The municipality of San Francisco, in the state of Zulia, Venezuela, got a brand-new grocery store, with good foods at very good prices. It also got a distinguished visitor to help them open it:
Yep, Chavecito was in town. And he didn’t come alone; ministers Félix Osorio (food production and distribution) and Blanca Eekhout (communications) were also there for the occasion. Mercal markets are nothing new; dire poverty and malnutrition have made them necessary. In Venezuela, at least 14 million people benefit from these markets, making them the go-to place for roughly half the population. Organization is key to helping reverse the mass misery that prevailed under the old capitalist system, and that’s where Mercal and PDVAL markets come in. Wherever possible, they sell locally grown food (produced by co-ops, another growing industry in Venezuela) at prices the average person can readily afford. Naturally those who expect to grow rich and fat on supermarkets aren’t happy about that! But that’s Venezuela; tycoons are just gonna have to get used to ceding power to the people…
…because these people aren’t about to give one crumb of it back.
God I love Venezuela! I wonder if I could get a visa for permanent residency? I would have gone to Panama where I have citizenship, but the new president is a wingnut who is running the country into the ground and corporatizing everything. A classic neoliberal capitalist.
If we would do the same thing in the US that Hugo has done, maybe our old folks (and some of our not so old folks) wouldn’t have to eat cat food to survive and keep from starving to death.
BTW, do you know anything about BoRev? I haven’t seen a post on his site in a while. I read the note by Revolter and thought it was a joke, but now I’m starting to wonder.
I wonder if Teh BoRev is on a top-secret mission somewhere, à la Che. I suspect it’s something more mundane, though, like just plain overwork.