Trump pledges prosperity as Venezuela struggles

Locals scrape by amid staggering inflation. A promised oil industry revival will take years.

- BY REGINA GARCIA CANO AND MATT SEDENSKY

JESUS VARGAS Getty Images A VENDOR sells bananas Thursday in Caracas, Venezuela. People typically work two or more jobs to survive.

CARACAS, Venezuela At the White House, President Trump vows American intervention in Venezuela will pour billions of dollars into the country's infrastructure, revive its oncethriving oil industry and eventually deliver a new age of prosperity to the Latin American nation.

Here at a sprawling street market in the capital, though, utility worker Ana Calderón simply wishes she could afford the ingredients to make a pot of soup.

"Food is incredibly expensive," says Calderón, noting rapidly rising prices that have celery selling for twice as much as just a few weeks ago and two pounds of meat going for more than $10, or 25 times the country's monthly minimum wage. "Everything is so expensive."

Venezuelans digesting news of the United States' brazen capture of former President Nicolás Maduro are hearing grandiose promises of future economic prowess even as they live through the crippling economic realities of today.

"They know that the outlook has significantly changed, but they don't see it yet on the ground. What they're seeing is repression.

They're seeing a lot of confusion," says Luisa Palacios, a Venezuelan-born economist and former oil executive who is a research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. "People are hopeful and expecting that things are going to change, but that doesn't mean that things are going to change right now." Whatever hope exists over the possibility of U.S. involvement improving Venezuela's economy is paired with the crushing daily truths most here live. People typically work two, three or more jobs just to survive, and still cupboards and refrigerators are nearly bare.