This weekend, Venezuela seized an electronics supplier after they "illicitly" raised prices.
This summer, Venezuelans began procuring dollars en masse abroad and bringing them back home to take advantage of their government's currency controls by selling the greenbacks on the black market at a premium.
It's just one of the many odd, unique things that have occurred in the Bolivarian Republic since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998 and promptly flipped the country's regime from democratic to socialist.
We've gone back and looked at 19 other instances where Venezuelan society appears to have wandered away from how most countries do things.
There's no Coke Zero — it was banned in 2009 for containing artificial sweeteners.
Source: AP
Golf was banned for being too bourgeois.
REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Source: New York Times
Though a few years later, President Chavez congratulated Jhonnatan Vegas for winning the Bob Hope Classic.
REUTERS
Source: Cybergolf
There is basically an entire industry devoted to pumping out beauty queens.
REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Source: Bloomberg
The first lady is called the "first combatant."
REUTERS/Miraflores Palace-Teresa Maniglia/Handout via Reuters
Source: New York Times
There are toilet paper shortages because of hoarding and profiteering.
REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Source: LA Times
Same for diapers, milk, and lots of other basic necessities.
REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Source: New York Times
And inflation sometimes hits close to 20%.
AP Photo/Fernando Llano
Source: Reuters
Parrots get their own revolutionary berets.
REUTERS
So do dolls.
There's a good chance you're driving an ancient car, probably American.
REUTERS/Isaac Urrutia
Source: New York Times
Because "conspiracies" are everywhere, there was an investigation into "the roots" of late leader Hugo Chavez' cancer...
REUTERS/Miraflores Palace/Handout
Source: New York Times
And the country's founding father was exhumed to prove he was assassinated (the results were inconclusive).
Wikimedia
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Chavez at one point hosted a regular 8-hour-long talk show, "Aló Presidente."
Youtube
Source: New York Times
After Chavez passed, it got changed to "Dialogo Bolivariano" — Bolivar Chat.
Youtube
The country wanted to raise a one-million-strong 'guerrilla army' to protect against a U.S. invasion.
REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Source: The Telegraph
"Columbus Day" is called 'The Day of Indigenous Resistance'
REUTERS
Source: Venezuela Analysis
They've got high-profile friends like Sean Penn...
REUTERS/Gaston Brito
And Naomi Campbell.
REUTERS/Miraflores Palace/Handout
BONUS: There's also this.
REUTERS
And this...
REUTERS
And this.
REUTERS
Now check out things that only happen in India...
Reuters
It's pretty intense »
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-only-happen-in-venezuela-2013-11?op=1#ixzz2kSHzoCgK
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