Hordes of grateful parents have queued to buy cut-price toys from China, writes Rory Carrollin Caracas
THINK OF a tubby man dressed in red who has an army of helpers distributing Christmas toys, and the odds are you visualise Santa Claus, elves and the North Pole.
Think again. President Hugo Chávez is delivering festive gifts to the tropics with Venezuela’s first socialist toy fair.
The government has spent $1.4 million (€958,000) importing 124,000 toys from China and is selling them at rock-bottom prices to hordes of grateful parents. So many swamped the inaugural feria socialista de juguetesin the capital, Caracas, that police officers on horseback intervened to impose order over the weekend.
“It’s amazing. There were thousands waiting this morning even before we opened,” said Jesus Alvarez, a government co-ordinator, as crowds threatened to break through police lines. Dozens of colleagues, all dressed in red, feverishly unpacked boxes of toys while an official with a megaphone appealed for calm.
The fair, which opened on December 7th, may be forced to close this Wednesday, a week early, due to depletion of stocks of dolls, puzzles and remote-control cars. Barbies sold out within days.
With discounts of up to 80 per cent, there is no mystery to its success. Venezuela is in recession and suffering 26 per cent inflation, Latin America’s highest. Many families are struggling to buy food, let alone gifts.
Josaira Rodriguez (33) had queued from 5am to 11pm, just to get a ticket to return the next day where she would have to wait another four hours to get into the white tents full of toys. She had brought $350 (€239), just over half her monthly teacher’s salary, in the hope of buying five presents. “With everything here three or four times cheaper, it’ll be worth the wait,” she said.
Inflation has eroded Chávez’s popularity, but parents who heaved away bulging sacks of toys had no complaints. “God bless the president. He is our maximum leader,” said Carmen Usecha (37). The nursery school assistant had bought a battery-powered buggy for her nine-month-old son and a train set for her five-year-old.
Industry minister Simon Daoud El Saden said the merchandise was not subsidised but sold at cost, stripped of “speculative” retail mark-ups. “It is a way to control and lower prices.”
The government has sought to accelerate Venezuela’s socialist revolution by expanding state control of the economy and regulating the private sector, but critics say the result is stagflation and a collapse in manufacturing.
Chávez has called for values based on those of independence hero Simón Bolívar to transform Venezuela’s Americanised society – obsessed with baseball, whisky and shopping.
Unlike his mentor Fidel Castro, however, he has not renounced Catholicism: a banner over the toy fair entrance read: “United with the baby Jesus we build a Bolivarian fatherland.” The pro-government newspaper Vea hailed the event as a victory over rip-off “capitalist toys”.
Freewheeling entrepreneurial spirit was evident, however, in the sun-baked park hosting the fair. Hawkers sold snacks and drinks, and outside the grounds some of the toys sold at discounted prices appeared on street stalls at marked-up prices. “This is supposed to be a socialist event with solidarity prices but it’s inevitable that some will resell the toys,” Alvarez, the government co-ordinator, said ruefully.
Opposition politicians usually assail Chávez initiatives but, not wanting to be labelled Scrooge, lauded the bargain toys.
“It’s positive, many people will benefit,” said Antonio Ledezma, mayor of Caracas. “But it’s not a socialist fair. It’s just a fair.”
– ( Guardianservice)