President Nicolas Maduro has accused Portugal of being behind a pork shortage that left thousands of Venezuela's poor without their traditional Christmas dinner and sparked a fresh round of angry street protests.

On Wednesday Maduro announced he had been unable to distribute thousands of pork hind legs to the poorest neighborhoods in the country -- as he had promised earlier in the month. And he put the blame squarely on Portugal.

"What happened to the pork?" Maduro asked during a Wednesday televised address. "They sabotaged us. I can name a country: Portugal."