With Venezuela's once-mighty oil industry in steep decline, one worker laments: 'My quality of life can never recover'

Aguilar is a process operator, helping monitor the refining process as crude oil moves through three distillers. Each morning, he walks two miles to get to the plant — a commute he once made on a company shuttle, before that benefit was discontinued. His shifts are eight hours, but he frequently works double that when other employees don’t show up. His salary was once more than enough to take care his wife and three children. But today, massive inflation means his paycheck and benefits amounts to less than $4 a month, enough to buy a kilogram of beef and a dozen eggs. More…