A video emerged Sunday of Venezuelan children rummaging through a garbage truck for food in the state of Miranda amid the country’s ongoing humanitarian and political crisis.
“While [Jorge] Arreaza discusses the anti-imperialist strategy in central park, these children scavenge for food in a garbage truck in Miranda,” wrote Venezuelan journalist Daniel Murolo on Twitter.
The Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional confirms that the incident took place on Sunday evening in Altos Mirandinos, part of the greater Caracas area.
Jorge Arreaza, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Maduro dictatorship are currently discussing the country’s response to additional U.S. sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump last Friday following socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s creation of a fraudulent lawmaking body known as the “national constituent assembly” (ANC), filled with pro-government stooges and members of Maduro’s family.
The sanctions include a ban on Americans buying Venezuelan bonds or those of its state-run oil company. Previous sanctions from July also personally targeted Maduro, by freezing bank accounts and prohibiting Americans from dealing with him.
The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has now reached a breaking point, with millions of people living in abject poverty as a result of skyrocketing rates of inflation that have left the country with chronic shortages of basic resources such as food, medicine, electricity, and sanitary products.
An annual survey of Venezuelan living conditions in May revealed nearly 75 percent of respondents lost an average of 19 pounds unintentionally in the past year, while 82 percent of households live in poverty. Many people have been forced to cut key proteins from their diets, such as meat, dairy, and fruit.
Therefore, scavenging for food has now become a daily practice for many Venezuelans, worsened by the country’s largely non-existent waste management system. On almost every street corner, stacks of waste can be seen piled up, some of it in black bags, but other items in limbo such as water bottles, diapers, and occasionally food waste.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has not ruled out a military solution to the crisis in Venezuela.
“Venezuela is a mess, it is a very dangerous mess, and a very sad situation,” Trump told reporters this month. “We have many options for Venezuela, I’m not ruling out military options.”
You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
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