Why is no one here to see this? U nder the soft orange glow of a street light in the guerrilla controlled town of Arauca, Northern Colombia , animal like silhouettes sit in puddles of water on the broken pavements.
Venezuelan families are feeding. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro feasts on steak dinners in exclusive restaurants while families in Venezuela eat from bins to survive. Nazareth Pirloiria, 27, sits outside her makeshift home near an overpass at Carcelen bus terminal in Quito. She waits patiently for public food donations from passersby; the blue plastic sheeting whips and cracks in the stiff morning breeze.
She has walked 20 days through Colombia with her partner and her three young children, arriving penniless, hungry and exhausted. The consequence, however, of this economic meltdown is a humanitarian crisis on an immense scale with the 2. Venezuela is a wealthy country with the largest oil reserves in the world, estimated at around billion barrels. But crippling hyperinflation is pushing the cost of household basics like rice to as much as three times an average monthly salary per kilogram.
Mothers sleep overnight outside supermarket doorways to be first in line in the morning to have any chance of buying what food and household essentials they can afford from the half-empty shelves. Extreme shortages of food have meant that on average 75 per cent of Venezuelans have lost 11kg in bodyweight. At the Department for Migration in Quito, Jomir, a former director at a public school in Venezuela, recalls having to certify the deaths of at least 30 children, from newborn to three-years-old, as a result of acute malnutrition.
Venezuelans forced by hunger, violence and lack of opportunities for a dignified life face stigma and discrimination in countries where local communities are also living on the threshold of poverty.
