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Food

Venezuelan Government Says It Will Finally Distribute Food to Its Hungry Citizens

President Nicolas Maduro’s wildly unpopular regime is taking measures to appease a very hangry population.
Photo via Flickr user NH53

Venezuelans are very pissed off at their government.

For months, a growing food crisis has led to reports of cats being hunted in Caracas and politicians telling their hungry populace to fry rocks. The people of Venezuela have shot back with pictures of empty fridges, angry tweets, and good old fashioned daily street protests to calling out what they see as a fiscally and monetarily irresponsible government.

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With the spectre of a decapitated Marie Antoinette surely floating around the psyche of country's ruling class, President Nicolas Maduro's wildly unpopular regime is taking measures to appease a very hangry population.

READ MORE: Venezuelans Are Fighting Their Government With Photos of Their Empty Fridges

The very same government that has been blamed for the monstrous 700 percent inflation at the source of Venezuelans' food-buying woes is now promising to import 115,000 tons of food basics like maize flour, pasta, rice, and oil, according to the BBC.

Rodolfo Marco Torres, the country's Food Minister, has promised that 70 percent of the country's food will now be supplied through a network of 15,900 Local Supply and Production Committees that will deliver these basic ingredients in plastic bags directly to family homes.

Obviously, this apparent goodwill gesture also came with a heaping helping of pro-regime propaganda, with Torres emphasizing that the food imports were being used to fight the "economic war" between the government and Venezuela's business elite and opposition groups.

Needless to say, this ideological rhetoric was met with consternation by opposition parties who said that the new food system distribution system could become "politicized" and that the government was "blackmailing the people through their stomach" and "trying to create an absolute monopoly on the distribution of food."

With such strong political discourse surrounding the distribution of food, this quick fix might only fuel the fire.