Protests In Venezuela Lead To Store Closures In Provincial Towns

The unrest in Venezuela has propelled some store owners to arm themselves with guns and machetes as hungry mobs have taken to looting shuttered stores in provincial towns.

The unrest in Venezuela, ranked as one of the most violent countries in the world, has created severe food shortages and unleashed a slew of killings since Christmas. So far seven people were reportedly killed, Reuters reported.

It was spurred by shortage of pork — a traditional holiday meal in the country. The government had promised millions of people pork during the holiday season, but it fell short on delivering the food due to supply shortage. When people realized they wouldn’t be receiving the meat, they took to streets to protest.

During one such incident, a soldier opened fire when a group of demonstrators charged against his army unit, killing a pregnant women, Metro reported.

President Nicolas Maduro blamed Portugal for the shortage alleging that it didn’t deliver enough meat.

Across the nation, mobs ransacked closed supermarkets, trucks, and liquor stores.

The crisis-stricken nation is already in the throes of world’s highest inflation rate that has plunged it into a fifth straight year of recession. Its opposition-controlled legislature said Venezuela, once considered Latin America’s richest countries, topped the inflation rate by 2600 percent last year, Reuters reported.

People now started questioning how long can they survive in a nation that’s over-wrought with poverty and corruption. Reports of starving Venezuelans mobbing fields and slaughtering cattle to ward off hunger surfaced a few days ago, giving an insight into the desperate measures employed by citizens to survive.

Shopkeepers in the Andean town of Garcia de Hevia, Tachira, have taken matters into their own hands. They are arming themselves with sticks, machetes, firearms and knifes to defend their assets, said William Roa, president of a local shopkeepers association.

Roa, who owns a restaurant and liquor store in town, told Reuters that more than two-thirds of small towns near Colombian border were shut.

“A person spends the night in each store and we communicate using WhatsApp groups, coordinating by block 24 hours a day,” he said.

Similarly, many stores were closed in a former Industrial powerhouse in eastern Venezuela owing to nighttime lootings. Business men in Caracas fear that the lootings could swiftly move from the poorer provinces to the capital.

Maduro’s ineptitude to salvage what’s left of the country’s economy has garnered vast criticism. Critics said the protests in world’s largest crude reserve is nowhere close to simmering down due to Maduro’s refusal to reform the decrepit state of nation’s economy.

Maduro’s office has so far stayed mum on the unrest.