Thread by @ContextNewsroom

🇲🇽 Many Mexicans can't afford to buy basic food...
🇧🇷 Meat is becoming a luxury in Brazil...
🇻🇪 And some Venezuelans can't even pay to bury their dead.

The cost-of-living crisis is wreaking havoc in countries worldwide.

Here’s how three nations in the Americas are coping. 🧵

🇲🇽 In Mexico, the #UkraineCrisis has pushed the price of corn to a nine-year high.

Vegetable oil prices are also up by 23% over the last year. Inflation is at a 21-year high of nearly 8%.

🌮 Families are cutting back on staples like tacos and empanadas.

tmsnrt.rs/3zhLk62

🍦 Hector Castro has owned a small ice cream stall in Mexico City for 27 years.

But this year, he’s struggling to stay afloat.

Despite working for more than 12 hours a day, Hector said he barely makes enough money to cover food, rent and transport from his home in Atlacomulco.

🇻🇪 Venezuela finally escaped years of hyperinflation at the start of 2022.

⭕️ In 2018, inflation reached 65,000%

📈 But while it cooled to its lowest level in a decade, consumer prices still rose more than 170% in the 12 months to June.
tmsnrt.rs/3cVFVdx

🪡 Retired schoolteacher Maria Teresa Clemente began taking up side jobs, like sewing, to pay the bills.

🚕 She says in Caracas, people are abandoning their cars because they cannot afford to run them.

🗣 "We pay for services, but they don't work. Power goes out often."

🇧🇷 In Brazil, consumer prices are up by 12% in a year.

☔️ Lower rainfall has also reduced crop yields and hydropower generation, raising costs even further.

📉 Meanwhile, average incomes nationwide have dropped 7.2% since 2021. tmsnrt.rs/3OP95be

💸 Small business owner and single mother Andreia Dias Alvares earns less than 1,000 reais ($185) per month.

⚠️ That's below the national minimum wage.

She said her only option was to cut back on household spending, which meant smaller meals for herself and her two teenagers.

📈 People around the world are seeing food and energy prices spike due to the Ukraine war and fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

⭕️ Here’s what the situation looks like in three European countries:
twitter.com/i/events/15515…

🚨 It’s not just those in Europe and the Americas struggling.

🌎 The bite of the crisis is being felt by families across the globe:

twitter.com/i/events/15489…

🗣 @TRF_Stories spoke to people living in 18 nations around the world in an attempt to gauge the human impact of the cost-of-living crisis.

Here’s what they had to say 👇

tmsnrt.rs/3J6wRyw