in fear that it’s actually a way to kidnap you.
In late 2014,there were marches against the countries government. Thousands marched and peacefully protested against what is now becoming a communist government. After president Nicolas Maduro was elected there has been cheating and lies,the people have gotten tired of it and have started to speak up. Most of the marchers were mostly young adults and college students trying to become the generation to change Venezuela. Over 1,000 students were arrested and over 20 were killed. No matter how hard they have marched, nothing has gotten better, but Venezuelans live constantly watching the news in hope that soon their country will become amazing once again.
Now lets go back to the diction from the beginning, why is it there? In Venezuela food has become scarce and the people are going hungry. Even the richest can’t get food at the store, because there is only a limited if not no food. Also each family receives a certain day they are allowed to go shopping, and with showing a writ they are allowed to shop and get what they can. So many families have to eat the same thing for a week until they can go get what they need. Also finding toilet paper, napkins, and women’s medical devices are very rare, and hard to find.
What is the most remarkable about Venezuela is it has the largest oil reserves in the world, they can’t afford to even stay in their own time zone, or have it’s citizens show up to work more than two times a week. They can’t even afford to print their own money, they don’t have a printing press, so they pay foreign companies to print their money. Essentially they need dollars to print Bolivares (their currency). Maduro has moved the clocks half an hour forward, so people won’t need lights as much at night.
For you this article may mean nothing, For you reading this may just be another problem in this world that cant be solved. Venezuela is a country that is limited to many things not just food, and safety, but also Internet and news. The government controls what the people see to make sure they don’t know how bad life is for them. News from other parts of the world is not shown restricting them from everything going on. Many people can not get out the country because you can’t even buy flights in Bolivares, Venezuelan currency, you can only buy it in dollars which is nearly impossible to get there. If you ever meet a Venezuelan you will most likely think, “This man/women is the happiest person I have ever met” and that’s because even though Venezuelans are living in fear they hope they are the happiest people. They are living with the hope that one day they’ll be able to say “We are finally free” the day that Venezuela will become what it once was, a beautiful, safe, happy Country.
