LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) \u2014 Juan de Dios Castillo, covered in flour and sweat, pulled a crisp roll from the cooling rack and weighed it on an old metal scale: 60 grams (2 ounces).<\/p>\n
That\u2019s barely half what it would have been two years ago. Unlike American or European shoppers scrutinizing suspiciously capacious<\/a> chip bags, Bolivians have no doubt that they\u2019re paying the same government-fixed price for a much smaller, lower-quality loaf.<\/p>\n For years, you could walk into a government-subsidized bakery like Castillo\u2019s anywhere in Bolivia and get a 100-gram (3.5 ounce) roll for 50 centavos (7 U.S. cents), but as a cash crunch cripples flour imports and inflation squeezes budgets<\/a>, bakers have almost halved the size of their staple bread. Early last year, rolls shrank to 80 grams, then 70, now 60.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like eating a bit of air, a Communion wafer, it doesn\u2019t fill you up anymore,\u201d said Rosario Manuelo Chura, 40, dipping some crust into her morning coffee in Bolivia\u2019s administrative capital of La Paz. <\/p>\n Castillo isn\u2019t particularly pleased about it either. Forced to sell his bread far below market price, he\u2019s barely breaking even. \u201cThis situation is not sustainable,\u201d he said, slamming the oven door open.<\/p>\n Bolivia\u2019s many harbingers of havoc ahead of its presidential election on Sunday<\/a> seem to converge in this shrunken piece of subsidized bread that La Paz residents call \u201cpan de batalla\u201d \u2014 \u201cbattle bread.\u201d<\/p>\n The hallowed staple speaks to a state stuck in the past<\/a> after 20 years under the state-directed economic model<\/a> of ex-leader Evo Morales<\/a>, and now struggling to pull itself out of its worst economic crisis in four decades. <\/p>\n The right-wing frontrunners, businessman Samuel Doria Medina<\/a> and former President Jorge \u201cTuto\u201d Quiroga, have proposed eliminating the politically combustible subsidies<\/a> that underwrite Bolivia\u2019s social safety net.<\/p>\n \u201cI say this openly, I\u2019ll remove subsidies because they\u2019re the greatest absurdity,\u201d Doria Medina told The Associated Press<\/a> this month, referring to the fuel that Bolivia subsidizes to the tune of billions of dollars a year.<\/p>\n Short on dough, literally<\/p>\n Legend has it that the battle bread earned its nickname from troop rations in the country\u2019s Chaco War against Paraguay in the 1930s.<\/p>\n Today, a battle over bread rages within Bolivia, which is running out of hard currency to import wheat because the country grows less than 25% of what it consumes. <\/p>\n Struggling to clear a backlog of imports, the government has slowed or in some cases suspended subsidized flour deliveries. Loaves have vanished from shelves and bread lines have started to appear across La Paz.<\/p>\n The scarcity of U.S. dollars<\/a> has also hampered diesel fuel imports, leading to fuel shortages and raising questions about the ability of import-dependent Bolivia to keep subsidizing its staples<\/a>.<\/p>\n Not only do farmers use diesel fuel to power machinery for irrigation, but diesel fuel also contributes to the price of imported foodstuffs.<\/p>\n Prices rise and loaves shrink<\/p>\n Some two years ago Bolivia had a lower annual inflation rate than Germany. Today it has among the region\u2019s highest, with the government reporting consumer prices rose 25% in July from a year earlier.<\/p>\n But the price of bread hasn\u2019t changed in 17 years. <\/p>\n Bolivia imports most of its wheat from Argentina, where prices have increased \u2014 along with the value of the Argentine peso<\/a> \u2014 under libertarian President Javier Milei<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bolivia\u2019s grain agency, EMAPA, distributes the subsidized flour to bakers at a fixed price while requiring them to sell battle bread for 50 centavos a loaf \u2014 about a fifth of what it would cost to bake the same loaf with ingredients bought at retail prices. <\/p>\n As the prices of other ingredients climb, many government-subsidized bakeries warn that they are facing bankruptcy. Scores of bakers last month staged a 24-hour strike demanding to sell their bread at market prices. <\/p>\n But a quick scan of history from the 1789 French Revolution<\/a> to 1989 Venezuelan riots<\/a> underscores why Morales\u2019 Movement Toward Socialism<\/a> party, or MAS, hasn\u2019t dared tinker with the agreement<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen the price of battle bread goes up, that\u2019s the day everything collapses,\u201d said Jacobo Choque, 40, an accountant waiting to buy bread rich in butter from a non-subsidized bakery. The line of Bolivians keen to shell out an extra 20 centavos for better-tasting, thicker rolls stretched almost two city blocks.<\/p>\n Nearby, cash-strapped customers scoured an open-air market, swarming around one of the few stalls selling battle bread.<\/p>\n \u201cWe used to have breakfast with one roll, but now we need two to feel full,\u201d said Carmen Mu\u00f1oz, 65, fuming as she queued. \u201cLet\u2019s not forget that socialism brought us here.\u201d <\/p>\n A subsidy system gone bust <\/p>\n When commodity prices surged in 2007, Morales<\/a>, a coca-farming union leader<\/a> elected the year before to his first of what would be three terms<\/a>, harnessed revenues from booming natural gas exports to bankroll subsidies<\/a> for bread and other essentials.<\/p>\n But as gas production plummeted about a decade later, MAS dipped into foreign reserves to keep spending. The model became ruinously costly \u2014 last year\u2019s food and fuel subsidies made up over 4.2% of gross domestic product. <\/p>\n With the government unable to pay suppliers on time and trucks trapped in fuel lines, EMAPA\u2019s monthly deliveries of milled wheat have hit snags, leaving subsidized bakeries suddenly without flour. Even as bakers eat into their savings to buy other ingredients, the subsidy agreement bars them from sourcing their own flour.<\/p>\n \u201cRather than helping, subsidies are hurting us,\u201d Castillo said.<\/p>\n Some bakers say that EMAPA \u2014 long accused of favoring MAS party members \u2014 has stopped supplying altogether.<\/p>\n EMAPA denies cronyism, saying it has ramped up investigations into reports of bakers reselling subsidized flour at inflated prices on the black market, or trying to pass off rolls baked with low-cost additives like cassava starch.<\/p>\n \u201cIn all my 30 years at this market, this is the most stressful,\u201d said Raquel de Quino, a 60-year-old bread vendor who now spends her mornings confronting customers outraged over the shrinkflation<\/a> and shortages.<\/p>\n On Saturday, she asked one angry woman to take her rant to the government \u2014 at least for its final week in power.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just the middleman,\u201d said De Quino, throwing up her hands in exasperation. \u201cLet\u2019s pray to God that under the next government, there will bread for our children.\u201d<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n