A Food Fight for Hugo Chavez

Caracas - It's 10 a.m., and tempers are already flaring at the Cada supermarket in Caracas' San Bernardino neighborhood. The store has just taken delivery of two pallets of 4- and 11-pound sacks of sugar. With dozens of shoppers swarming around him, Rigoberto Fernández tries to pass out the bags one by one. The clerk hands a smaller one to a gray-haired woman, but she flings it back. "How dare you tell me I can't have one of the larger bags?" she screams. The sack splits open, spilling sugar everywhere.

Within 10 minutes, the shipment has vanished. "I am so fed up with these food shortages," Fernández mutters as he sweeps up the mess. "People get desperate and start behaving like animals."