Crisis In Venezuela, Family Eats Garbage Due To Food Crisis, The Rebeca´s Story
The garbage truck brakes and Rebecca runs to the container to rummage through the bags. It is his daily race against hunger, which has many in Venezuela living on scraps. Before the waste is crushed, check quickly and find some pasta.
Rebeca León is 18 years old, currently finishing high school and lives in Petare, in a house that despite its misery has basic services.
A malnourished two-year-old son, a disabled mother and weeks "at the water's edge" took her to the streets for six months. Go through well-off sectors to look for food in the trash.
"My mother did not want to accept it, but what else is done with how bad the country is? He was going to die of hunger, you could see the bones. My son was malnourishing me, "he told AFP.
Your routine is overwhelming. He studies in the afternoons and from school he goes out hunting garbage trucks and digging rubbish in restaurants, from where he takes out remains of chicken, bread, fish or cheese.
He sleeps on the street and comes home in the morning to clean up what he picked up, rest and start the gear again.
This young brunette with lively eyes left the shame aside to survive an agonizing crisis, in which 68% of basic products are scarce and inflation grows uncontrollable (according to the IMF it will reach 1,660% in 2017).
"I cried because I felt humiliated. I do not stop him anymore (I do not care), because if you do not work or look for something in the trash, you do not eat, "he said while waiting for a truck that never arrived.
With it, some 70 people -including several children- wait for the collection cars and distribute the control of restaurant garbage.
Rebeca records the leftovers of a seafood restaurant in Altamira. Nearby, at a fast-food restaurant, a man was recently stabbed in a fight over a bag, an employee says.
In that place José Godoy, unemployed mason of 53 years, eagerly licks a disposable plate. He is accompanied by two daughters of six and nine who drink juice taken from a boat. They are anemic. Once a day they eat yucca or banana.
"I felt sorry, but one night we went to bed without eating. I do not wish it to anyone. The children cried: 'I am hungry'. I sold the tools, everything, and finally I went out to the street. Thousands of us live on garbage, "said José, who says he is tired of doing in vain to buy subsidized products.
Some 9.6 million citizens of Venezuela - almost one third of the population - eat two or fewer meals a day. Income poverty increased almost nine points between 2015 and 2016 to 81.8% of households, according to the Living Conditions Survey. 51.51% are in extreme poverty.
93.3% of families do not have enough to buy food, while seven out of ten people lost an average of 8.7 kilos in the last year, according to a study by a group of universities.
"I was fat, now look: skinny. I had to take her out of school because I could not give her food to take, "says Godoy pointing to one of the daughters, who shyly says she has not eaten meat for a long time.
The nutritionist Maritza Landaeta, co-author of the research, argues that 10% of people in extreme poverty (about 1.5 million) eat what they are given by family members, or from garbage and leftovers from restaurants, exposing themselves to diseases.
But President Nicolás Maduro says that in 2016 poverty in the country with the largest oil reserves in the world fell from 19.7% to 18.3%, and poverty from 4.9% to 4.4%, despite the collapse of crude oil, practically the only income in an economy dependent on imports.
The socialist government, which attributes the shortage to an "economic war", claims that the United Nations recognized its efforts against hunger in 2015.
In addition, that its program of sale of subsidized products in popular areas - created a year ago - will benefit six million homes in 2017.
However, those bags of food have only reached Rebeca's house twice, where a damaged fridge serves as a cupboard to protect the mice's food.
With his face broken by the late night, hunger and dismay at not finding anything, he returns to his neighborhood -the most dangerous in Caracas-, from where he must walk for an hour to the high school through steep streets. There, he says, some colleagues "faint from hunger."
"I do not want to stay like this," she says in the school uniform she is eager to leave to study tourism. For now he is getting ready for another day of this struggle that does not see his end.