CARACAS, Venezuela — They were the cheapest in the store, but the Converse knockoffs were still 500,000 bolívars a pair. “Son locos” — they’re crazy — Viviana Acosta had said, gingerly placing the sneakers back on the shelf.
Just before Christmas, the world’s worst inflation crisis in nearly a decade was escalating — bringing a country of nearly 32 million, once Latin America’s richest per capita, to its knees. Shoes for the kids had been Viviana’s plan for the holidays. But multiply by three — for two daughters and one son — and it was three months worth of what she earned doing house-call hair and nails.
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Venezuelans are calling this “Infeliz Navidad” — Unhappy Christmas — a holiday season devastated by hyperinflation.
Under Chavez, who came to power in 1999, oil-rich Venezuela proclaimed itself a socialist paradise. Industries were nationalized. Government handouts multiplied.
But Venezuela’s economy no longer works.
The past six months have brought the kind of shocking price surges that the world last saw in Zimbabwe in 2008. Venezuela hasn’t released official inflation data since 2015. But last month, according to the Caracas-based statistical firm Ecoanalitica, the country slipped into hyperinflation — and hit an annualized rate of nearly 2,000 percent.
