CARACAS, venezuela — On aisle seven, among the diapers and fabric softener, the socialist dreams of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez looked as ragged as the toilet paper display.
Employees at the Excelsior Gama supermarket had set out a load of extra-soft six-roll packs so large that it nearly blocked the aisle. To stock the shelves with it would have been pointless. Soon, word spread that the rolls had arrived. Despite a government-imposed limit of one package per person, the checkout lines stretched to the decimated dairy case in the back of the store.
“This is so depressing,” said Maria Plaza, 30, a lawyer, an hour and a half into her wait. “Pathetic.”
A country with the world’s largest petroleum reserves — and with oil prices at nearly $95 a barrel — is unable to supply basic goods because of its crumbling local currency and a shortage of U.S. dollars.
“Soon, we’ll be using newspaper, just like they do in Cuba!” said an elderly man, inching forward in line. “Yeah! Like Cuba!” others shouted.
The fate of Venezuela’s revolution, it seems, will be decided at the supermarket.
Nearly a year after Chavez’s death of complications from cancer at age 58, his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, is struggling to contain food shortages, spiraling inflation and rampant crime.
The arrival of staples such as cooking oil, chicken, flour or milk brings Venezuelans running to supermarkets and touches off mob scenes, even as the government imposes price caps and rationing to prevent hoarding.
Venezuela’s real problem, economists say, is that a shortage of U.S. dollars is squeezing the ability of the government and the private sector to import. Even in upscale Caracas shopping malls, international chain stores such as Zara and Gucci are gutted, their employees standing around with nothing to sell and the mannequins left naked.
