Caracas Chronicles

Among many pressures from all sides involved and even violence to try to hide the truth, the technical mission sent by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights offered a non-flattering declaration about the current situation of Venezuelans under Maduro.

During six days of blackout, Merida, the most important city of the Venezuelan Andes, braced for the end of the world. Ordinary citizens geared up to defend streets and stores from looters, while the state disappeared. What can we do to survive if this happens again?

In Barquisimeto, the four envoyées sent by UN Human Rights High Commissioner were only taken to places the regime can control, while patients, doctors and journalists were harassed to stop them from telling the truth to the visitors.

One month later, the failed attempt to bring humanitarian aid into the country continues to get coverage in international media.

With a new system through the patria.org.ve website, the dictatorship is creating a way of getting income even from the money sent from abroad in cryptocurrencies. I tried it and it works, sort of.

The three refineries and 5,500 retail stations that Venezuela owns in U.S. soil are one of the most important battlefields in the struggle of replacing the Maduro regime and funding our reconstruction. Here’s what has happened so far and what the interim government’s options are.

As electricity comes back to most of Caracas, new testimonies emerge about what happened in a country ravaged by all kinds of problems when the power went out. This terrifying log shows the darker side of the disaster: the unraveling of the social fabric.

Dorothy Kronich suggests in The New York Times that in order to avoid a famine here, American companies should be allowed to buy Venezuelan oil, as long as the revenues are exclusively used for buying food and medicines. But that would be ignoring chavismo’s very nature.

One of the side effects of the nationwide power outage of the last few days is the confirmation that Venezuelans are getting less reliable information about what’s going on.

Army soldiers who want to help and think people have the right to be angry. Truman Capote’s masterpiece. A sky exposing its wonders in the absence of urban lights. Some strange and unforgettable things happen in this Merida tale of the nationwide blackout.

Millions of Venezuelans abroad experienced complete disconnection from their elders, friends and even children during the nationwide blackout. As people in the country tried to overcome the hardships of the crisis, the diaspora had to find new ways to help, and fast.

The blackout turned off the last cells operating at Venalum and Alcasa, and with them, an entire aluminium factory. The sad new chapter on the rise and fall of an industry that gave Venezuela valuable non-oil exports tells a cautionary tale: if you build an entire cluster on electric power, don’t let that resource disappear.

The damage from the huge blackout that just attacked Venezuelans is such, that even now, a week later, we can’t quite grasp it in full. This is what we do know: it’s a lot, and we’re falling short.

These are the stories of the people hit hardest by looting in Venezuela’s second city: small business owners who have no chance of surviving an event like that, helpless against the anarchy unleashed in Zulia due to the national blackout.

After more than 80 hours without power, groups of people at the normally dangerous Venezuelan capital city began to protest and some incidents of looting took place. Security forces managed to avoid the violence from spiraling, and just then the power came back.

Nearly 30 hours after his enforced disappearance, journalist and human rights activist Luis Carlos Díaz was released from SEBIN headquarters in El Helicoide with precautionary measures. A safety net of people was all that stood between him and a prison cell.

At Caracas hospitals, every one of the innumerable problems is getting worse, while colectivos and security forces threaten everyone who is trying to help or even get some answers about the extent of the crisis.

Six days after the beginning of the largest blackout ever experienced in Venezuela, it’s time to take a look at the health disaster unfolding in front of us, because the Maduro regime won’t do it.

Although he didn’t prepare for this exactly, he knew something could come up that would require him to hole up and resist. Our own Victor Drax is a prepper and this is how he faced the massive blackout that attacked Venezuelans.

Venezuela’s second city spent the first 50 hours of blackout trying to survive under the intense heat. But once food and water began to run out, the looting started. All kinds of businesses are being destroyed by a mob made of desperate people and common thugs.

After the humanitarian aid debacle at the border on February 23rd, and amid the ongoing national blackout, pressure has been building on caretaker President Juan Guaidó to come up with a definitive solution to the crisis in the form of military intervention, undermining critical unity.

Once a pleasant, clear-water creek, in our times the Guaire is no more than Caracas’ open air sewer. Amid power cuts that took down the water pumping stations that feed Caracas, the people from the slums of San Agustin had to climb down to its embankment to collect water of unknown origin and very dubious safety.

As Nicolás Maduro forced all TV and radio stations to broadcast his accusation that the U.S. caused the collapse of Venezuela’s power grid, the secret police was arresting Luis Carlos Diaz, the journalist and occasional Caracas Chronicles contributor, that state media is framing for “sabotage”.

While caretaker President Juan Guaidó decrees the emergency and installs a situational room, the Maduro regime stays silent about the precise diagnose and forecast of the crisis, besides the propaganda trope of sabotage. This is what we can assess on the fifth day of the nationwide blackout.