I walk the line...

And the good news is, says Miguel Angel Latouche in the PanAm Post, that in Venezuela your 90 year old father won't have much to carry;

My father can still move about relatively well, though slowly; he walks using a cane and suffers from knee problems. He had surgery a few months ago to remove a cancerous tumor from his neck.

You might say that a person with health issues like these should be resting, enjoying his retirement, and definitely not running errands.

Latouche then explains that in Venezuela's controlled from above retail sector, the consumer must appear personally to buy his needs. Even if he can barely walk.

The truth is that, in this incomprehensible country we live in, the authorities have limited purchases of some staple products, such as corn flour and powdered milk, to specific days and according to the last digit on one’s ID card. In other words, only the people with the right ID numbers can buy items on a particular day, and in person.

Imagine how much more misery could have been inflicted in Lenin and Stalin's Russia, or Mao's China, if they had had the modern technology (fingerprint scanner at point of sale, say). Latouche continues;

There I was with Papá, buying four packages of corn flour, amid pervasive annoyance, people cutting in, and smug expressions stamped on the civil and military officials managing the queue. I must confess that I feel a certain kind of rage when I must stand in a line that is watched over by armed military men intent on keeping order.

That's the Bolivarian Revolution writ in human terms.