Caracas

Venezuelans are struggling to carry out basic transactions like purchasing food as the value of their currency, the bolivar, has plunged against the dollar amid the country’s worsening economic collapse.

According to Reuters, over the past year, Venezuela’s currency weakened 97.5% against the greenback: Put another way, $1,000 of local currency purchased in early January would be worth just $25 now. The annual inflation rate in 2017 could reach $2,000. Though at least one other estimate puts the real rate of inflation closer to 2,800%.

Authored by Joe Withrow via InternationalMan.com,

Eli’s mother was dying from cancer.

Eli is 33 years old. He owns a shoe store in Caracas, Venezuela. His mother has bone cancer.

Venezuela’s currency is the bolivar. It lost 62% of its purchasing power in February. (It lost 67% the month before that.)

That means prices for everything (food, water, and utilities) increased 62% over a month.

Authored by Hannah Dreier via APNews.com,

The first thing the muscled-up men did was take my cellphone. They had stopped me on the street as I left an interview in the hometown of the late President Hugo Chavez and wrangled me into a black SUV.

Heart pounding in the back seat with the men and two women, I watched the low cinderblock homes zoom by and tried to remember the anti-kidnapping class I’d taken in preparation for moving to Venezuela. The advice had been to try to humanize yourself.

With opposition parties boycotting what they call a rigged election, Reuters reports the streets of Caracas were deserted on Sunday as a minority of Venezuelans trickled to the polls to elect a constitutional super-body that unpopular leftist President Maduro vowed would begin a new era of combat in the crisis-stricken nation. That is good news as, following the death of two people yesterday, shortly after a large group of motorbikes sped through the city, and explosion hit, reportedly injuring a number of police officers.

Venezuela celebrated 206 years of independence in a manner uniquely befitting Latin America’s socialist paradise: A gang of armed Maduro supporters broke into the National Assembly and viciously assaulted opposition lawmakers, nearly killing one.

Here’s Reuters:

“The melee, which injured seven opposition politicians, was another worrying flashpoint in a traumatic last three months for the South American OPEC nation, shaken by opposition protests against socialist President Nicolas Maduro.