Friday, December 29, 2017

Venezuela: Protests on streets due to pork shortage: Maduro blames Portugal

(Caracas)  If you hadn't noticed, it was Christmas day on Monday and Christians around the world settled down to a festive Christmas dinner.  However in Venezuela the locals typically eat pork legs, known locally as pernil de cerdo, during the Christmas holidays instead of the European and American custom of eating a Turkey.


Unfortunately, like virtually everything else in the Oil rich socialist state, Pork legs were in short supply and so a lot of people went without, resulting in protests on the streets on Wednesday.
This is despite the promise made by  Porky President Nicolas Maduro to supply and distribute the pork as part of the monthly subsidized food ration for low-income families at the start of the month.
However instead of blaming the US (As he has a habit of doing) this time he blamed….Portugal. Speaking on his weekly televised address to the country:
"What happened to the pork? They sabotaged us. It was all set, because we had bought all the pork there was in Venezuela, we bought it all. So we had to import, and so I gave the order and I signed the payments. But they went after the bank accounts, they went after the two giant ships that were coming. They have sabotaged us, I can name a country: Portugal."
Funny enough, it transpires that Portugal hasn't supplied Venezuela with pork since 2016 and the reason why?  Portuguese food company Raporal, which supplied pork hind legs to Venezuela in 2016, issued a statement saying that Venezuela still owed it, and its parent company Agrovarius, close to 40 million euros stemming from last year's order of 14,000 tons of pork hind legs.

Posted by pounce_uk at 12/29/2017 08:00:00 AM | | E-mail this article

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