Hunger and survival in Venezuela
By: The New Humanitarian
Tags: Long Reads, Crisis, Health, Humanitarian, Venezuela

These boxes, the government claims, will feed a family of four for one week. They are supposed to be delivered once a month to all those who have signed up for the “Carnet de la Patria” — a controversial ID card that grants holders access to subsidised food.

However, according to those who get the CLAP boxes, the food arrives spoiled or past its sell-by date, is nowhere near enough to last even a week, and never comes more than, if you’re lucky, once every six weeks. Around Cumana, seven hours east of the capital Caracas, people say the boxes arrive once every three to four months.

Pilongo, Vallenilla, and other locals say the trucks still barrel through here daily — in convoys of as many as 40 — laden with precious food and never stopping for angered, hungry people. They recall how people started coating the road with oil so the trucks would skid into a ditch and then everyone would swarm around and loot them.

“A population which is not well fed become thieves and will steal any food no matter what.”

When the truck drivers wised up and took a diversion, people got metal strips with sharp teeth and laid them across the other road. Tires would blow out and trucks would still be looted. When the National Guard came and confiscated the metal strips, the community protested that they belonged to them. After a fight, the mayor agreed and returned the strips.

As hunger grew around the country so did the number of incidents like these, leading Maduro to issue an edict that armed National Guards must accompany the government food trucks. This has given greater license to the much-feared National Guard, who locals accuse of being behind the bodies they say have been turning up on nearby beaches.

The threat hasn’t stopped people. They just choose different trucks.

“Malnutrition is the mother of the whole problem,” says Pilingo’s former teacher, Fernando Battisti Garcia, 64, talking from his home in the town of Muelle de Cariaco. “A population which is not well fed become thieves and will steal any food no matter what.”

People call it “the Maduro diet”.

“As soon as people see a big truck coming with supplies,” explains Pilingo, “they go into the street — men, women, even children — and stop the truck and take the supplies.”

It happened just a few days ago, he says, adding that the National Guard has begun searching people’s houses and if they find anything — food, toilet paper, supplies — they take you to jail.

So people have started hiding the goods in tombs in cemeteries, or lowering them in buckets into water tanks.

“Everyone is just so desperate,” Pilingo shrugs.

With their erratic and infrequent delivery of meagre, often spoiled goods, CLAP boxes have done little to address hunger. What they have done, however, is line the pockets — and secure the loyalty — of military and government officials.

The US treasury estimates as much as 70 percent of the CLAP programme is victim to corruption, while accusations of military and government officials siphoning off millions of dollars and creating a lucrative food trafficking business and thriving black market have led to sanctions and intensifying international scrutiny.

The CLAP boxes have also succeeded in creating dependency. As inflation continues to spiral upwards and poverty escalates — jumping from 81.8 to 87 percent between 2016 and 2017 — more and more desperate people have become reliant on them to supplement their impoverished diets. In 2018, one in two Venezuelans say CLAP boxes are an “essential” part of their diet, while 83 percent of pro-Maduro voters say that CLAP is their main source of food.