A woman’s hair usually holds a very strong symbolic power in western civilization, going through the process of cutting it is a ritual on its own, but in modern-day Venezuela, women can no longer afford the luxury of this commodity.
The economic crisis of the South America country continues, and with Nicolas Maduro’s decision of dissolving the country’s opposition majority Parliament, things will not get better any time soon, leaving Venezuelans no choice but to turn to more unorthodox ways of making ends meet. One of the more unconventional ways for Venezuelan women to secure an income has become the selling of their own hair.
The Reuters international news agency, recently reported that the monthly minimum income a citizen of Venezuela can aspire to is that of $6, but if a women were to sell her hair, she could be perceiving an average of $21 per donation, this kind of money for a Venezuelan woman who can spare some hair is too good of an opportunity to pass over. Women from the impoverished country have even been reported to travel to Colombia and Panama, where they can get better offers for their hair, as the exchange rate with these countries currencies, provides them with more purchasing power back in their home country.
The extreme shortage of basic necessities, like food and toiletries, can push people to make drastic choices in the means of survival. “I thought, ‘Whatever God wants. I’m going to cut my hair.’ I had it very long and I said, ‘I’m going to sell it,’” Crismary Gonzalez, a Venezuelan woman who has already sold her hair twice, told the London News Agency. “My children come first, then my hair. Hair grows back.”
Since Colombia opened its borders to Venezuela, many people have traveled to the country looking for informal jobs that can provide a livelihood for their families, like Katherine Riera who left her home in Puerto Cabello, 13 hours away from Colombia, so she could sell wholesale chocolates in the border. “The money we make selling these chocolates, we use to pay for the hotel on the Venezuelan side, we save very little every day, and when I go home, I take food and money back with me,” told Riera to Al Jazeera. “They [Venezuelan government] should sit down and talk, bring ideas to the table that offer real solutions, they have to stop fighting each other, we want peace and food.”
Recently, Venezuela drew some bewildered looks when they offered millions of dollars in aid to the United States and the various Caribbean countries that were struck by the recent hurricanes, many people see this not as a noble humanitarian effort but as a way for Maduro to win some political points in the international scene.