Venezuela: no limiar de uma terrível crise humanitária - Anthony Failola (WP)

The Americas

Venezuela’s economy is so bad, parents are leaving their children at orphanages

By Anthony Faiola

The Washington Post, February 12 at 5:27 PM

A caregiver helps a child to dress at Bambi House, a private orphanage in Caracas, Venezuela. (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)

CARACAS, Venezuela — “Would you like to see the little ones?” asked Magdelis Salazar, a social worker, beckoning me toward a crowded playground. 

We were at Venezuela’s largest orphanage, just after lunch. The yard was an obstacle course of abandoned children. A little chunk of a boy, on the cusp of 3, sat on a play scooter. He was called El Gordo — the fat one. But when he was left here a few months ago, he was skin and bones. 

He zoomed past a 3-year-old in a pink shirt with tiny flowers. “She doesn’t talk much,” one of the attendants said, tousling the girl’s curly hair. At least, not anymore. In September, her mother left her at a subway station with a bag of clothes and a note begging someone to feed the child. 

Poverty and hunger rates are soaring as Venezuela’s economic crisis leaves store shelves empty of food, medicine, diapers and baby formula. Some parents can no longer bear it. They are doing the unthinkable. 

Giving up their children.

“People can’t find food,” Salazar told me. “They can’t feed their children. They are giving them up not because they don’t love them but because they do.” 

Ahead of my recent reporting trip to Venezuela, I’d heard that families were abandoning or surrendering children. Yet it was a challenge to actually meet the tiniest victims of this broken nation. My requests to enter orphanages run by the socialist government had gone unanswered. One child-protection official — warning of devastating conditions, including a lack of diapers — confided that such a visit would be “impossible.” Some privately run child crisis centers worried that granting access to a journalist could damage their delicate relations with the government. 

My Venezuelan colleague Rachelle Krygier introduced me to Fundana — an imposing cement complex perched high on a hill in southeastern Caracas. Her family had founded the nonprofit orphanage and child crisis center in 1991, and her mother remains the head of its board and her aunt its president. Rachelle remembered volunteering there a decade ago, when she was a student and the children were almost exclusively cases of abuse or neglect. 

There are no official statistics on how many children are abandoned or sent to orphanages and care homes by their parents for economic reasons. But interviews with officials at Fundana and nine other private and public organizations that manage children in crisis suggest that the cases number in the hundreds — or more — nationwide.

A poster with the hands of children living at Fundana, a private institution that is part orphanage, part temporary care center for children. (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)

Fundana received about 144 requests to place children at its facility last year, up from about 24 in 2016, with the vast majority of the requests related to economic difficulties.

[Venezuela’s Maduro cements control as the opposition fractures]

“I didn’t know what else to do,” said Angélica Pérez, a 32-year-old mother of three, near tears.

On a recent afternoon, she showed up at Fundana with her 3-year-old son and her two daughters, ages 5 and 14. She lost her job as a seamstress a few months ago. When her youngest came down with a severe skin condition in December and the public hospital had no medicine, she spent the last of her savings buying ointment from a pharmacy. 

Her plan: leave the children at the center, where she knew they would be fed, so she could travel to neighboring Colombia to find work. She hoped she would eventually be able to take them back. Typically, children are allowed to stay at Fundana for six months to a year before being placed in foster care or put up for adoption. 

“You don’t know what it’s like to see your children go hungry,” Pérez told me. “You have no idea. I feel like I’m responsible, like I’ve failed them. But I’ve tried everything. There is no work, and they just keep getting thinner. 

“Tell me! What am I supposed to do?”

Venezuela descended into a deep recession in 2014, battered by a drop in global oil prices and years of economic mismanagement. The crisis has worsened in the past year. A study by the Catholic charity Caritas in poorer areas of four states found the percentage of children under 5 lacking adequate nutrition had jumped to 71 percent in December from 54 percent seven months earlier. 

A shelf for children’s shoes at Bambi House. (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)

Children play at Bambi House. (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)

Children nap at the Caracas orphanage. (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)

Venezuela’s child welfare ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the phenomenon of children being abandoned or put in orphanages because of the crisis. The socialist government provides free boxes of food to poor families once a month, although there have been delays as food costs have soared.

For years, Venezuela had a network of public institutions for vulnerable children — traditionally way stations for those needing temporary or long-term protection. But child-welfare workers say the institutions are collapsing, with some at risk of closing because of a shortage of funds and others critically lacking in resources.

So, increasingly, parents are leaving their children in the streets. 

In the gritty Sucre district of Caracas, for instance, eight children were abandoned at hospitals and public spaces last year, up from four in 2016. In addition, officials there say they logged nine cases of voluntary abandonment for economic reasons at a child protective services center in the district in 2017, compared with none the previous year. A child-welfare official in El Libertador — one of the capital’s poorest areas — called the situation at public orphanages and temporary-care centers “catastrophic.” 

“We have grave problems here,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals from the authoritarian government. “There’s definitely more abandoned children. It’s not just that there are more, but also their health conditions and nutrition are much worse. We can’t take care of them.”     

Dayana Silgado cries at the end of a Sunday visit with her children at Fundana.  (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)

On a visit to Fundana on a Sunday, Melani Morales hugs her son Christopher, whom she placed there because she cannot afford to care for him. (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)

With the public system overwhelmed, the burden is increasingly falling on private facilities run by nonprofit organizations and charities. 

Leonardo Rodríguez, who manages a network of 10 orphanages and care centers across the country, said that in the past, children placed with his centers were almost always from homes where they had suffered physical or mental abuse. But last year, the institutions fielded dozens of calls — as many as two per week — from desperate women seeking to give up their children so that they would be fed. Demand is so high that some of his facilities now have waiting lists.

[A Venezuelan woman had grown used to shortages. Then her HIV drugs ran out.]

To manage the surge in demand at Fundana, the organization opened a second facility in Caracas with the aid of private donors. But it still had to turn down dozens of requests to take in children. At Bambi House, Venezuela’s second-largest private orphanage, requests for placements surged about 30 percent last year, said Erika Pardo, its founder. Infants, once in high demand for adoption or foster placement, are also lingering longer in the organization’s care.

“Foster families are asking for older children because diapers and formula are either impossible to find or too expensive,” she said. The number of pregnant women seeking to put their children up for adoption is also jumping.

José Gregorio Hernández, owner of one of Venezuela’s main adoption agencies, Proadopcion, said that in 2017, his organization received 10 to 15 requests monthly from pregnant women seeking to give up their babies, compared with one or two requests per month in 2016. Overwhelmed, the organization had to turn down most of the women. It accepted 50 children in 2017 — up from 30 in 2016.

For many Venezuelan families, hunger presents an excruciating choice.  

Dayana Silgado carries her daughter to the playground minutes before the end of a visit to Fundana. Silgado cannot provide enough food for her children, so she placed two of them at the center. (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)

I met Dayana Silgado, 28, as she entered Fundana’s new food center for parents in economic crisis. Silgado seemed drained. The shoulder blades on her thin frame protruded from her tank top.

In November, she surrendered her two youngest children to Fundana after losing her job as a cleaner for the city during a round of budget cuts. At the center, she knew, they would get three meals a day. 

Fundana’s home for children did not accept older kids, so Silgado was still trying to feed her two eldest — ages 8 and 11 — at home. 

The free milk, sardines and pasta offered by the center helped. It still was not enough, though.

After eating dinner, Silgado said, her children tell her, “Mom, I want more.”

“But I don’t have more to give,” she said.

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Venezuela: quase calote com o Brasil, e novo calote se aproximando

Venezuela paga US$ 262 milhões ao Brasil e evita calote

MARIANA CARNEIRO, DE BRASÍLIA

Folha de S. Paulo, 10 de janeiro de 2018

A Venezuela pagou a parcela de US$ 262 milhões (cerca de R$ 850 milhões) da dívida com o Brasil, vencida em setembro, com isso, evitou a formalização de um calote.

O pagamento foi acertado nesta segunda-feira (8) e ocorreu por meio da transferência de valores que a Venezuela tem como cotista do FMI (Fundo Monetário Internacional) para o Brasil.

Todos os países que são membros do Fundo —casos de Brasil e Venezuela— têm cotas, que representam uma parcela financeira do capital total do FMI.

Essa foi a alternativa encontrada pelo Ministério da Fazenda e pelo Banco Central para viabilizar o pagamento, uma vez que a Venezuela tem contas bloqueadas nos EUA e também tem pagamentos a fazer para China, Rússia e Japão.

Na noite desta terça-feira (9), o governo brasileiro esperava superar as últimas dúvidas técnicas levantadas pelo Fed (banco central dos EUA) para consumar a transferência e, assim, trazer os recursos para o país.

Com o dinheiro, o governo pagará parcelas devidas ao BNDES, ao Credit Suisse e ao Bank of China por financiar operações de exportadores brasileiros ao vizinho, principalmente construtoras.

E, dessa maneira, evitará que os bancos acionem o FGE (fundo garantidor de exportações), obrigando o Tesouro Nacional a honrar os pagamentos da Venezuela, como já está ocorrendo com Moçambique.

No dia 15 de dezembro, o governo pagou R$ 124 milhões ao BNDES a título de ressarcimento pelo calote da primeira parcela, de US$ 22,4 milhões, de Moçambique. O total da dívida do país africano é de US$ 483 milhões (R$ 1,5 bilhão).

No caso da Venezuela, embora tenha evitado a configuração do calote neste momento, o país está longe de uma solução permanente. A segunda parcela venceu nesta segunda-feira (8) e não foi paga. Os recursos do país no FMI não são suficientes para bancar a dívida total com o Brasil.

O BNDES e bancos privados têm a receber US$ 1,5 bilhão (cerca de R$ 5 bilhões) da Venezuela —mais da metade desse valor em 2018.

Caso o país não pague, a dívida recairá sobre o Tesouro Nacional, que é o fiador das exportações por meio do FGE.

A Venezuela foi o segundo principal destino de financiamento público a obras de construtoras no exterior, executadas por empreiteiras envolvidas na Lava Jato, como Odebrecht e Andrade Gutierrez. O primeiro destino foi Angola, cuja dívida total com o Brasil soma US$ 1,97 bilhão.

Todas essas operações foram seguradas pelo FGE.

Venezuela, no desastre completo; invasao militar? - Ricardo Hausmann

Vou ser muito claro quanto ao que pretende Ricardo Hausmann, um venezuelano que se desespera de ver o seu povo morrer de fome: a Assembleia Nacional não tem poderes para destituir Maduro, e mesmo que tivesse, não aconteceria absolutamente nada, pois as rédeas do poder continuariam com quem estão atualmente: com os chavistas no poder, apoiados em maciças forças repressivas, a começar pelo Exército (mas não só ele). E mesmo se esse milagre da destituição por acaso ocorresse, não haveria um governo com legitimidade suficiente para chamar uma "invasão" estrangeira, que seria contra quem? Contra o Exército venezuelano? Haveria sérios problemas nos planos militar, social, político, logístico, humanitário, e a situação passaria de uim para pior. Mas imaginemos que tudo isso ocorra, que viria para essa "invasão armada estrangeira"? Não vejo NENHUM vizinho em condições políticas, militares, diplomáticas de fazê-lo, e não creio que os EUA de Trump poderiam montar um exército à la Rangers de Theodore Roosevelt, ou mesmo de marines, para "libertar" a Venezuela do governo narcotraficante (essa seria a rationale, não seria?). Esqueçam a ONU, que não serve para essas coisas, não por culpa da ONU, mas dos membros do CSNU.
Infelizmente, a Venezuela e os venezuelanos estão dramaticamente sós, para enfrentar a fome, a repressão, a desesperança, a morte...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida  
 
D-Day Venezuela

RICARDO HAUSMANN

Project Syndicate, Jan 2, 2018 

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/venezuela-catastrophe-military-intervention-by-ricardo-hausmann-2018-01

As conditions in Venezuela worsen, the solutions that must now be considered include what was once inconceivable. A negotiated political transition remains the preferred option, but military intervention by a coalition of regional forces may be the only way to end a man-made famine threatening millions of lives.

CAMBRIDGE – The Venezuelan crisis is moving relentlessly from catastrophic to unimaginable. The level of misery, human suffering, and destruction has reached a point where the international community must rethink how it can help.

Two years ago, I warned of a coming famine in Venezuela, akin to Ukraine’s 1932-1933 Holomodor. On December 17, The New York Timespublished front-page photographs of this man-made disaster.

In July, I described the unprecedented nature of Venezuela’s economic calamity, documenting the collapse in output, incomes, and living and health standards. Probably the single most telling statistic I cited was that the minimum wage (the wage earned by the median worker) measured in the cheapest available calorie, had declined from 52,854 calories per day in May 2012 to just 7,005 by May 2017 – not enough to feed a family of five.

Since then, conditions have deteriorated dramatically. By last month, the minimum wage had fallen to just 2,740 calories a day. And proteins are in even shorter supply. Meat of any kind is so scarce that the market price of a kilogram is equivalent to more than a week of minimum-wage work.

Health conditions have worsened as well, owing to nutritional deficiencies and the government’s decision not to supply infant formula, standard vaccines against infectious diseases, medicines for AIDS, transplant, cancer, and dialysis patients, and general hospital supplies. Since August 1, the price of a US dollar has added an extra zero, and inflation has exceeded 50% per monthsince September.

According to OPEC, oil production has declined by 16% since May, down more than 350,000 barrels a day. To arrest the decline, President Nicolás Maduro’s government has had no better idea than to arrest some 60 senior managers of the state-owned oil company PDVSA and appoint a National Guard general with no industry experience to run it.

Rather than taking steps to end the humanitarian crisis, the government is using it to entrench its political control. Rejecting offers of assistance, it is spending its resources on Chinese-made military-grade crowd-control systems to thwart public protests.

Many outside observers believe that as the economy worsens, the government will lose power. But the organized political opposition is weaker now than it was in July, despite massive international diplomatic support. Since then, the government has installed an unconstitutional Constituent Assembly with full powers, deregistered the three main opposition parties, sacked elected mayors and deputies, and stolen three elections.

With all solutions either impractical, deemed infeasible, or unacceptable, most Venezuelans are wishing for some deus ex machinato save them from this tragedy. The best scenario would be free and fair elections to choose a new government. This is Plan A for the Venezuelan opposition organized around the Mesa de la Unidad Democratica, and is being sought in talks taking place in the Dominican Republic.

But it defies credulity to think that a regime that is willing to starve millions to remain in power would yield that power in free elections. In Eastern Europe in the 1940s, Stalinist regimes consolidated power despite losing elections. The fact that the Maduro government has stolen three elections in 2017 alone and has blocked the electoral participation of the parties with which it is negotiating, again despite massive international attention, suggests that success is unlikely.

A domestic military coup to restore constitutional rule is less palatable to many democratic politicians, because they fear that the soldiers may not return to their barracks afterwards. More important, Maduro’s regime already is a military dictatorship, with officers in charge of many government agencies. The senior officers of the Armed Forces are corrupt to the core, having been involved for years in smuggling, currency and procurement crimes, narco-trafficking and extra-judicial killings that, in per capita terms are three times more prevalent than in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines. Decent senior officers have been quitting in large numbers.

Targeted sanctions, managed by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), are hurting many of the thugs ruling Venezuela. But, measured in the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths and millions of additional Venezuelan refugees that will occur until the sanctions yield their intended effect, these measures are too slow at best. At worst, they will never work. After all, such sanctions have not led to regime change in Russia, North Korea, or Iran.

This leaves us with an international military intervention, a solution that scares most Latin American governments because of a history of aggressive actions against their sovereign interests, especially in Mexico and Central America. But these may be the wrong historical analogies. After all, Simón Bolívar gained the title of Liberator of Venezuela thanks to an 1814 invasion organized and financed by neighboring Nueva Granada (today’s Colombia). France, Belgium, and the Netherlands could not free themselves of an oppressive regime between 1940 and 1944 without international military action.

The implication is clear. As the Venezuelan situation becomes unimaginable, the solutions to be considered move closer to the inconceivable. The duly elected National Assembly, where the opposition holds a two-thirds majority, has been unconstitutionally stripped of power by an unconstitutionally appointed Supreme Court. And the military has used its power to suppress protests and force into exile many leaders including the Supreme Court justices elected by the National Assembly in July.

As solutions go, why not consider the following one: the National Assembly could impeach Maduro and the OFAC-sanctioned, narco-trafficking vice president, Tareck El Aissami, who has had more than $500 million in assets seized by the United States government. The Assembly could constitutionally appoint a new government, which in turn could request military assistance from a coalition of the willing, including Latin American, North American, and European countries. This force would free Venezuela, in the same way Canadians, Australians, Brits, and Americans liberated Europe in 1944-1945. Closer to home, it would be akin to the US liberating Panama from the oppression of Manuel Noriega, ushering in democracy and the fastest economic growth in Latin America.

According to international law, none of this would require approval by the United Nations Security Council (which Russia and China might veto), because the military force would be invited by a legitimate government seeking support to uphold the country’s constitution. The existence of such an option might even boost the prospects of the ongoing negotiations in the Dominican Republic.

An imploding Venezuela is not in most countries’ national interest. And conditions there constitute a crime against humanity that must be stopped on moral grounds. The failure of Operation Market Garden in September 1944, immortalized in the book and film A Bridge Too Far, led to famine in the Netherlands in the winter of 1944-1945. Today’s Venezuelan famine is already worse. How many lives must be shattered before salvation comes?

RICARDO HAUSMANN

Writing for PS since 2001 
58 Commentaries

Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, is Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University and a professor of economics at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Venezuela: mortes infantis por fome se acentuam

Até quando a América Latina suportará esse espetáculo propriamente "africano" num país que já foi, outrora, o de maior renda per capita da região?
Até quando crianças morrerão de fome na Venezuela, na total indiferença dos países vizinhos?
Até quando teremos de assistir realidades brutais como essa, ao lado do Brasil?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Crise se agrava e crianças morrem de fome na Venezuela

O Estado de S. Paulo, 18/12/2017

 

 Nos últimos cinco meses, ‘New York Times’ visita 21 hospitais em 17 Estados e constata a falência do sistema de saúde venezuelano

CARACAS - O problema da fome assola a Venezuela há anos, mas agora a desnutrição está matando as crianças em ritmo alarmante. Por cinco meses, o New York Times acompanhou o cotidiano hospitais públicos venezuelanos e, segundo os médicos, o número de mortes por desnutrição é recorde.

Desde que a economia da Venezuela começou a ruir, em 2014, protestos por falta de comida se tornaram comuns. Também virou rotina ver soldados montando guarda diante de padarias e multidões enfurecidas saqueando mercados.

As mortes por desnutrição são o segredo mais bem guardado do governo de Nicolás Maduro. Nos últimos cinco meses, o New York Times entrevistou médicos de 21 hospitais em 17 Estados. Os profissionais descrevem salas de emergência cheias de crianças com desnutrição grave, um quadro que raramente viam antes da crise.

“As crianças chegam em condições muito graves de desnutrição”, disse o médico Huníades Urbina Medina, presidente da Sociedade Venezuelana de Pediatria. De acordo com ele, os médicos venezuelanos têm se deparado com casos de desnutrição semelhantes aos encontrados em campos de refugiados.

ara muitas famílias de baixa renda, a crise redesenhou completamente a paisagem social. Pais preocupados ficam dias sem comer, emagrecem e chegam a pesar quase o mesmo que seus filhos. Mulheres fazem fila em clínicas de esterilização para evitar bebês que não possam alimentar.

Jovens que deixam suas casas e se juntam a gangues de rua para vasculhar o lixo atrás de sobras carregam na pele cicatrizes de brigas de faca. Multidões de adultos avançam sobre o lixo de restaurantes após os estabelecimentos fecharem. Bebês morrem porque é difícil encontrar e pagar pela fórmula artificial que substitui leite materno, até mesmo nas salas de emergência.

“Às vezes, eles morrem de desidratação nos meus braços”, afirmou a médica Milagros Hernández, na sala de emergência de um hospital pediátrico na cidade de Barquisimeto. Ela diz que o aumento de pacientes desnutridos começou a ser notado no fim de 2016. “Em 2017, o aumento foi terrível. As crianças chegam com o mesmo peso e tamanho de um recém-nascido.”

Antes de a economia entrar em colapso, segundo os médicos, quase todos os casos de desnutrição registrados nos hospitais públicos eram ocasionados por negligência ou abusos por parte dos pais. Quando a crise se agravou, entre 2015 e 2016, o número de casos no principal centro de saúde infantil da capital venezuelana triplicou.

Nos últimos dois anos, a situação ficou ainda pior. Em muitos países, a desnutrição grave é causada por guerras, secas ou algum tipo de catástrofe, como um terremoto”, disse a médica Ingrid Soto de Sanabria, chefe do departamento de nutrição, crescimento e desenvolvimento do hospital. “Mas, na Venezuela, ela está diretamente relacionada à escassez de comida e à inflação.”

O governo venezuelano tem tentado encobrir a crise no setor de saúde por meio de um blecaute quase total das estatísticas, além de criar uma cultura que deixa os profissionais com medo de relatar problemas e mortes ocasionados por erros do governo.

As estatísticas, porém, são estarrecedoras. O relatório anual do Ministério da Saúde, de 2015, indica que a taxa de mortalidade de crianças com menos de 4 semanas aumentou em 100 vezes desde 2012, de 0,02% para pouco mais 2% - a mortalidade materna aumentou 5 vezes no mesmo período.

Por quase dois anos, o governo venezuelano não publicou nenhum boletim epidemiológico ou estatísticas relacionadas à mortalidade infantil. Em abril, porém, um link apareceu subitamente no site do Ministério da Saúde conduzindo os internautas a boletins secretos. Os documentos indicavam que 11.446 crianças com menos de 1 ano morreram em 2016 - um aumento de 30% em um ano.

Os dados ganharam manchetes nacionais e internacionais antes de o governo declarar que o site tinha sido hackeado. Em seguida, os relatórios foram retirados do ar. Antonieta Caporale, ministra da Saúde, foi demitida e a responsabilidade de monitorar os boletins foi passada aos militares. Nenhuma informação foi divulgada desde então.

Os médicos também são censurados nos hospitais e frequentemente alertados para não incluir desnutrição infantil nos registros. “Em alguns hospitais públicos, os diagnósticos clínicos de desnutrição foram proibidos”, afirmou Urbina.

No entanto, médicos entrevistados em 9 dos 21 hospitais investigados mantiveram ao menos algum tipo de registro. Eles constataram aproximadamente 2,8 mil casos de desnutrição somente no último ano - e crianças famintas regularmente sendo levadas para a emergência. Quase 400 delas morreram, segundo os pediatras. “Nunca na minha vida vi tantas crianças famintas”, afirmou a médica Livia Machado, pediatra que oferece consultas grátis em uma clínica particular.

Venezuela: um pais empobrecido e sem dinheiro - John Otis (The Guardian)

Cash crunch: how Venezuela inadvertently became a cashless economy

John Otis in Caracas

The Guardia, December 1, 2017

Venezuela's currency, the bolívar, is named after Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century hero revered across South America for leading the fight for independence from Spain. But the recent history of the banknote he inspired is far less glorious: low-value notes have been rendered practically worthless – and now Venezuela is running out of them.

The cash crunch is so acute that ATMs now provide a daily limit of 10,000 bolívars, enough to buy just a few cups of coffee. Black-market money changers charge commissions of up to 20% to score paper money for small business people who pay their workers in cash. Banks are running out of banknotes.

"Sometimes, bank tellers will only pay you half of your pension and suggest that you come back later for the rest," said Marta Milano, who was waiting in a long line outside a state-run bank in Caracas hoping to collect her pension.

Although many nations are moving away from paper money in favor of electronic payments – for convenience and to reduce street crime – critics contend that Venezuela is inadvertently turning into a cashless society thanks to economic blunders by President Nicolás Maduro's socialist government.

Out-of-control state spending, government currency controls and other policies have led to what many describe as hyperinflation, as well the collapse of the bolívar – which now trades at about 107,000 to the pound on the black market.

Now, there is not enough cash in circulation to keep up with soaring prices.

Jean Paul Leidenz, a senior economist at the Caracas thinktank Ecoanalítica, says there are about 13bn banknotes in circulation in Venezuela. But about half of these are 100-bolívar notes, each worth a small fraction of one penny.

The central bank has introduced higher-denomination bills, including a 100,000-bolívar note. But these new banknotes are printed in Europe and the government, which is dealing with falling production of oil – its main export – and massive foreign debt, lacks the money to import enough of them to meet demand.

"Prices are doubling around every two months. So at that rate of price increases you can't keep up with inflation even if you start importing bills," Leidenz says.

He and other analysts are calling for market reforms, including the lifting of government currency controls, to help combat inflation and boost national production amid Venezuela's worst economic crisis in modern history. But the Maduro government has made no effort to change tack.

President Maduro blames the cash shortage on private bankers who he claims are working in cahoots with President Juan Manuel Santos of neighbouring Colombia, who has criticized Maduro for cracking down on democratic freedoms.

Maduro insists that bankers are smuggling cash across the Venezuelan-Colombian border as part of an elaborate conspiracy to sabotage the economy and bring down his government.

"Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia along with the [border] mafias are leading this attack against Venezuela. They are stealing 50- and 100-bolívar banknotes to take them out of the country," Maduro said in a recent speech.

He did not, however, explain why smugglers would covet nearly worthless banknotes or why spiriting them out of the country would threaten the Venezuelan economy.

Instead, Maduro tried to paint the cash crisis as an opportunity for Venezuela to ditch cash altogether. He said that by next year, up to 95% of all payments in Venezuela should be done electronically.

That's already starting to happen, though critics point out that the transition stems from a dearth of cash rather than ahead-of-the-curve planning by the Maduro government. These days, Venezuelans pay for the smallest purchases – from a pack of gum to newspapers – with credit or debit cards.

At an outdoor produce market in Caracas, electrician Edinson Sua whipped out his debit card to pay for a few kilos of potatoes and carrots. He said he saves his scarce bolívar notes for bus fares and other transactions that require cash.

"I almost never use cash except in a real emergency," he says.

But paying with plastic creates new problems. The rising number of electronic transactions can cause internet connections for card readers to collapse. Empty shelves at supermarkets prompt many Venezuelans to seek out black-market vendors who sell milk, rice and other basic staples but accept only paper money.

What's more, about 40% of Venezuelans do not have bank accounts. For them the daily scramble for cash continues.

Venezuela: o que falta para decretar intervencao humanitaria?

Onde andaria o tal de R2P? Ou mesmo o RWP? Ou simplesmente um SOS mundo?

Metrô para por falta de luz e diabéticos morrem sem insulina na Venezuela

O Estado de S. Paulo, 1/12/2017

 

Em dia caótico, apagões interrompem partida de beisebol, escassez de combustível afeta transporte público, médicos reclamam de epidemia de malária e de surto de doenças já erradicadas; OMS reconhece que país vive crise humanitária

A Venezuela viveu ontem um dia caótico. Algumas estações do metrô de Caracas fecharam por falta de luz. Houve queda de energia em várias regiões. Em 17 Estados, a gasolina está no fim. Em Vargas, médicos anunciaram que 24 diabéticos morreram nos últimos quatro meses por falta de insulina. A Organização Mundial de Saúde (OMS) admitiu, pela primeira vez, que o país passa por uma crise humanitária.

“Nos últimos quatro meses, 24 pacientes diabéticos morreram em razão da falta de insulina e amputamos cinco pessoas em um mês.” A frase de Monica Conde, médica do Estado de Vargas, no norte da Venezuela, é um retrato da crise. “Alguns tipos de insulina até chegam às farmácias particulares, mas custam muito caro”, disse Monica ao jornal La Verdade de Vargas.

“No hospital, não temos como tratar os pacientes e estamos fazendo vaquinha para comprar alguns produtos básicos.”

Diante da escassez de remédios, a OMS admitiu ontem que há uma crise humanitária no país. Desde 2014, faltam pelo menos 100 remédios essenciais. Segundo a Federação Farmacêutica da Venezuela, 85% dos medicamentos necessários à população sumiram das farmácias. Quando se trata de doenças crônicas, como diabetes e câncer, a escassez é de 95%.

Doenças como a difteria, erradicada havia 24 anos, reapareceram, assim como a tuberculose e o sarampo. A Venezuela enfrenta uma epidemia de malária, com 200 mil casos até outubro, metade dos casos de todo o continente americano.

A desnutrição em crianças menores de 5 anos aumentou de 54%, em abril, para 68% em agosto. Segundo um estudo da ONG Cáritas da Venezuela, vinculada à Igreja Católica, 35,5% das crianças pobres do país, com idade de 0 a 5 anos, estão desnutridas. A mortalidade infantil na Venezuela aumentou 30,12% no ano passado, em relação a 2015, com 11.466 mortes de crianças de 0 a 1 ano.

Não foram apenas os alimentos e os remédios que desapareceram das prateleiras. A escassez de métodos contraceptivos e de preservativos causou um aumento drástico do número de doenças sexualmente transmissíveis, como gonorreia, sífilis e herpes, além de uma epidemia de abortos caseiros – o aborto na Venezuela é proibido, a não ser em casos de risco de vida para a mãe. Segundo ONGs, em 2015, foram 2.366 atendimentos médicos em decorrência de abortos improvisados. Em 2016, o número aumentou para 3.430.

Para os médicos, a escassez de métodos contraceptivos é a causa do aumento de casos de aids e de outras doenças sexualmente transmissíveis (DSTs), como gonorreia, sífilis e herpes. Este ano, mais de 6,5 mil pessoas contraíram o HIV na Venezuela. Em 2016, foram 5,6 mil. Em 2014, 3 mil.

A ginecologista do Hospital Universitário de Caracas, Vanessa Diaz, afirmou ao jornal Washington Post que o número de pacientes com outras DSTs também aumentou. “Dos pacientes que atendi, a cada dez, seis tinham alguma DST. Dois anos atrás, esse número não passava de dois”.

O caos na Venezuela começou a afetar também questões mais prosaicas – do fornecimento de gasolina à energia elétrica. Nos últimos três dias, estações de metrô de Caracas tiveram de ser fechadas por falta de luz. Os apagões são cada vez mais frequentes. Em Caracas, nos horários de pico, a interrupção das linhas de metrô por queda de energia costuma durar até duas horas. O principal jogo de beisebol da rodada de ontem, entre Magallanes e Águilas, disputado em Maracaibo, foi interrompido por mais de duas horas em razão de um blecaute na cidade.

Mesmo tendo as maiores reservas de petróleo do mundo, em várias regiões a gasolina está no fim. Dos 23 Estados da Venezuela, 17 enfrentam escassez de combustível. O problema reduziu a circulação de táxis e ônibus, afetando o transporte público em várias cidades do país.