Venezuela was about to collapse and a blackout triggered anarchy

Gustavo Ocando collaborated on this report from Maracaibo.

The city was about to collapse well before the light went out. Then came the blackout and anarchy.

For days and nights, crowds of people have looted 523 stores Maracaibo while the inhabitants guarded their entrances with weapons in hand to protect themselves from looters. Dozens of people died in hospitals. There were corpses in decomposition at the morgue. And the few foods that remained in the refrigerators rotted while hunger raged in the country.

I went to Maracaibo with Meridith Kohut, a photographer from The New York Times, to witness the chaos that caused a devastating power outage, probably the longest in a country already deeply affected by the economic crisis and the lack of food, medicines and water. Along the way, smoke rose as business owners burned garbage left behind by looters. At night, only the headlights of the cars were pbading through the dark, revealing the silhouette of the pedestrians.

The entire country was plunged into darkness for six consecutive days. However, here in Maracaibo, a warm coastal town, the nightmare lasted more than a week: desperate people searched for food in looted or closed shops and formed long queues in the shops. some bakeries who had the courage to stay open. Many companies have been reduced to stacks of broken glbad and stacks of burned objects.

Everto León, 58, was sitting on a totally dark road because the electric shutdown continued, shortly thereafter, in the car, where the worst part of the looting had taken place. His figure, barely visible at night, showed jaw tumors caused by the cancer that killed him.

"I do not have the medications I need, and now the probability of getting them is zero," said Leon, adding that the looters had emptied all nearby pharmacies.

The power outage has become the most recent battleground in a country where two men claim to be presidents.

Juan Guaidó, the leader of the opposition recognized by more than 50 countries as the legitimate leader of Venezuela, offered this event as evidence of the failure of the state. President Nicolás Maduro accused the United States of having collaborated with the opposition to sabotage the electricity grid. He therefore ordered the opening of an investigation on Guaidó and sent a commission of intelligence agents to arrest a journalist alleged participation in the power outage.

Trade union leaders said the most likely scenario was that the power outage was the result of a simple brush fire that was destabilizing the country's electricity grid. This event highlights the lack of maintenance of key infrastructure and years of mismanagement of the country's economy, which have become the hallmark of the country's economic collapse. In addition, he revealed the devastating reality of Venezuela: when there is no electricity, there is no rule of law.

"You can listen to the hospital doctors screaming about the patients in the dark:" Wait! "" Resist a little more! "But that removes nothing, said a doctor from a public hospital in Maracaibo, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the government." Six days without electricity in the 21st century, how is this possible? "

At first, it was so much like the rest of the power cuts that occur frequently in Venezuela that few were surprised. Maracaibo is located in the most populous state of Venezuela and was the first to receive energy there are several generations. However, it is currently at the west end of the power grid and is a torrid Caribbean city whose high energy consumption has caused a power outage and a steady restoration over the past three years. years.

When the light went off, towards a Thursday afternoon, publicist David Ardila tried to keep working. We thought it was a normal rationing of electricity, he said. Constant power outages usually ended before dark, as Ardila knew well. But then his wife called him. This was not a normal power outage. He was not limited to his neighborhood, he told him.

The whole country – with its 30 million inhabitants – was without electricity. "There was no TV, no radio, no wifi, there was nothing there," Iveth Figueroa said. "We were totally in secret."

However, it seemed like a failure that would soon be controlled. When cell batteries began to run out on Friday, a neighbor turned on a generator and allowed other residents to charge their devices.

But food, whose supply is still scarce in Venezuela, was becoming a concern in the neighborhood. On Saturday, many began to realize that their meat in the coolers would soon begin to rot. With the help of cooks still connected to the gas service, some residents cooked the meat, while others tried to salt it and dehydrate it.

As the day went on, people began to visit the few gas stations that remained open as rows of hundreds of cars circled several corners of the sun. An opposition demonstration was violently repressed by the police. Maduro, who did not say anything until the weekend, appeared on television but said little about government plans to tackle the problem.

"They did not give us any information," said Figueroa, who feared that popular resentment would soon explode. "It was like one of those catastrophic movies that they used to film, like Silky green o Underground world. We should design our own ways to survive. "

The first shots were heard Monday outside the neighborhood of Omar Chavez.

Chavez had just come back for medicine for his daughter and rack up dollars when he heard the start of a riot. He went to a safe place and was put on alert.

"We were able to see with the help of binoculars that they were looting everything," Chávez said. "The owners tried to defend their premises by shooting, not to kill, even though I think there were a lot of deaths, no one was controlling people."

A group of more than a thousand people went to La Curva, a shopping district in Maracaibo, to smash shop windows and steal merchandise, according to the merchants. The National Guard of Venezuela, plagued by months of desertions, has not appeared anywhere.

"In the midst of the power outage, there was no authority," said Miguel Sierra, who was selling laundry detergent when the looters arrived.

At dusk, the crowd began to burn the stores.

"I think the fires started because there was no light, there was no other way to see what they could take," said Marbella Jimenez, who has an informal sales booth.

As the riots continued, hospitals were preparing to receive the wounded, who soon arrived with gunshot wounds or wounds caused by shards of glbad. But hospitals, which had barely access to soap because of the shortage, no longer had access to electricity.

A senior medical officer, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said that 47 people died in the main medical center of Maracaibo.

"At least half can be attributed to the crisis," said the official who cited patients who died from heart failure or diabetes-related complications.

Medical officials also said that many young people arriving with gunshot wounds should be amputated instead of receiving less harsh treatment that could be complicated if the power outage continued.

"It was like entering the den of a lion, it was a dark cave," said the doctor about the hospital. He refused to reveal his name for fear of the government. "The worst was the smell: it was a foul and bloody aroma, and the heat made the atmosphere dense and horrible."

In a hospital that only had electricity from a generator to keep the emergency room on duty, an armed group entered without being seen and badaulted patients who were on two floors , according to the doctors. In another medical center, the maternity wing had no window and pregnant women were to be transferred to an outdoor place, doctors said.

This week, Maduro said his government has determined the cause of the blackout: an "electromagnetic cyber attack", organized by the US government in Houston and Chicago.

The explanation did not convince Figueroa nor many others during the eighth day without electricity in his neighborhood. But then a miracle caught his attention: the electricity finally came back.

A shout of enthusiasm was heard when lampposts lit up the faces of neighbors sitting in a dark garden. But no one knew how long the electricity would last or when it would go again.

"It's something new, the big problem we all suffer equally," Figueroa said.

Copyright: New York Times 2019 Press Office