Feeling Flush, Venezuelans Are Snapping Up $100 Christmas Trees
Stores are actually stocked with goods now that import and price controls have been loosened, just in time for el nino Jesus
A pop-up Christmas shop in the Las Mercedes neighborhood of Caracas.
Photographer: Adriana Loureiro Fernandez/Bloomberg
Editor’s Note: There are few places as chaotic or dangerous as Venezuela. “Life in Caracas” is a series of short stories that seeks to capture the surreal quality of living in a land in total disarray.
Driving down the highway, it caught my eye: a car with a fir tree lashed to the roof. Then I saw another. And another.
Real evergreens? Really. Even though one can cost $100, more than 12 times the official monthly minimum wage.
People are lining up to buy them. They’re flocking to malls for presents and pop-up shops for tinsel. Street vendors are selling hallacas, a favorite holiday conglomeration of cornmeal, beef, pork, chicken, raisins, capers and olives wrapped in banana leaves.
Christmas is back in Caracas, after a fashion. The Nicolas Maduro regime, angling to keep the wheels of what's left of the economy turning, eased price controls and import restrictions and now stores are actually stocked with goods. Remittances from the Venezuelan diaspora — 4 million strong and growing — keep pouring in, mostly in U.S. dollars, and the government is turning a blind eye to their use.
It’s widespread, and really greasing those wheels. Caraquenos with side hustles, tutoring or sewing clothes, typically won’t take payment in anything but dollars. Ditto doctors and lawyers, and definitely retailers. So many are circulating the expert opinion is that they outnumber bolivars.