CARACAS, Venezuela — For a glimpse into Venezuela’s economic disarray, slip into a travel agency here and book a round-trip flight to Maracaibo, on the other side of the country, for just $16. Need a book to read on the plane? For those with hard currency, a new copy of “50 Shades of Grey” goes for $2.50. Forget your toothpaste? A tube of Colgate costs 7 cents.
Quite the bargain, right?
But for the majority of Venezuelans who lack easy access to dollars, such surreal prices reflect a tremendous currency devaluation, a crumbling economy expected to contract 7 percent this year as oil income plunges and price controls produce acute shortages of items including milk, detergent and condoms.
“I’ve seen people die on the operating table because we didn’t have the basic tools for surgeries,” said Valentina Herrera, 35, a pediatrician at a public hospital in Maracay, a city near Caracas. She said she planned to look for other work because making ends meet on her salary of 5,622 bolívars a month — $33 at a new exchange rate unveiled recently — was impossible.
Faced with tumbling approval ratings as Venezuelans reel from the economic shock, President Nicolás Maduro is intensifying a crackdown on his opponents, reflected in last week’s arrest of Antonio Ledezma, the mayor of Caracas, and his indictment on charges of conspiracy and plotting an American-backed coup.
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Even that absurdly cheap flight to Maracaibo is more complicated than it appears since some airlines have trouble obtaining the dollars they need to import spare parts and maintain their planes.
“You’ll see things you’ll never believe: half a dozen aircraft from just one airline just waiting on the ground because they don’t have parts,” said Nicolás Veloz, a pilot based in Caracas, describing the situation on the tarmac at the international airport in Maiquetía.
For some Venezuelans who are struggling to get by, the economic disorder they see around them explains the president’s targeting of his opponents. “Maduro is terrified, and so he’s using more totalitarian methods, putting politicians in prison with so many police,” said Eduardo de Sousa, 28, a pharmaceutical lab assistant. “They know that the revolution is over, and they’re scared.”
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