IT’S still possible to buy a gleaming Ford truck in Venezuela, rent a chic apartment in Caracas, and snag an American Airlines flight to Miami. Just not in the country’s official currency.

    As the South American nation spirals into economic chaos, an increasing number of products are not only figuratively out of the reach of average consumers, but literally cannot be purchased in Venezuelan bolivars, which fell into a tailspin on the black market last week.

    Businesses and individuals are turning to U.S. dollars even as the anti-American rhetoric of the administration grows more strident. It’s a shift that’s allowing parts of the economy to limp along despite a cash crunch and the world’s highest inflation. But it could put some goods further out of reach of the working class, whose well-being has been the focal point of the country’s 16-year-old revolution.

    The latest sign of an emerging dual-currency system came earlier this month when Ford Motor Co. union officials said the company had reached a deal with officials to sell trucks and sports utility vehicles in dollars only.

    A few weeks earlier, American Airlines announced that it had stopped accepting bolivars for any of its 19 weekly flights out of Venezuela. Customers must now use a foreign credit card to buy the tickets online.

    Driving the shift is the crumbling value of the bolivar, which has lost more than half its value this year, plunging to 400 per U.S. dollar on the free market as Venezuelans scramble to convert their savings into a more stable currency. Desperate, people are selling bolivars for a rate 60 times weaker than the strongest of country’s three official exchange rates.

    It’s not just businesses chasing greenbacks. Real estate contracts are still drafted in bolivars to satisfy a requirement imposed by late President Hugo Chavez, but in upscale neighborhoods most owners operate outside the law and sell and rent in dollars only. (SD-Agencies)