Expatriates in U.S. ship food and other aid home
LOS ANGELES - While video chatting with relatives in Venezuela, Tere Caicedo watched as they opened a package she had sent them stuffed with clothes, shoes and a large bag of oatmeal.
The bag had ripped during transport, spilling oatmeal all over. Caicedo, a Santa Ana resident who cleans houses for a living, told her relatives not to worry. She would send more.
But her uncle carefully picked out the package's contents, flipped the box over and dumped the oatmeal into a bowl.
"No," he told her. "This is food. We can't just throw it away."
That moment in January brought home to Caicedo, the only member of her immediate family in the U.S., the pressing needs of a country spiraling out of control amid skyrocketing food costs, political chaos and shortages of nearly everything.
Caicedo is one of a growing number of Venezuelans in
