Venezuela is facing a slow-motion societal collapse
The situation in Venezuela is getting worse and worse by the day. Thousands of people are emigrating to Colombia, Ecuador and other countries every day. Welcome to Plain English for July 6, 2018. I’m Jeff and if you are learning English, then you are in the right place. Every episode of Plain English goes at a slower speed than normal, and every episode has a full transcript available online. The slower speed is great, I think, because it gives you just those few extra micro-seconds you need to recognize the words you’re hearing. And that little bit of extra time makes all the difference for people who are still practicing.
And if you think reading a transcript as you listen would be helpful, the transcripts are always free online. Today’s transcript can be found at PlainEnglish.com/63. You already know the transcripts have instant translations from English to Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, French, and Japanese.
And we are trying something new this week, too, and that is Italian. One of your fellow listeners, Mattias, is going to give the Italian translations a shot this week. So if you speak Italian, check out PlainEnglish.com/63 and you can see all the hardest words from this episode translated to Italian instantly, as you read, you don’t even have to press pause.
Venezuela is suffering a humanitarian crisis
Before we start in on the main topic, I want to acknowledge a listener, Javier, who is Venezuelan and living in Costa Rica. Javier is in many ways just like a lot of you, trying to get ahead in his career, practicing English for his job and to help his daughters’ education. But in addition to all of that, he also has to worry every day about what is going on back home in his country, with his other relatives and friends there. And he suggested that we create an episode about Venezuela.
The people of Venezuela are facing what is probably the world’s worst humanitarian crisis right now and one of the worst humanitarian crises in the history of Latin America. The country has the world’s highest inflation rate. In a stable economy, inflation is three to five percent; in Venezuela, it is 13,000 percent. That means if you earn money today, it is almost worthless tomorrow.
There are extreme shortages of food and medical supplies. Thousands of children have died of hunger. The average person in Venezuela—I can hardly believe this—the average person in Venezuela has lost 24 pounds in the last year alone, since the average person can only eat about one meal a day. That’s not the worst case: that’s the average person in the whole country. There are frequent electricity blackouts, as the government cannot keep the lights on in the country. The cities are overrun by violence and looting.
Diseases that have disappeared from the rest of the world now appear in Venezuela. Hospitals are getting only about 10% of what they need to operate. Doctors are among the many people who have fled the country, leaving hospitals short of not only supplies but also expertise. Doctors who remain aren’t making enough money to even feed their own families. Pharmacies report shortages of 85%w of medications.
This is a man-made crisis by the government of Nicolas Maduro. He has lost all control of the economy. He clings to power by jailing opposition politicians, invalidating the other branches of government, and bribing citizens for support by handing out food. Since the private economy has all but collapsed, most of the population survives on government food handouts. The government makes support of the Maduro regime a requirement to receive the food subsidies.
In the face of all this, the answer many Venezuelans have is to simply leave. Estimates vary, but it’s safe to say that over a million people have left just in the last year or two. Two thousand people a day go to Ecuador. Three thousand people a day go to Colombia, which shares a long border with Venezuela. Many of them walk across the Simon Bolivar Bridge connecting the Venezuelan town of San Antonio with the Colombian city of Cúcuta. Many people walk across with nothing but their own clothes and their children in tow. Over 40 percent of the people who are fleeing Venezuela are under 18 years of age.
This is overwhelming neighboring countries like Colombia, which are struggling to adapt to the hundreds of thousands of new refugees, most of whom don’t have jobs or family connections in their new cities.
The Venezuelan government is refusing international humanitarian aid, so getting help to Venezuela remains extremely challenging. I saw a video online this week as I was researching the program about an organization called Comparte Por Una Vida—Share for a Life. It was started just a couple of years ago by Ana Otero, who lives in Caracas, the capital, and they collect donations of food, medicine, baby formula, and medical supplies mostly from Venezuelans living in the United States. They distribute the help to hospitals and orphanages in Venezuela.
I’ll post a link in the show notes and in the transcript to a video from NBC News on Ana and her organization and I’ll also post a link to their web site, so if you are moved to help in any way, whether by making a donation or volunteering, you can find out more about how to do that.
Fundrise page: Comparte Por Una Vida
How to help: Comparte Por Una Vida
NBC News Video
Thanks again to Javier, who suggested the topic for today.
If you’d like to get in touch with me and JR, we love hearing from listeners and hearing what’s important in your lives and turning those topics into episodes. One of the great things about technology and communication is that it lets us all learn so much about the rest of the world. And we are all one big community here at Plain English, so don’t be shy about sending some ideas for future episodes. I’d be happy to try to work some of your suggestions into future episodes. The best way to be in touch is to find us on Facebook or Twitter with the user name PlainEnglishPod or send an email to [email protected].
Learn English the way it’s really spoken
