NEWS & COMMENT
MEET THE
Venezuelan Volleyball
ACTIVIST
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN VENEZUELA? Venezuela has been plunged in a socioeconomic and political crisis since 2010 under the presidency of Hugo Chavez and the current president, Nicolas Maduro. Shortages, insecurity and unemployment have forced millions to leave the country. According to recent studies, almost 90% of Venezuelans now live in poverty. Nieves, the interviewee By Felix Keane-Vincent
It’s a warm September morning; the sun is dripping into the large kitchen of the hostel where we are having breakfast. Nieves is sitting to my right and tells me she is from Venezuela. She describes the brutality of daily life, the struggle to get medicine, food, or travel safely. She tells me about the times she has protested, showing me videos of herself shouting at the top of her lungs against her government. Whilst listening to her bright, determined voice, I try to imagine life beyond the warmth of this kitchen, in the country she calls home, plunged into a deep socioeconomic crisis since 2010. When did you feel your day-to-day life started to change? The feeling of a lower quality of life began about 3 years ago for the average Venezuelan. The areas which were most affected by the bad political governance of Maduro were health, food, safety and transport. To access treatment, one has to travel to several pharmacies to find the appropriate medicine. This takes up time and effort, which could be used working, being productive outside of health needs. Not only that, many people don’t have the means to travel safely from one health centre to the next either.
26 BATHTIME
What is day-to-day life like today? For food, a typical Venezuelan regularly spends 3 hours in queues waiting to buy groceries cheaply. If you go somewhere more expensive, you will be able to get your food a bit sooner; even then however, you would still be queueing for long periods of time due to the generalised shortages. Security is another issue which unsettles the people regularly. Kidnappings and burglaries happen under the complacent watch of the police, who are the representatives of the government to citizens on a daily basis. As a country, we’ve seen how the government has committed fraud, during the elections, for example. One of my friends was jailed simply for having an opinion that went against the government. Nowadays, Venezuelans don’t travel by bus like in any other country in the world, they do it in open trucks without railings, putting their physical safety at risk. On top of that, you need to pay for these rides, which means you’re paying money to be transported like animals; that connotation sums up the current situation of Venezuela.
“In the morning you’ll pay for rice at a certain price and by the evening, the price will have changed”
