Photograph by Alvaro Ybarra Zavala— Getty Images Reportage for TIME
TIME

Requiem for Venezuela

CARACAS, VENEZUELA - JUNE 2016: A street performer works for spare change on a traffic officer's pedestal in Caracas in June
Alvaro Ybarra Zavala—Getty Images for TIME CARACAS, VENEZUELA - JUNE 2016: A street performer works for spare change on a traffic officer's pedestal in Caracas in June

How the nation with more oil than anywhere else in the world fell apart

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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