CORO, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelans are familiar with hardship — they have lived under a complex social, economic and political crisis for more than a decade. Now, across the South American country, they are finding themselves hungry and unable to buy food.
The Associated Press over the summer set out to understand how Venezuelans feed — or struggle to feed — themselves and their families. It found that the latest unraveling of Venezuela’s economy, changes to foreign aid, sanctions from the United States, and cuts to state subsidies and programs have made many necessities simply unaffordable to the 80% of residents estimated to live in poverty.
In the western state of Falcon, where state-owned oil refineries offered plenty of well-paying jobs before the country came undone in 2013, more than two dozen residents shared with AP how their woes center on food and how they dwell on the issue — how to buy it, how much and where – every day.
Experts say that while a famine-level crisis is not imminent in Venezuela, the severe food insecurity is a disaster that will mark the population with lifelong physical and mental health challenges.
Here are some takeaways from AP’s report.
Economic unraveling
President Nicolás Maduro — sworn in this year despite credible evidence he lost reelection — has created economic conditions that largely limited people’s access to food nationwide, with the value of wages and local currency plummeting.
Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage of 130 bolivars, or $0.90, has not increased since 2022, putting it well below the United Nations’ measure of extreme poverty of $2.15 a day. But the price of a basic basket of food has topped $500, according to the independent Venezuelan Observatory of Finances.
Parents, educators, doctors, humanitarian workers and religious leaders say food is simply out of reach to many, with children suffering the most. They go to bed early to avoid hunger pangs, skip school and snatch food from each other at aid sites.
Alnilys Chirino’s family is among those who increasingly fear the return of the malnutrition and starvation that gripped the country from 2016 to 2018. She worries constantly for her teenagers: Juan, José and Angerlis Colina.
“They ask me, ‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’” Chirino said. ”‘What are we going to eat?’”
Chirino’s only income sources are the $70 a month she earns from selling clothing, accessories and linens, and a monthly government stipend of about $4. She said she spends it all on food.
Meals are not nutritious
Health care experts say animal protein is the first thing families reduce or eliminate from their diet when prices increase, and they tend to substitute cheaper, less nutritious foods. Poor nutrition can lead to stunting, headaches, fatigue and other health issues in children.
Chirino knows that all too well. Her children suffer from frequent headaches, but the last time she could afford to purchase meat — enough ground beef for perhaps two servings — was May.
“It’s becoming more difficult every day for people to access food of a certain quality,” said the Rev. Gilberto García, whose Catholic church runs a soup kitchen in Falcon. “People eat, but they usually eat carbohydrates. And that’s how people survive.”
The law guarantees all students in the country a daily free lunch, but that hasn’t happened for ages, families and teachers across Venezuela told AP. In fact, teachers and administrators across the country are renewing pleas for parents to keep children home if they’ve not had at least one meal and if they have no food to bring to eat during breaks. But not all abide by the request, and students cannot always hide their hunger from classmates and others.
Venezuelans said they buy food almost exclusively at corner stores, where they can run up an account and walk over one, two, even three times a day. City residents also buy from public markets, but grocery store trips are rare.
Aid is disappearing
Soup kitchens that fed thousands, mostly children, have been forced to close as Maduro’s government targets real and perceived opponents through a new law that has restricted the work of nongovernmental organizations.
Families who sign up for the ruling party-run subsidy program can receive small cash stipends that they can use to buy food. The program also offers families the option to purchase a combination of food — arepa flour, rice, pasta, beans, sardines and canned lunch meat — every month. However, most of the two dozen people in Falcon who spoke to AP said they had not received the food since the spring.
Yamelis Ruiz said her family’s challenges are compounded by the loss of critical help from the World Food Program, which distributed food, refurbished school cafeterias and served meals after reaching an agreement with Maduro’s government in 2021 to support the most vulnerable. WFP prioritized Falcon, with its massive sand dunes and mountain ranges that reach the Caribbean Sea, due to the population’s particular problems with food insecurity.
But citing funding challenges, the WFP this year has deeply cut its aid in Venezuela — Falcon included — and beyond. Ruiz said she had already stopped receiving monthly shelf-stable food rations from WFP when the organization further reduced the number of days it would feed kids at schools, to eight from 20.
“Food or medicines. Either I buy one thing or the other,” said Ruiz, whose daughter has a congenital brain condition that requires costly treatment.
