Scarce And Scarcity

By Adriaan van Ginkel

Yonarkys could be any hardworking Venezuelan housewife and mother. While I’m writing to you, she could be standing in a kilometrical queue in front of a supermarket anywhere in Venezuela with her child in her arms. For hours and hours, since before dawn. Yonarkys was there already at 5.30 am. She put herself and her baby behind an enormous queue of people who were already standing there all night, despite warnings from the authorities not to do so. The drugstore opens at 8.00 am. There is an acute shortage, nation-wide, of diapers. And of a lot of other items. So when disposable diapers are distributed in some supermarket or drugstore, mothers flock to that spot, baby in one arm (they have to show them to the shop employees), and the birth certificate in her other hand. She is a single mother, like so many. Standing in the queue, they wrote a number on her arm with a marker. 164. And they only let twenty people in every 30 minutes. That means a waiting time of at least 4 hours on top of the time she already spent in the queue, before she can enter the store.  Finally, at about 12.30 pm, they let her in with 19 other desperate mothers. Her ID is checked, the birth certificate is checked as well, and then she gets permission from the shop employee to go to the diaper stack. Soldiers from the Guardia Nacional, toting their Kalashnikovs, are everywhere in the drugstore, keeping an eye on the mothers. In case someone gets crazy, screams, or just starts complaining. Then they move in and arrest the hapless shopper. For disturbing the peace and “fomenting social unrest”. If we believe the latest statements of the Maduro government, everyone who is complaining, getting into a fistfight with others for milk, diapers, shampoo or toilet paper after standing 5 hours in the baking tropical sun with a number on his arm, or even taking pictures of the sad scenes, is an agent paid by the U.S. to provoke unrest and riots. 

Yonarkys’ only big trip ever has been from her birth village in the Llanos to the capital Caracas. Her cousin has been to Miami once or twice, but she never left the country till now. She has no passport, no money to travel, and ever since her husband left her and her newborn baby, she has had quite a hard time mending all ends in the beginning. She has no contact to any American “gringo”, she knows no foreigners, so why should anyone arrest her? There was a time she voted for Hugo Chavez, who promised a better life for people like her living in the enormous shantytowns, or barrios, and for some years, life was becoming easier. She got married and settled down in a little house crudely built of bricks in the middle of a big barrio sprawling over the hill tops of southern Caracas. Ever since her husband left her for another, she and her baby stayed in that little house. But the neighbors are kind, they help her out and somehow, with the little she earns sowing clothes in a sweatshop nearby, she ekes out a simple meagre living. At night, shots ring out near where she lives. Next day, one or two malandros are found dead on the pavement. Another gang shootout, that’s the way it goes every single day. But like so many single mothers, she finds joy in her baby, in the contacts with her neighbors. And she has some nice gossipy colleagues too, at the sweatshop. She lives day by day, accepting her poverty as the only life she knows, getting happy over what scarce things she can get after much pain and effort. Her only concern now is to get that pack of diapers, move her sore feet towards the cashier, pay, walk towards the bus that will take her to her home, and then see what will come next. She plans to burn a candle in front of a picture of the Virgin of Coromoto when she gets home, thanking her, as a mother, for getting those diapers at a low price. Politics are just a far world for Yonarkys. She has a distinct feeling that her place is at home and not on the street protesting against those horrible queues and the scarcity, getting kicked or beaten for some ideal that won’t change her life. Why should it? It’s the life she knows, why should it change? Politicians are just a bunch of liars. Next day, she will see where to get maize meal for making arepas, the local tortillas. And stand in another queue for hours, like today.

Meanwhile, Concepción, a mother of two adolescents, is desperate. She lives at the other end of Caracas, in a middle-class neighborhood. In Venezuela, you can hold a local credit card, but the foreign currency you can pay with it electronically, has to be permitted by the government. You cannot exchange dollars or euro’s just like that at the bank, you need a permit, and they are extremely hard to come by, if you are not connected, or enchufado, to the government. And since there are more and more indications that the government is running out of dollars, panic is being felt among many Venezuelans. As in every year, a cupo of US$ 300 is allotted to every credit card holder in the country to do internet shopping, or some fantasy travelling – you won’t even survive a day on Aruba with only 300 dollars. But this year, the cupos have been blocked. Yes, the government allowed the 300 dollars to every card holder. No, the bank is blocking the cards because of “uncertainties”. Is there money, or isn’t it?

Concepción doesn’t need the dollars right now. But the anguish she feels, looking at her blocked credit cards, is choking her. For her, as for the rest of her countrymen, life hasn’t become easy since the economy began to collapse years ago. Every year, she flew to Spain to visit her relatives. But now she hasn’t travelled for more than a year. No dollars, no payable flight tickets. And now, the scarcity is crawling into her house. She should be joining other mothers like Yonarkys in the food queues. There is no milk, no oil, no chicken, and no laundry detergent in the house. Two rolls of toilet paper which she will cut in half by the end of the day. But she won’t stand in the queues. Not her. Not now. She has so much trouble accepting the scarcity of everything. Accepting that she doesn’t feel happy anymore in the country she was born in. Her life was normal, according to first world standards, before politics started ruining everything around her.  Her standard of living, despite her husband’s job as an accountant, descended every year a bit more. She hated the government for so much time, she longs for it to fall. She blames the sitting president for her blocked credit cards and for the scarcity in her life. 

She sighs. Maybe one of these days she will stand in a queue, to get goods that get scarcer every day, at a reasonable price. The supermarket she always frequented, now boasts empty shelves where she normally found her cheese and the yoghurt she loves to take for breakfast. No matter how much her husband makes now, the prices of what can be gotten in private shops, are off the roof, unpayable. 30 dollars, according to the black market rate, for a piece of Swiss cheese. Crazy. 

Concepción won’t accept for now that there are fewer and fewer differences between her and Yonarkys. The gap is closing in Venezuela between scarce and scarcity. The first one – Yonarkys’ life - is eternal, but livable poverty. The second one – Concepción’s - is a horrific mental state that makes it impossible to bear the poverty you experience - for the first time, for many.

Maybe one of these days Concepción will have a nice chat with Yonarkys, although that chance is remote. But I hope they will meet, and learn from each other. For the crisis that lashes Venezuela could either split society into even more pieces than now, or create a bond that will unite all mothers who suffer to feed their families in such hard times.

Thanks for reading my letter. Have a great week and till next Wednesday!

© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015