A once rich nation descends into darkness under 20 years of socialism.
A lesson in real time for all those young Hillary and Bernie voters to see...if they will open their eyes and their minds...
A ‘Caravan Of Misery’ As Desperate Venezeulans Flee Their Country To Survive
JOHN SEXTONPosted at 7:01 pm on March 3, 2018
Hot Air
Venezuela was a socialist paradise until it became a nightmare. Now no one on the left wants to talk about it. All the more reason to talk about it and to study closely the complete collapse of a society that elected a socialist goon promising to wipe out inequality. He did that in a sense. Money is so worthless in today’s Venezuela that almost anyone can be a millionaire and almost everyone is equally starving and miserable. The only solution for many people is to flee the country. Venezuelan socialism has led to one of the largest mass migrations in South American history, with up to 1.5 million Venezuelans fleeing the country in the past two years.
Yesterday the Washington Post and Reuters both published lengthy stories focused on the exodus of starving and desperate people. Reuters reporters spent 9 days on a bus full of people hoping to find work in neighboring countries most had never even visited.
On board the bus, web developer Tony Alonzo had sold his childhood guitar to help pay for his ticket to Chile. For months he had been going to bed hungry so that his 5-year-old brother could have something for dinner. Natacha Rodriguez, a machine operator, had been robbed at gunpoint three times in the past year. She was headed for Chile, too, hoping to give her baseball-loving son a better life. Roger Chirinos was leaving his wife and two young children behind to search for work in Ecuador…
By the time dawn rises over Caracas, hungry people are already picking through garbage while kids beg in front of bakeries. Come dusk, many Venezuelans shut themselves inside their homes to avoid muggings and kidnappings. In a country with the world’s largest proven crude reserves, some families now cook with firewood because they cannot find propane. Hospitals lack supplies as basic as disinfectant. Food is so scarce and pricey that the average Venezuelan lost 24 pounds last year.
“I feel Venezuela has succumbed to an irreversible evil,” Chirinos said…
Venezuelans elected Chavez, the late leftist firebrand, in 1998 with a mandate to fight inequality. A charismatic former lieutenant colonel, Chavez transformed the country during his 14-year rule, pouring oil revenue into wildly popular welfare programs. But he also nationalized large swaths of the economy and implemented strict currency controls, state meddling that economists say is the root of the current crisis…
Now, financially ravaged Venezuelans with fewer skills are pouring across South America in a frantic search for work in restaurants, stores, call centers and construction sites. Some travel only as far as their savings will stretch: A one-way bus ticket to neighboring Colombia from Caracas costs the U.S. equivalent of around $15; the fare for a trip to Chile or Argentina can run as high as $350, a small fortune for many. The plunging currency and rocketing inflation make financing the voyage more expensive with each passing day.
Sociologist Tomas Paez, an immigration specialist at the Central University of Venezuela, estimates that almost 3 million people have fled Venezuela over the past two decades. He believes nearly half of them have left in the last two years alone, in one of the largest mass migrations the continent has ever seen.
All of that means that the worst is probably yet to come in Venezuela. What we’re seeing now is probably just the beginning of a mass exodus that could create chaos throughout South America. No wonder American socialists don’t want to talk about it.
<snip>
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/03/...untry-survive/