There are a lot of beggars on the streets nowadays in Venezuela (together with starving people searching in the trash). During any other time, we would ask ourselves "but why don't they just get a job instead?". Nowadays we know that this is an impossible feat for many Venezuelans, and that even if they could get a job, it would have such a low pay that it would be insignificant. They'd have to get two or three jobs and bargain with the employer for a higher salary.

^{All images taken from Pixabay}

It's very hard to get a decent job without connections

Long ago before the current rulers sat on the throne and called Venezuela their kingdom, people used to, like on any other normal western country, bring their CV's to companies and hope to get a job. It was common knowledge that you had to have a good CV and good qualifications to get a job.

You'd get a university degree, then a Master's degree, then a PhD and you'd know that you were going to earn a decent salary, that companies would bring their wage offers up in order to rope you in.

However, good jobs are now held by the sons, cousins, friends and any other family or close relationships to the people with authority. This is a situation born out of the necessity to take care of our own.

Crisis has fallen and there is not enough space under our roofs to cover everyone. We have to be selective and the shape that this has taken is a strong and prevalent nepotism all around the country.

This is not absolutely new. There are, as there have always been, "rich families" and "family businesses". The difference is that it is now virtually impossible for someone to get a job without close referrals. This might bring down the quality of a company, but it's something considered to be a necessary evil.

But nepotism doesn't end here

Nepotism is everywhere

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Basic-needs products

It's extremely hard to find essential products here (food and hygiene, mostly, as well as car parts). If you don't have connections, you'll have to pay a lot of money to have access to them, and even then, sometimes you just can't access those products. They're saved for family members and friends.

Groups of people get together to pay for a big pack of flour (because it's the only way to get a lot: directly from the ditributor or the producer) and then divide the little 1 kg packs between each family. Twenty packs for each, more or less, depending on how many people are living in the household.

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Paperwork and getting things done

Bureaucracy is on the rise in Venezuela. It's hard and slow to get anything done if you don't have the right contacts, the right information providers. You'll find the loners aimlessly posting on Facebook groups trying to get some help, but in these days of hardships, you'd better have a lot of friends in various fields or you're getting nowhere.

Need a lawyer? Find an aunt who is a lawyer. Need to get into a university? Find an uncle who is the director of some department in the university.

This is not to say that there is nothing you can do without contacts. I know someone who spent a lot of money trying to get some paperwork done "under the table" and didn't ever succeed, while others did it meanwhile and afterward in less time through the legal means. But this is not the norm by any means.

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Technology as a countermeasure to nepotism

The pattern I mentioned was noticed, if maybe indirectly, by the loners and people with unsolved needs. In the age of technology, many have decided to create mini-communities everywhere, such as @orinoco (a Steemit account) that allows us to easily trade our SBD for Bolivars (our national currency). Many of these communities are based on Whatsapp, Facebook, Telegram and Discord.

These are not new, and they have quickly grown into very specific niches for people to solve their needs while making these groups a substitute for tightly-knit families and friends. There are groups for schools, grades, subjects, neighborhoods. Around my house, there is a group for each block in the neighborhood, a group per family, a group per family sub-group (we have very divided political groups, what was called Polarization*) and a group per need (one for finding basic needs products, for example).

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*Polarization (polarización in Spanish) is what we call the strong-felt political division in society, where those who support the government and those who oppose it find themselves in unavoidable conflict and a certain level of hatred or resentment

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It's just starting

You might think that with the advent of technology and with people noticing the patterns, things might change, but this is very far from the truth. The crisis creating an even deeper crack in our ability to cover our basic needs.

In Venezuela, inequality is turning into the norm. The poor will grow poorer and die while families try to stay afloat by doing everything in their hands to keep money rotating within. As the government strengthens its iron fist over production and makes it stagnate, nepotism will not only be the norm, but the only way to survive in these wild lands.

How does nepotism present itself in your home country? I've read that it's different everywhere, but it's not a topic that it's common to talk about.

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