She is up by 2 a.m., trudging down 12 flights in her housing project and over three blocks to a small pharmacy in eastern Caracas. This city is filled with danger at night but when Laura arrives, dozens are already there, holding their places in line with a practiced shrewdness. When the doors swing open at 7:30, hundreds of people elbow their way past security guards. Laura manages to find just one bottle of detergent and two bottles of shampoo. She’ll resell them hours later for 10 times their sticker price.
Venezuela’s shortages and lines are epic. Byzantine controls warp wages and distort commerce. Inflation is spiraling out of control. Whole industries are vanishing, a trend that only accelerated after the price of oil, the country’s lifeblood, fell by more than half. But within the incredibly shrinking economy, one business is thriving, spawning a new class of entrepreneurs, a new set of mothers of invention. They’re called bachaqueros. Laura, a 30-year-old former housecleaner, is one of them, buying up basic goods at government-set prices and hawking them privately in the black market.
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