Rei Murasame wrote:Arabs from which specific country? Why is the PSUV allowing foreigners to run around in the retail sector in the first place?
The family which owns Daka is from Syria.
I think there's a bit of confusion on your part. Over the last 15 years Chavez had been carrying out a plan to destroy private enterprise in Venezuela. This he did via nationalizations, and by choking to death certain sectors by rendering them unable to compete with imports.
To make imports very cheap he had foreign exchange controls which made the bolivar a very strong currency. Thus the entities able to exchange their bolivars for dollars at the artificial price had a tremendous advantage. Local producers were slapped with taxes, regulations, controls, and very restrictive labour laws. This meant they could not compete with imports.
Chavez also gave construction contracts and business to companies from abroad, or to newly arrived immigrant clans. These people were treated very well, and usually became attached to sponsoring government officials who shared the spoils. Many are Arabs from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, etc.
So the corruption was actually very well organized and Chavez was on his way to replacing the native business class which had opposed him with those natives who played along (and there were many who became rich doing business with the government while greasing the right PSUV politicians). And he also had these newly arrived clans, which became very prominent in the Arab community.
I happen to know one of these Arab Syrian families and so I heard the gossip and met some of these players at social functions at the club (I lived in a very upper class area so we all used the same three clubs and ran into each other at the local deli and so on).
I keep getting information Maduro moved on this because he got tipped off Daka was making a lot of extra cash leveraging their connections. And right now Maduro is in a bind, he's short of cash and there are acute food shortages, so I imagine this was a quick and harsh reaction to punish the mafias allied with these particular Arab families. But the Daka family had already taken a bunch of their profits and moved on to Panama. So the guys they arrested were local guys who were just store managers.
What happened was that when Maduro gave his speech to "empty the shelves" people took him at his word and started looting. And some of the looters were National Guard. So many merchants closed down and many are refusing to open because they got roaming crowds waiting to get in.
In Venezuela the high crime leads to stores being armored with thick steel bars and many barriers, so it's kind of hard to get inside unless the owner opens. I'll get on the news sources I have to see what I can pick up directly from the ground, but I can tell you now at least one friend who owns a store left it shut and left the country. I can't imagine how he got the ticket because all the flights are sold out.