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It’s time to say something about Venezuela’s famous black market.

I earlier wrote about what others had told me to pack for my move to Venezuela, given the country’s chronic shortages. Here’s my duffel bag unpacked of its conditioner, toilet paper, detergent and, of course, deodorant.

But what happens when the Old Spice runs out?

A lot of the goods you can’t find in a store are being sold on the street — for quite a markup.

Part of the reason soap is so scarce in Venezuela is because years of economic turmoil have left the country unable to produce some of the basics. But another reason has to do with subsidies and price controls.

The government was trying to help. During the presidency of Hugo Chávez, the government lowered the price of groceries and other goods to make them more affordable to poor people.

But hard times in Caracas have forced some residents to be crafty. They have realized there is a business in buying goods cheaply at the supermarket, and then reselling them at marked-up prices on the street.

Think of it like ticket scalping. But instead of concert tickets, it’s your eggs and milk.

“Those are bachaqueros,” said a new friend here, referring to the food scalpers by their local name. We were watching a line form in front of a grocery store. It’s a common sight in Caracas to see hundreds of people — both resellers and residents — waiting for hours outside a shop to get something basic, like a bag of coffee.

A bachaco is a little red ant that cuts and carries away leaves. Venezuelans turned the word into the name of a reseller, and then flipped it into its own verb, bachaquear.

Yo bachequeo, tú bachaqueas; I resell, you resell.

It has become a valuable service for middle- and upper-class Venezuelans who don’t want to take time off work to spend half a day in line to get groceries.

A couple of weeks after I arrived in Caracas, I decided it was time to meet some bachaqueros in their natural habitat.

I hopped onto the back of a motorcycle taxi, along with Meridith Kohut and Miguel Gutiérrez, two photographers on assignment for The Times, and we headed to the black market in one of Caracas’s biggest barrios, a neighborhood called Petare.

What does the black market look like? If you were expecting elephant tusks and deals in shady alleys, you would be disappointed. It looks like any informal market you’d see in Mexico City, Beirut or Harlem. There are a dozen tiny stands under an awning, each selling five or six products like toilet paper and shampoo.

But the prices! On the day we visited, the subsidized government price for a bag of black beans was 50 bolívars, about 6 cents. At the stands here, it was 700 bolívars, almost a dollar.

Neither price would be high in the United States, but it’s a different matter here. Teachers and government workers, for example, earn a minimum wage of just under 10,000 bolívars a month. It’s unlikely these black market beans will be on their menu anytime soon.

I started chatting with the bachaquera selling the black beans, a woman in her 40s who didn’t quite like the idea of being questioned about her business and had no desire to pose for a photo for Times readers. If the police come, the resellers must hide since what they are doing is illegal.

Why such a big markup? I asked her. She said that goes to the people who wait in line to buy the beans. She takes a cut too, of course. All told, it’s another way of making a living in a country where jobs are hard to come by.

That said, a Venezuelan can make bank as a bachaquero. Those we talked to said their profits were in the range of 200,000 bolívars a month, 20 times the minimum wage.

Still, their offerings were pretty slim. They sell only what they can find available in the shops. Eggs (500 bolívars), coffee (1,000), birth control pills (700), powdered milk (600) and a few other goods, all at big markups from the government prices.

The black beans woman was also selling what are the only two brands of shampoo available in this country, Pantene and Head & Shoulders.

And Old Spice? Nope. Not available. And I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath.