LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Hyperinflation is affecting how Venezuelans have sex. “One of the drivers for extreme inflation is soaring demand – in Venezuela there are far more people trying to buy goods from shops than there are goods out on the shelves.”

That’s shrinking supply, not soaring demand. But never mind that for the moment:

“In Venezuela, some people are using old-fashioned ways to avoid getting pregnant and when I said old-fashioned ways, it’s like the withdrawal method or the rhythm method, which is tracking your menstrual history to predict when you’ll ovulate.”

With this has come a rise in unplanned pregnancies, STDs and HIV, she adds.

Because contraceptive pills have become so expensive, there has been a spike in the number of women taking more permanent measures to ensure they don’t have any more children.

Zuniga spoke to a clinic in Caracas which sterilised 400 women in 2017: it reached that number by May this year. On so-called ‘sterilisation days’ run by local health programmes, the appointments for 40 free sterilisations per day have been snapped up, with waiting lists of up to 500 women.

“Before, the women that were sterilised in Venezuela were more than 30 [years old] and with more than three children,” Zuniga says. “Now you can find women [aged] around 19, 20, 24 that are looking to be sterilised because they can’t afford to have another [child], because they can’t find pills on the market anymore and it’s just desperation, they are desperate.”

I had been assured by the highest authority that socialist sex was the best sex.