POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

Writing for Euronews, Cristina Abellan Matamoros, Natalia Oelsner, and Marta Rodriguez have reported that a Venezuelan professor’s tweet showing the cracked soles of his shoes and explaining that it will cost him four months wages just to have them repaired has gone viral.

The English translation is: “I’m not embarrassed to say it: it’s with these shoes that I go to the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) every day to teach. My salary as a university professor is not enough to change the sole of my shoes.”

The article reports:

His tweet has had more than 9,000 retweets and more than 5,000 likes at the time of writing. In a country where the IMF projects an inflation of 1,000,000%, a cobbler told the professor he would need 20 million bolivares to get new soles. His monthly salary is 5.9 million bolivares—the equivalent of €1.45. “We’ve had to make changes to our life,” Ibarra told Euronews, adding that when he started working, he was able to buy a house with his old salary. . . .

By sharing the picture of his old shoes, Ibarra was hoping to show the rest of the world how a university professor lives in Venezuela today. . . .

Thanks to the power of social media, Ibarra has received various pairs of old and new shoes, clothes, money, and hundreds of support messages since the publication of his tweet.

He has since created the “Shoes for Dignity” movement to help other people in a similar predicament. . . .

Ibarra will donate the money he’s received to “professors that need it to buy food,” adding that “many of them have fainted because they don’t eat enough.”

 Three weeks ago, university professors started striking for higher pay, according to Ibarra. . . .

According to a study by the main universities in the country, including UCV, poverty in Venezuela affected 87% of the total population in 2017. And while many Venezuelans, including university professors, have left the country in search of a better life, Ibarra has decided to stay because “a lot of things can still be done for the country.”

The United States is not experiencing an economic crisis—and has not experienced anything close to what is occurring in Venezuela since the great Depression–and yet some adjunct professors, especially in large urban areas, are homeless, many adjunct professors face food insecurity, and most confront economic precariousness on an almost daily basis. It is a national disgrace that has gone too long unaddressed.

The complete article by Matamoros, Oelsner, and Rodriguez is available at: http://www.euronews.com/2018/07/24/this-university-professor-needs-four-months-wages-to-repair-his-shoes.