![CARACAS, VENEZUELA - JUNE 2016: A street performer works for spare change on a traffic officer's pedestal in Caracas in June](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/oil-rich-venezuela-falls-apart.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
In Venezuela the food lines are only the most visible evidence of a nation in free fall. Known as las colas, the lines form before dawn and last until nightfall, several bodies thick and zigzagging for miles in leafy middle-class neighborhoods and ragged slums alike. In a country that sits atop the world’s largest known petroleum reserves, hungry citizens wait on their assigned day for whatever the stores might stock: with luck, corn flour to make arepas, and on a really good day, shampoo…
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