Looting, arrests soar as Venezuela’s food crisis mounts

LA VICTORIA, Venezuela — Hungry Venezuelans escalated attacks on trucks carrying scarce food to the country’s largest cities Wednesday, a day after hundreds of protesters were arrested by security forces.

Photos on social media showed looters attacking trucks on the highway that connects Venezuela’s main port of Puerto Cabello to the industrial city of Valencia. Others said that trucks ferrying food now can’t enter Cumana due to frequent attacks being carried out on the highways entering the city.

Looting and violent protests are threatening President Nicolas Maduro's hold on power.

“All it would take would be for the military to react violently to a protest, or just step back and let one go, and an epidemic of protests could emerge and grow out of control,” said David Smilde, senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.

Maduro blames the looting on his opponents, who are promoting a referendum to recall him.

Looting was reported throughout the country, including Caracas, where merchants refused to open their shops.

A tense peace reigned Wednesday in Cumana — one of Venezuela’s poorest cities — following the arrival of hundreds of National Guardsmen and police. The city’s mayor decreed a three-day ban on all motorcycles, which are often used by looters to flee. More than 170 people were detained.

Maduro sent a trusted aide, Freddy Bernal, the former mayor of the Libertador borough of Caracas, to the city to evaluate the situation. “The people, the PSUV (Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the government are united to neutralize the fascists,” Bernal tweeted.

National newspapers also reported that angry protesters Tuesday night torched the local headquarters of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in the western city of Lagunillas, while attacking the city hall. The actions took place after promised deliveries of powdered milk never arrived, infuriating residents who had waited all day in line.

Protests and looting has soared as Venezuela’s food crisis mounts. The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, a human rights organization, said more than 10 cases of looting are erupting daily now.

“The looting is going to continue because there’s hunger,” Roberto Briceno Leon, director of the organization, told the Associated Press. “The government’s response appears to be insufficient or politicized, so people are resorting to robbery.”

Venezuela’s opposition blames the economic policies of Maduro, and his iconic predecessor, Hugo Chavez, for a collapsing economy and soaring inflation.

To avoid a debt default this year, the government has slashed imports to save foreign currency. It has created food and medicine shortages. Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, imports about 70% of the food it consumes.

“My neighbors are only eating green bananas and mangoes to survive,” said Carmen Lopez, a community organizer outside this central industrial city. “People are hungry. People are desperate. They have nothing else to eat.”

Bakeries here in La Victoria, 55 miles southwest of Caracas, are now open but had stopped producing bread in May because there is no flour.

Venezuela food shortages cause some to hunt dogs, cats, pigeons

"People are hunting dogs and cats in the streets, and pigeons in the plazas to eat," Ramon Muchacho, mayor of the Caracas district of Chacao, said last month in a tweet that was reported in many newspapers.

The government has sought to blunt the protests by distributing bags of essential food to residents. The effort has been plagued by a slow start-up and charges of corruption. The government is also urging its supporters in cities to plant gardens to raise food.

The crisis goes beyond food.

International airlines are pulling out of the country because the country is barring them from taking earnings out of the country, and most of the country faces daily three-hour cuts in electricity service.

Venezuelans also can’t call out of the country on their mobile phones, and thousands of medical operations have been postponed due to a lack of supplies.

Against the backdrop of Venezuela’s worst economic crisis in recent history, government officials continue to claim that there isn’t enough time to hold a referendum to recall Maduro this year. If the vote is postponed until 2017 and goes against Maduro, his vice president would finish the rest of his term, which ends in 2019. If the vote is held this year and Maduro loses, fresh presidential elections would be held. Polls suggest that Maduro would lose any recall vote by a hefty margin.