Baseball is a religion in Venezuela.
The country cheers Felix Hernandez, Miguel Cabrera and other local boys who’ve made it in the Major Leagues up north, then turns its attention to its very own winter league that runs from September through the end of the year. They’re raucous games featuring drumming, cheerleaders and copious amounts of beer. Alongside hot dogs, vendors hawk arepas.
But this season, no one is in the mood.
Venezuelans are outraged at the government’s decision to make $10 million available for importing equipment and paying players’ salaries at a preferential rate of 10 bolivars per dollar. This is not going over well in a country where grocers pay as much as 15,000 bolivars to import $1 of rice and poor Venezuelans struggle to feed their families amid the deepest recession on record, soaring inflation and shortages of affordable staples and medicine. The idea of precious dollars going to fund athletics is abominable, critics say.
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