The Trump administration has sent the U.S. military to Venezuela (“hundreds of personnel, two warships, fixed and rotary-winged aircraft, and search and rescue teams”), which will, I hope, help with immediate problems. But what about supporting long-term rebuilding of this frenemy? My preferred method for helping afflicted foreign countries is to boost their economies by buying their exports (see Japan Relief: Idea #1 (buy a knife), for example).
What can we buy from Venezuela in the coming months that we wouldn’t have otherwise purchased? ChatGPT says that Venezuelan coffee is “potentially very good, but uneven and hard to find” (old/popular brand available on Amazon), that chocolate made in Venezuela can be good. Franceschi Chocolate, Chocolates El Rey, and Savoy are the recommended brands. Of these, I found only Savoy at Amazon. ChatGPT apparently wants humans to be too drunk to resist its takeover of the planet and consequently recommends rum: Diplomático, Santa Teresa, Pampero, Cacique. Venezuelan seafood is apparently a big export, but tough to find as a consumer.
Since we live in a Latinx-rich environment, I am going to visit some of the local “Hispanic” supermarkets and see what I can find before hoping and praying for chocolate to make it through the mail in summer heat.
The good old days…
My first order… (U.S.-roasted because ChatGPT says that nationalization and state control hasn’t worked out well for the quality of the two big Venezuelan coffee companies, though of course Mamdani-run state enterprises will do better!)
Purchase #2, at Jupiter’s Latinx supermarket (Tapatia):
Note that the above shows 100 percent of the Venezuela-made items available in the store, according to the staff. They had a lot of stuff from Mexico, some from Central America, and not even coffee from Venezuela.
With due respect to the efforts of the military, the deaths and the injuries, also reflect on why the quote, “saving the planet”, is so full of hubris.
Diplomatica rum
castronovochocolate (.com) in Stuart, FL manufactures award-winning chocolate bars with beans from Venezuela, like Chuao Venezuela 72% Dark.
That said, it’s very artisanal and you are not guaranteed to find them in stock.
We’ll look forward to your review of the VZ coffee! Could be a nice new direction for the blog. You can check for vennie restaurants in your area, via Door Dash perhaps. Your gardener prolly eats there.
Will you be reviewing the chocolate? The foreign candy bars always look so exotic and appealing but who knows. I do like a Lion Bar.
So far the Cri Cri crispy chocolate was good (like a Nestle Crunch) and the little wrapped chocolates (Savoy) also. The Samba cookie-based bar that we’ve tried was rated “poor” by both me and the 11-year-old.
It looks like Bernie Sanders’s mentor threatened to nationalize Venezuelan Nestle in 2008 and the company said that it didn’t care. https://www.reuters.com/article/markets/nestle-says-not-against-venezuela-nationalisation-idUSL21780855/
That’s a great guide to what Nestle thought the long-term prospects were! They would have been delighted to receive a one-time payment and never have to travel there from Switzerland again.
The Cocosette wafer bar was okay, but not chocolate (coconut cream).
I guess we’ll never know how many Venezuelan bolivars it takes to buy a Nestle CEO a new Swiss watch for his collection – managing revenues in (hyper?) inflation, then conversion and repatriation of hard currency must’ve been quite a feat requiring too many MBA’s and/or bribes..