Translation mine. It’s instructive to note that the Bolivarian Hypermarket (don’t you love that exaggeration in the name? It’s not super enough to be merely super in Venezuela, you gotta be HYPER!) is a case of workers asking the government to expropriate and buy out the chain so that they can become self-governing. This is another case of the same thing. Red is not only the color of the chain logo (see photo at the link), it’s also a state of mind.And, oh horrors, it’s one that the workers in Venezuela actually LIKE being in. Three guesses as to why that is.(Muchas gracias to Utpal for the linky.)At the end of his speech during the opening of the Bolivarian Hypermarket, President Hugo Chávez expressed the willingness of the government to acquire 80% of the shares of CATIVEN, the consortium which manages the Cada supermarket chain.“The group wants to reach an amicable agreement because the expropriation will be an amicable agreement, they want to sell to [the government of] Venezuela 80% of the shares of CATIVEN, so that they will belong to the government and the people of Venezuela.President Chávez directed vice-president Elías Jaua to start talks with the consortium in order to reach agreements as to the price, form of payment and labor contracts.The Cada chain has 35 stores and the purchase agreement will include distribution centres, transportation fleet, and of course, the 5,000 workers who have been wearing red for quite some time already.
Btw, the supermercado – hipermercado distinction is not just found in Venezuela but throughout the Spanish-speaking world (including Spain) and this might be a continental Europe-wide thing (France has the same concept). Basically a supermarket is mostly food and food-related products (usually with some other stationery thrown in, but not much). A hypermarket, on the other hand, is like a supermarket and a K-Mart in one. The average hypermarket tends to be bigger than the average supermarket, of course, and at least in the smaller cities hypermarkets tend to be located at the outskirts of a city rather than inside; although the bigger cities do have hypermarkets in major urban centers.
Ah…in other words, it’s a big-box store. Like WallyWorld.
BTW, it’s getting harder to tell drugstores apart from grocery and department stores up here. One-stop shopping is all very well, but ironically, it makes it harder for me to find just what I’m looking for.