Tom Phillips - 'A slow-motion catastrophe': on the road in Venezuela, 20 years after Chávez's rise
... a humanitarian crisis
unprecedented in modern Latin American history... The United Nations estimates 3
million have fled the
country since 2015 to escape chronic food and medicine shortages,
crumbling healthcare and transport systems and an economy in freefall.
The latrines at Simón
Bolívar international airport in Caracas overflow with urine; the taps are bone
dry. In the departures hall, weeping passengers prepare for exile, unsure when
they will return. At customs, a sticker
on one x-ray machine warns: “Here you don’t speak badly about Chávez!” But even before
stepping outside the terminal it is obvious his Bolivarian revolution, like the
airport’s immobile escalators, has ground to a halt.
On 6 December
1998, Hugo Chávez proclaimed
a new dawn of social justice and people power. “Venezuela’s resurrection is
under way and nothing and nobody can stop it,” the leftwing populist told a
sea of euphoric supporters after his
landslide election victory. Two decades on, those
dreams are in tatters. The comandante is dead and
his revolution in intensive care as economic, political and social chaos engulf
what was once one of Latin America’s most prosperous societies.
Almost 10% of
Venezuela’s 31 million-strong population have fled overseas; of those who
remain, nearly
90% live
in poverty. To understand
Venezuela’s collapse, the Guardian travelled hundreds of miles across the
nation Chávez dreamed of transforming, from the spot in downtown Caracas where
he gave his first speech as president-elect to his birthplace in the country’s
sun-scorched southwestern plains. On the way, we
encountered lingering affection for a charismatic populist still celebrated as
a champion of the poor, and a determination among Venezuelans from all walks of
life to somehow weather the economic cyclone ravaging their country.
read more:..
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/06/on-the-road-venezuela-20-years-after-hugo-chavez-rise
