essay #2

                                                                     Economic Crisis 

I am a Venezuelan born to Chinese parents. I lived in Margarita city for more than fifteen years, and I liked it so much. Venezuela used to be a country with a very good economy. My parents immigrated to Venezuela and lived there for almost thirty years to make a business, and they enjoyed their life there. However, in Venezuela a huge change occurred in 2013. The president Hugo Chavez died, and the country started rioting. People fought for food and a lot of people died from starvation and fighting. It is still unimaginable what happened in my home country when the country fell into an economic crisis and widespread poverty. The economic crisis had seeped into the whole country, and it affected my entire family. 

At the beginning, during the economic crisis, getting resources was difficult for my family. There was insufficient food, medicine and daily necessities, so getting these things like meat, toilet paper and rice became a daily routine. Every day my parents would have to line up to wait and buy these items. Even though my family had enough money, there was not enough food to buy in the stores. Because of the supply shortage, sometimes my parents and I did not have food to eat. Usually, my parents went to buy food in the morning at the supermarket, but they had to wait two or three hours to buy some food and it was not enough for a few days. The shortage of resources made it impossible for us to live. For example, when I was sick, my parents went to a pharmacy, but there was no medicine to buy. These shortages of resources affected my family physically and it was getting worse as the months passed by.  

In addition, during the economic crisis, my family felt unsafe. Because of the shortage of resources, people started lining up every day to buy food, but they were not able to get enough. It was serious enough to cause starvation for some. A lot of people fought and scrambled for the resources, and some ended up killing others for food. At that time, my parents had a small snack store. Because due to the lack of food, people went into my parents’ store and started to steal things, so my family decided to close the store for good. It was the only way to reduce losses. 

After many years of suffering, my parents decided to move to the U.S. They started to think and plan how our family was going to leave. However, my father could not sell his business or house because of the crisis. People did not have the resources to buy property. A lot of people did not have money to buy a house or car because it was so expensive, so my father decided to give up our house and business. It caused my family to not have enough money to leave. Fortunately, some family members who lived in China offered to lend us money so we could leave. Based on this money, we eventually made our way to Chicago, and we started living and working in the U.S. 

Venezuela used to be a great country, but a lot of problems happened after Hugo Chavez died. When the Venezuelan economic crisis started in 2013, I felt like nothing bad would happen, but a lot of unimaginable things happened. Fortunately, my entire family started a new life in the U.S and it changed for the better.