On the afternoon of Sunday March 10th, on Day 4 of the nationwide blackout, looting started in Venezuela’s second city. More than 500 businesses were looted. But the Maduro-loyal governor, a kind of Rodrigo Duterte, seems to be OK with that.
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.
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.
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.
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