In the midst of a budding humanitarian crisis, already unpopular Maduro gives Cuba 12 tons of food and medicine
CARACAS -- The embattled administration of Nicolas Maduro on Thursday donated 12 tons of food and medicine to Cuba and the outrage is piling up higher than the crates of aid meant to assuage the impact of Tropical Storm Alberto.
“It is more than indignant the way these criminals mock the Venezuelan people. While our people die because of the humanitarian disgrace that the regime generated, they are sending to Cuba what little is left in the country. For my friends in the FANB (The Bolivarian Armed Forces): now this is treason to the country,” Attorney General in exile Luisa Ortega tweeted.
A Maduro ally for decades, Ortega broke with the government and started denouncing Maduro in early 2017, only to be forcibly removed from her office and hunted. She managed to escape the country and now lives outside Venezuela, from where she has continued denouncing Maduro.
A ceremony was televised, live and on the internet, with Interior Minister Nestor Reverol presenting a Cuban delegation with the 12 tons of aid. Reverol has been sanctioned and indicted by the U.S. and more than 30 other countries for his role in human-rights abuses and drug trafficking.
The country has been mired in hyperinflation since October 2017, when the monthly inflation rate first exceeded 50%. Thursday, U.S. economist and long-time Venezuela watcher Steve Hanke estimated that hyperinflation has exceeded 20,000% and Venezuela is one of 57 countries in history where such a phenomenon has presented itself.
Critics blame Maduro for boosting liquidity from Bs 1 trillion in 2014 to over Bs 72 trillion in 2018 through increased government spending in the form of politically motivated handouts.
Nowadays, 87% of Venezuelans are poor, from only 41% in 2015, by almost every standard used to measure poverty, according to the 2018 ENCOVI living conditions poll taken annually by a consortium of private and public universities. The monthly minimum wage is just of $2 and about a third of the population eats from the garbage at least once a day, ENCOVI stated.
It’s not that Venezuelans are not protesting to get food from their government. According to local social conflict NGO “Observatorio Venezolano de Conflictividad Social”, 11 demonstrators died in protests during the first four months of 2018, with hunger now being the trigger for most of the 11 protests registered all over the country every day. There were more than 900 protests in April alone, according to OVCS.
The unfulfilled promise to give each home a leg of pork (“pernil” a traditional Christmas time dish that is well beyond the means of most Venezuelans) triggered violent protests also in 2017, with a pregnant woman shot and killed during a demonstration demanding the promised perk on New Year’s Day near Caracas.
The government last year ordered poor Venezuelans to raise rabbits and eat them, but the initiative was admittedly a failure when people grew to attached to the animals and refused to kill them.