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Cardboard signs on the door warning of "No bread" have become increasingly common at Venezuelan bakeries/XINHUA-File

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Hard to find bread in shortage-stricken Venezuela

– Who to blame? –

After visiting four bakeries in a quest to buy two “canillas,” an angry 71-year-old Francesco Angelastro declared that buying bread has become an “ordeal.”

In Catia, west of Caracas, the 4F bakery – a reference to the late ex-president Hugo Chavez’s February 4, 1992 attempted coup – sells state-subsidized bread.

But customers complain that the prices have just gone up, and are closer to prices found in privately-run bakeries.

For Luis Rondon, 86, who has been in a bread line for two hours in his quest to buy two loaves of rustic bread, the culprits are the rich businessmen.

He blames President Nicolas Maduro for the scarcity and rising prices “for not setting the businessmen straight.”

As a Ministry of Food truck unloads sacks of flour at a state-run bakery, 62 year-old Diego Morillo wonders why the private bakers don’t complain more.

“Because they sell more and earn well through speculation,” he answered.

But Jesus Masco, who manages a bakery with 20 employees, says that customers “have no idea” of the difficulties bakers face to remain in business.

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He said he used to have a quota of 100 sacks of flour a month.

“But two years ago, the deliveries began to decrease, and now we get 30 sacks if we’re lucky,” he said.

Perez, at the Chacao bakery, is afraid of being out of a job if the promised wheat imports don’t arrive.

She survives selling whatever she can, but customers seem interested only in the basics.

“We’re going to sing happy birthday to these bottles of olive oil,” Perez said.

“They’ve been on the shelf for two years and nobody is interested in buying them.”

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