Caracas Chronicles

Confusion is rife over what exactly National Assembly Speaker Guaidó really said at today’s “Cabildo” assembly. No, he did not proclaim himself president. Yes, he said he’s ready to do so. Soon. And called for protests.

On the day of his “inauguration” the streets around the TSJ weren’t even half full. Caracas traffic didn’t collapse because of hundreds of buses, like we saw during chavismo’s golden years. Some people were honest about being there for the free food, others weren’t sure about questions of legitimacy.

The atmosphere was electric at a session that showed only Bolivia, Nicaragua and a dwindling band of Caribbean microstates remain on Maduro’s side.

Newsflash: The National Assembly was shut down. Years ago. It’s just that the government, in an inspired bit of next-generation authoritarianism, never told us.

Year after year the opposition stages symbolic fights that show it hasn’t really digested the reality of the National Assembly’s complete powerlessness.

Rhetoric aside, what has the Maduro Era done to Venezuelans’ livelihoods? A deep dive into the numbers behind a calamity.

As Nicolás approaches his self-proclamation, the international sphere and internal political actors make some pretty relevant moves,

The government’s spent years covering official data on Venezuela’s martyred economy. But there are alternatives out there. Here’s a guided tour.

January 10th creates a unique situation that calls for a political solution, not a Constitutional one. What is needed now is for the National Assembly, as a legitimate power, to step up.

On Thursday, Nicolás Maduro’s 2013-2019 term expires. By no stretch of the imagination will he be a lawful president after that date.

The shelter of the Middle of The World, in Ecuador hosts a Christmas dinner for Venezuelan walkers in need. We get a first-hand view, and a taste of its hallacas.

When a foreign journalist gets arrested and sent to Venezuela's notorious El Helicoide prison, it's big news. So why not more of a ruckus over Billy Six? Because when you're German, and far right, things get tricky.

Raw sewage, no supplies, no doctors: in conditions like these, a hospital is just a building. But people have no place else to go.

One study shows that elections often create short-term stability problems for dictatorial regimes, but those that ride out the electoral wave end up even more entrenched than before.

Chavismo may have destroyed the country, but it also controls the means of exiting it. Come along with one medical student on quest through Venezuela's dystopian passport bureaucracy.

2018 was the year when Venezuelan traditional migratory patterns were altered: It became the country of origin in the Americas with the highest numbers of displaced people. Check out the key milestones in what became the year of Venezuelan migration.

The fourth and final installment of our 2018 kaleidoscope is here. What did the last three months of the year leave us?

We continue our trip down article lane with the third quarter of 2018, which can be split in two periods: before and after Red Friday, a night that we won’t remember fondly.

We continue with the Caracas Chronicles’ best pieces from the second quarter of the year, with the May 20 presidential “election” as the main event, for better or worse.

2018 was quite a challenging year for Venezuela, but Caracas Chronicles was there to cover its different angles. Here’s some of the best writing from the first quarter of the year.

After 72 hours of cursing brittle banana leaves, contentious almond-roasting, YouTube scouting, Scannone-hating and pork lard handling, I made my first hallaca. It was gruelling. It was worth it.

In Venezuela, we don’t have A Christmas Carol, a It’s a Wonderful Life, we don’t even have a Home Alone. But we have Herrera Luque, and one of his tales hits a bit close to home this year...

Designer Manuel Lara has a special knack for looking at the ravishing Caracas all around us that we barely stop to notice.

Sick of the chaos in Venezuela, I ran off to Paris. And then protests seemed to follow me here. My PTSD’d self could barely handle it, at first. But then I saw the French have a whole different way to do street chaos... nothing at all like ours.