LA PAZ, Bolivia — Juan de Dios Castillo, covered in flour and sweat, pulled a crisp roll from the cooling rack and weighed it on an old metal scale: 2 ounces.

That’s barely half what it would have been two years ago. Unlike American or European shoppers scrutinizing suspiciously capacious chip bags, Bolivians have no doubt that they’re paying the same government-fixed price for a much smaller, lower-quality loaf.

For years, you could walk into a government-subsidized bakery like Castillo’s anywhere in Bolivia and get a 3.5 ounce roll for 50 centavos (7 U.S. cents), but as a cash crunch cripples flour imports and inflation squeezes budgets, bakers have almost halved the size of their staple bread. Early last year, rolls shrank to 80 grams, then 70, now 60.

“It’s like eating a bit of

See Full Page