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Venezue­lans are fa­mil­iar with hard­ship — they have lived un­der a com­plex so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal cri­sis for more than a decade. Now, across the South Amer­i­can coun­try, they are find­ing them­selves hun­gry and un­able to buy food.

The As­so­ci­at­ed Press over the sum­mer set out to un­der­stand how Venezue­lans feed — or strug­gle to feed — them­selves and their fam­i­lies. It found that the lat­est un­rav­el­ling of Venezuela’s econ­o­my, changes to for­eign aid, sanc­tions from the Unit­ed States, and cuts to state sub­si­dies and pro­grams have made many ne­ces­si­ties sim­ply un­af­ford­able to the 80% of res­i­dents es­ti­mat­ed to live in pover­ty.

In the west­ern state of Fal­con, where state-owned oil re­finer­ies of­fered plen­ty of well-pay­ing jobs be­fore the coun­try came un­done in 2013, more than two dozen res­i­dents shared with AP how their woes cen­tre on food and how they dwell on the is­sue — how to buy it, how much and where — every day.