Biscucuy: Shortages of fuel and electricity, hospitals in ruins and impassable roads: outside the relative comfort of Caracas, years of economic crisis have taken their toll on the Venezuelan countryside.
The only thing these abandoned communities have in abundance are election promises ahead of Sunday’s presidential vote.
Incumbent Nicolas Maduro, who is seeking a third six-year term, has offered to repair schools and clinics as well as build houses in dozens of towns and villages where he campaigned.
But for residents of places like Biscucuy, a coffee-growing region in the western state of Portuguesa, it’s hard to imagine escaping the daily grind.
“The economy in the village is not easy,” laments 56-year-old mechanic Jose Gregorio Mejia as he wipes his hands on oil-covered clothes.
Mejia needs surgery for a urinary tract obstruction, but the local hospital with its abandoned facade does not have the materials to perform the operation.
Despite his doctor’s orders, he goes to work every day with the goal of earning two to four dollars for his efforts.
Power outages of up to four hours a day are common in this region of 50,000 people.
The roads between the Biscucuy coffee farms are full of potholes and become mud traps when it rains.
“We used to say: Let’s start working young so we can live happily in our old age.” We can’t say now because this government has cut our pensions,” said 62-year-old Rosa de Madrid.
The retired teacher earns only thanks to the financial support sent by her daughter from the United States.
Maduro blames Venezuela’s economic woes on US sanctions imposed after dozens of Western and Latin American states refused to recognize his 2018 re-election over alleged fraud.
But residents and experts say the collapse began much earlier, with the petrostate’s all-important oil industry collapsing under corruption and mismanagement.
Many in rural Venezuela feel they are being overlooked in favor of Caracas, where power outages are less frequent and fuel and food are plentiful, although the capital has not been spared from rising poverty.
Biscucuy harvests 60 to 70 percent of Venezuela’s coffee, but production is increasingly difficult.
For example, the Hernandez family does not have fuel to run their coffee dryer or transport it to the village.
There is a shortage of fertilizers and coffee farmers complain about the price the government pays them for their product – sometimes $80 for a quantity that trades for $200 on international markets.
“We are drowning because we have no resources,” said Migdalis Hernandez, 53, who runs the family farm.
To produce the target 3,680 kilograms (8,113 pounds) of coffee a year, they have to spend about $800 on diesel — money they don’t have.
Coffee farmers are increasingly using some of their production to barter for food as Venezuela faces one of the world’s highest inflation rates and a sharp devaluation of the local currency, the bolivar.
Rafael Hernandez – no relation to Migdalis – told AFP he had no choice but to trade some of his coffee production for basics such as corn flour, pasta, sugar and vegetable oil. He can’t save enough for meat or chicken.
“We coffee farmers have a bad diet,” Hernandez told AFP.
Biscucuy Mayor Jobito Villegas estimates that in recent years, as life has become increasingly difficult, “between 5,000 and 10,000 (residents) have left the community.
“The young are gone and we’re left with the old. We’re losing the workforce,” he said. “Before it was a rural exodus that went from Biscucua to Caracas, now they go from Biscucua to the United States.”
Since Maduro came to power in 2013, roughly seven million citizens of the once-wealthy country have left as GDP has fallen by 80 percent in less than a decade.
Migdalis Hernandez still clings to his farm. “It’s what we have, it’s an inheritance. It’s what our parents left us, it’s our economy, how do we leave it?” she said.
