The lady got fat

La Inflacion: Inflation

Nope that fat lady is not I. As much I tempted, I have resist the daily lures of Buñuelos from the corner bakery and Arequipe (that is dulce de leche for you English speakers) and chocolate ice cream from Crepes&Waffles. It has been a miracle that my jeans not only fit, but also I bought the trendy skinny ones and I don’t look like a chorizo.

That fat lady is inflation. And she seems to singing loudly. Prices have gone through the roof. Limes alone have gone up 70% in three months; forget about corn in a country where some people eat arepas three times a day. All government estimates have been rendered useless. The dollar keeps on plummeting to historic lows. People are panicking, and the presidents finance minister makes a quip about that the minimum wage has been set to handle such a precipitous price increase. Forgetting that the wage was adjusted for the whole year and not just the first quarter of the year.

The government is not helped by the scandal in El Choco the state that takes up most of the Pacific coast. Several children die of malnutrition, and more will die if the national government does not intervene health officials tell news outlets. This is one of Colombia’s poorest states with the largest population of Afro-Colombian’s and several important indigenous tribes. It is also one of the most corrupt and underdeveloped.

President Uribe engages in one of his usual great PR campaign moves. He arrives to pat the heads of some of the sad looking kids in a rural community. He promises to get to the bottom of the situation. It seems like this is enough to get the news outlets to focus on something else. That is until it is discovered that supplies of Bienestarina, a food supplement provided to the poorest children in Colombia, has been sold to feed pigs in a large farm. Some bureaucrat in El Choco has sold it to a friend rather than let it be distributed to those in need.

The country is outraged. How can this be happening in a country so rich in resources? What heartless bastard would do such a thing? In the meantime it is discovered that the money given to El Choco for its public health system has gone missing. Not one hospital has received its funds, and they chug along without the basics. No gauze, gloves, or needles. The situation is chaotic, and Uribe pets another kid’s head.