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.

But above all, there was deprivation, hunger, profound apprehension and seething anger – even among proud chavistas – at a government now incapable of fulfilling its citizens’ most basic needs, and in denial over a humanitarian crisis unprecedented in modern Latin American history..
read more:.. 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/06/on-the-road-venezuela-20-years-after-hugo-chavez-rise

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

Three Versions of Judas: Jorge Luis Borges

Goodbye Sadiq al-Azm, lone Syrian Marxist against the Assad regime