Venezuela’s vehicle industry produced only eight trucks last year — and nary a single car — according to the Chamber of Venezuelan Manufacturers of Automotive Products. At the century’s peak, in 2006-2007, some 172,000 vehicles rolled out of plants operated by Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Chrysler and others.
So people cling to what they have. Like Eduardo Ayala’s 1999 Nissan Sentra, which was undergoing mechanical surgery at a shop in a working class district in western Caracas. “The vast majority of people do not have money to buy a car — that is the truth of the matter. So they prefer to repair the one they have,” Hernandez said. Around him, fellow mechanics worked on other cars, all at least a decade old.Venezuela’s roads are full of high-mileage, money-sucking vehicles, many that predate the socialist transformation ushered in by the late President Hugo Chavez at the turn of the century.
But a complex social, economic and humanitarian crisis began in the mid-2010s, aggravated by falling oil prices, U.S. economic sanctions on the government and — critics allege — flamboyant mismanagement of the economy.
The irony, one of the worlds largest oil producers and no cars to drive.
Socialism.