Caracas Chronicles

Maracaibo's main newspaper, Panorama, stopped publishing its printed edition. Even if it always had a complacent editorial line with past and present governments, it didn't survive the hegemony.

In Barquisimeto, one of the cities most affected by the collapse of the power network, demonstrations against the dictatorship are mercilessly punished. Now, those who fall in the hands of FAES or the National Guard can be jailed inside containers, with no fresh air or sunlight.

In a piece for The Globe and Mail, former Canadian Ambassador to Venezuela, Ben Rowswell asks the world to put Venezuelans trapped in a dangerous geopolitical board, over international interests.

With a combination of exceptional powers, harassment, jail, and exile, the Maduro government became a dictatorship by ignoring all its obligations to submit the Executive to the control of a Legislative controlled by the opposition since 2015. The Supreme Tribunal has been the main tool to void the legitimate National Assembly of people and functions.

Imagine you can’t graduate and continue with your life’s plans because your university or college has no power most of the time. You are attending only a few lessons under scorching heat. You can’t print a blueprint or run lab tests. That’s life in Maracaibo for university students.

He’s epileptic. He was doing nothing. And the police took him because people were protesting somewhere else in Puerto Ordaz. With this photo essay, we start a series of stories of human rights violations documented by La Vida de Nos, a wonderful Venezuelan project of storytelling focused on testimonials.

It was meant to be the largest rice-processing plant in the continent, providing jobs and infrastructure to Delta Amacuro, one of the least developed states in the country. But now it’s in ruins, it was never finished and later abandoned. A Reuters story unveils the real outcome of Chinese patronage: massive losses for a famished nation.

The new report by the CEPR, “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela” written by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot, is generating sympathy for the chavista cause in the liberal media at a critical moment, but it’s already being challenged by the heavyweights.

This new open letter to non-Venezuelans draws from the concept of cultural appropriation, to denounce the pattern by which the first-world left shuts down the voices of the human beings affected by the situation in Venezuela, weaponizing it for their own wars.

On May 8th, 1817, two legendary leaders of the Independence tried to restore the federal model of the first republican Constitution. But El Libertador used his might to let the project die: he didn’t want to share power.

One of the most spectacular aspects of the events of February 22nd and February 23rd was the widely broadcasted defection of Venezuelan soldiers into Colombia and Brazil. HRW’s Tamara Taraciuk talked to some of them in Cucuta: they are more than disappointed.

Discard political preconceptions. Ignore the ideological noise. Don’t rely on what you see. Here’s what you can do to figure out what happened on April 30th—and its effects—without going crazy.

Reporters targeted by security forces, radio station shutdowns, news channels taken off the air and blocking websites have become normal. Maduro's siege against the press is getting worse.

This Venezuelan island, known by many international travelers, struggles to preserve what’s left of its foregone prosperity. The Free Port model needs updating and its dependence on the mainland leaves its people vulnerable to the country’s collapse.

Six years after awarding Nicolás Maduro’s government for apparently reducing hunger in Venezuela, the UN agency for food security puts Venezuela in a list of countries in high-risk of facing a widespread food crisis.

An open, respectful letter to those people who decided it was right to occupy the Venezuelan embassy in Washington D.C. to avoid National Assembly-appointed representatives to work there, by one Venezuelan who’s sincerely making the effort of understanding your point of view.

After Cristal Palacios shared with us her concept of “peace privilege” to explain the inability to understand Venezuela from the comfort of development, Manuel Llorens takes the cue to propose another dimension of the phenomenon: everyone tends to reduce the contemplation of pain.

May 1st gave Caracas a crowded chavista march and a constellation of anti-regime protests severely repressed. Four young Venezuelans have been killed so far since Tuesday morning. The unrest, again, is nationwide and people look determined to resist.

While some may say that the U.S. has been vehemently supporting democracy and human rights in our country, Venezuelans believe those considerations can be extended to regularize the migrant population in the U.S.

In areas of Caracas such as Santa Mónica in the south east, and El Paraíso in the west, neighbors have organized to resist on the street since April 30th, following Juan Guaidó’s instructions. This is how they took the upheaval of recent hours.

It was the kind of incredible days we’re used to: at dawn, spectacular and hopeful news; at sunset, confusion and defeat. While night falls, Guaidó appears at the brink of jail and Maduro looks weaker and stronger at once. Let’s try to make sense of this, now.

Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela were supposed to form a big, powerful country. That was the original project of Miranda and Bolívar, but it never had real possibilities. On April 30th, 1826, the dream would be over.

Caretaker President Guaidó and his team are working hard for the march on May 1st, understanding it’ll be a crucial date. Three months ago, we felt we were going well, then we felt we were going OK but too slow… now, we just feel stuck.

The recent deportation of Swedish reporter Annika H. Rothstein brings attention to the legal status for foreign journalists who want to cover Venezuela. The regime has its excuses to stop foreign eyes to see what’s happening.

On Sunday, Spain will hold general elections to see if the socialists still have support to rule, but for the first time in years, the outcome of the chavista revolution is not a central issue in the debate between Spanish parties.

Truly understanding the nature of conflict is quite hard when looking from the distance. This is what happens with so many people in Europe or North America, when they fall into binary thinking and they explain to Venezuelans what is happening in their own country. Even in post-conflict societies like Northern Ireland.

While the world talks about progress, we look at the everyday reality of a malaria epidemic in Venezuela and how illegal mining and negligence made it the biggest public health emergency in the country.

A thorough report by a CNN team sheds light on the “cocaine superhighway” that connects Colombia, Venezuela, Central America and the United States, revealing details about Venezuelan high-ranking military officers’ deep involvement in drug trafficking.

On Easter, Venezuelan barrios and villages choose a prominent political figure, build a doll, and burn it to mark the end of the Holy Week. The press usually covers it because the custom registers who the population is blaming for its problems. This year, Guaidó had his baptism of fire, along with Maduro and Trump.

The young people at Venezuela’s second city have to work hard to carry on with their lives amid the chronic blackouts. This is how they manage to have some sort of night life or event to watch Game of Thrones.