Too Hungry To Pump Oil

- Lucia Kassai & Andrew Rosati

At 6:40 a.m., Pablo Ruiz squats at the gate of a decaying oil refinery in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, steeling himself for eight Sisyphean hours of brushing antirust paint onto pipes under a burning sun. For breakfast that morning, the 55-year old drank cornflour mixed with water.

Ruiz’s weekly salary of 110,000  bolivares— about 50¢ at the black market exchange rate— buys him less than a kilo of cornmeal or rice. His only protein comes from 170 grams of canned tuna included in a food box the government provides to low-income families. It shows up every 45 days or so. “I haven’t eaten meat for two months,” he says. “The last time I did, I spent my whole week’s salary on a meal of chicken.”

Hunger is hastening the ruin of Venezuela’s oil industry as workers grow too weak and famished for heavy labour. With children dying of malnutrition and adults sifting garbage for table scraps, food has become more important than employment, which is why thousands are walking off their jobs. 

A socialist autocracy that once was South America’s most prosperous nation, Venezuela is suffering an economic collapse. Gross domestic product has contracted 40  percent since 2013. Food inflation surpassed 2,500 percent in January alone, according to independent estimates, the result of price and currency controls that have created acute shortages. In a new survey by three Venezuelan universities, more than 64 percent of respondents said they’d lost weight in 2017, 25 pounds on average.