The Daily - When the Lights Went Out in Venezuela

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

Economic collapse, crumbling infrastructure, a contested presidential election result — Venezuela was already in crisis. Then the power went out. Guest: Nicholas Casey, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times, who recently returned from Venezuela. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. An economic collapse. A crumbling infrastructure. A contested presidential election. Venezuela was already in crisis. Then, the power went out.

It's Wednesday, April 10th. Nick, tell me the story that you were told about what happened in Venezuela last month. So it was a Thursday last month in Maracaibo, and David Ardila, who's a publicist there, was sitting at his desk when the lights went out. Nick Casey covers Latin America for The Times. This wasn't anything that surprised him because the lights were always going out in the city. This is a place on the edge of the electric grid in Venezuela,

so it was not unusual for the lights to go out for a number of hours. There were rolling blackouts there. Usually by 4 p.m., the lights are back on. But then he got a call from his wife who said there was not just a power outage in Maracaibo, but all over Venezuela. This was something that wasn't usual. This was something no one had really seen or remembered before. We're talking about a country of 30 million people,

and almost no one has electricity. So the power is out across Venezuela. Across the entire country. And that means things get very ugly very fast. What had happened to trigger this blackout? According to the Electricians' Union, it was a brush fire that took place over some cables that were feeding the country. But you have to ask yourself, if one fire is able to turn off all the power to a country, there must be a bigger problem. Right. And the problem is that Venezuela is in the middle of an economic collapse. That means that key infrastructure in the country isn't getting built,

and what's there isn't getting repaired. On top of this, there's massive political unrest. Juan Guaido, the country's self-proclaimed leader, is calling for his supporters to take to the streets again to step up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro and demand new elections. Maduro has also called on his supporters to rally today. The power struggle between Guaido and Maduro has brought the country to a standstill. And that as a huge electricity... There are still two men who say that they're the president of Venezuela and Guaido actually has the support of America and 50 other countries as well.

This is extremely unresolved. Donald Trump is saying that Maduro needs to step down and let Guaido be the president. So in this moment when the power goes out to 30 million Venezuelans, it's not entirely clear who runs the country or who will be solving the blackout. Not at all.

And it's becoming clear to everybody that Maduro can't do even the most basic thing that a government should be doing, which is keeping the lights on. So these two events aren't directly connected to each other, but you suddenly see that one is starting to feed off of the other, which is this discontent that brought Guaido to the forefront in Venezuelan politics, is now being doubled by the fact that Maduro can't provide electricity. It's underscoring this question which everybody has asked in Venezuela, which is, if you can't provide power, are you actually providing a state? So I decided to go to Maracaibo, which is Venezuela's second largest city.

It's also at the end of the electric grid. So we knew that this was going to be a place where there was going to be problems, and the problems were going to be very big. So you can hear the sound of the generator here, which is out of a small truck. And there's basically a line of phones where everybody has plugged in. You have to remember that Maracaibo sits on the Caribbean coast. It's a really hot, sweltering city. The old joke in Maracaibo was that it's the coldest city in Venezuela

because everybody has air conditioning. But now there was no air conditioning. And after a few days, things started to come apart. because everybody has air conditioning. But now there was no air conditioning. And after a few days, things started to come apart. People were running out of food. And it started with the looting. There were big crowds of more than a thousand people that suddenly gathered looking for food. And these crowds first went to the grocery stores.

They sacked almost every single supermarket that was in Maracaibo. But then they kept going. They started taking anything that was available. People were suddenly taking furniture. They were taking washers and dryers. They were taking all of these appliances and anything that they could. After this massive economic crisis, you can suddenly imagine if you could get your hands on something that was of value and worth a lot, you would go for it. You would take it.

Especially if there's no state, there's no one patrolling. There's no one patrolling? No one. I talked to many store owners who said that they were waiting for the police to come and the police didn't come. Part of the reason for that is because the police themselves, their paychecks are worthless. People aren't showing up to the jobs. Things are just coming apart this way.

I talked to one woman who was selling vegetables out in front of one of the places that got completely torn apart. People were setting fire to the stores. And asked her why they were setting fire. And she said, it wasn't actually out of spite. It was because it was dark and they couldn't see inside the store. Burn the store in order to see what you are stealing. Burn the store, take as much as you can,

and leave it to be burned to the ground. And that's what we saw by the time we were there. A lot of these places were just in embers at that point. There were so few places that were remaining, so few pharmacies that were even remaining. Yes, I ran into one man who had tongue cancer. He was a professor. And at that point, you could see his face was completely bulging in tumors

that were taking over the sides of his chin, below his jaw, affecting how he could speak. He hadn't been treated for weeks, and he told me that he didn't think he had any hope of being able to find medication at that point, because there's nowhere that was going to be able to sell it to him. There was so much looting that seemed to be taking place simultaneously across Baracaibo, and then there were firefights that were breaking out between the looters and the owners as people were trying to break into stores. Firefights and then there's gunfire.

Gunfire. This was just a total anarchy in parts of Maracaibo. Now these people started to end up in hospitals. They're going to hospitals at that point that didn't have any electricity. So how are you going to take care of people with gunshot wounds when there's no electricity? I needed to see what was going on. But you can't get into hospitals in Venezuela if you're a journalist. Many of them are militarized. People have been arrested for going into these hospitals. They don't want you to see. This is really at the core of what Maduro can't do in this country. This is very sensitive to the government. They can't treat people. So this has even put the

hospital staff and the doctors under threat. They're afraid to speak. But I was able to find a couple of doctors who were able to talk to me behind closed doors in another facility. And here we're actually going to change the voices of these doctors so that their identities are protected and they don't get in trouble for talking to you. Right. And these doctors were telling me when I met them that this had been a place where it was already almost impossible to treat patients. There was very little water. They were having to wash their hands using bottled water. They were running out of soap.

They didn't have medicines that they needed. And then suddenly they didn't have any electricity. One of the doctors I talked to said, the first thing that hit you was the smell. There is a stench that is horrific there. And as the people were coming in with injuries from these lootings that were taking place, gunshot wounds, glass wounds, because they had broken down one of the windows, doctors didn't know how to treat them initially.

They were trying to treat them. And in some cases, according to one of the medical. Doctors didn't know how to treat them initially. They were trying to treat them. And in some cases, according to one of the medical officials I talked to, people were getting amputations that they didn't necessarily need because this was the only way that they were going to save this person was doing an amputation,

when ordinarily, if you had had everything that you needed, you would have been able to do something else for this person besides take off their arm or their leg. This blackout is literally costing people their limbs. Yes. And on top of that, even in the morgue, there's no power.

So the bodies are starting to rot there. That's during the day. But then the night starts to hit, and you have to continue doing work as people are coming in to try to get treated. People were pulling out their cell phones to use the light by their cell phones to try to treat people at that point. This doctor told me that you could hear people screaming. But you couldn't tell where the screams were necessarily coming from because the whole place was dark. At a certain point, a couple of days into this,

there was a robbery when an armed group came in and went to the third floor of one of the hospitals and started to steal from the patients who were there. Taking advantage of the fact that you give me your camera, etc. Taking advantage of the fact that you couldn't see anyone in there. So one thing that the doctor said was most difficult about this was there was no information on what was going on or when this was going to be over. Finally, the government did come out and say it was an act of sabotage that caused this. Blaming the U.S. and the opposition for what had happened.

But this wasn't something the doctors believed themselves. This was the equivalent of having no information at all still. And how, in the government's telling, is the U.S. somehow responsible? They said that it was a cybernetic, electromagnetic attack that had been launched from the U.S., likely in Houston and Chicago, and that this was an effort by Donald Trump for regime change. Shut down the electricity and you can help the opposition by making Maduro look like he can't run the country. And how would that even work? There is such technology out there,

but he didn't provide any evidence, any pictures, anything showing that that's what had happened. And there are satellite photos showing that there was a brush fire that day. And are people buying this story that the U.S. is behind the blackout? Whether you buy it says a lot about how you feel about Maduro. If you follow Maduro, you've probably followed him into a lot of other explanations as well, which largely is based on the idea that the economic crisis of Venezuela has to do with the U.S. and its imperial desires to bring Venezuela down. So of course you see this blackout as

probably being their sabotage. But if you're tired of Maduro, if you've been suffering this economic collapse and you think he's the cause for it, then you're not going to believe him for a second. You're going to see this as one more very strong piece of evidence as to why he needs to go because he can't keep the power out. And I guess it's kind of telling that a blackout would be drawn into this political standoff between these two,

Guaido and Maduro. Everything now is being used as political ammunition. And when you have something that affects 30 million people at the same time, of course that's going to be the center of the political debate. Why aren't these lights on now? What ended up happening to the power while you were there? Did it ever come back on? There was one neighborhood that we were at

that had been without power for eight days at that point. And we got there, people were sitting on their lawns in the middle of the dark, drinking coffee. And just when we were about to leave, suddenly all the lights came back on. about to leave, suddenly all the lights came back on. And it was just this really magical moment. They were really happy.

But when you think about it, if these are the moments of hope that people are having, that the lights are going to come back on, that means it's a long way that Venezuela has to go to actually have real moments of hope. And how long did the lights stay on? Not too long. We were there and the lights were still on in that neighborhood, but since then they've been going on and off throughout Maracaibo. And they just don't know when they're going to have power and when they're not. And I think it left not just me, but almost any Venezuelan terrified about what might be coming next.

You just saw a level of violence and disregard for society, which I don't think Venezuelans had seen on that scale in most of their lifetimes. What's the next thing that's going to disappear that you couldn't imagine disappearing? And then what's going to happen when that's going to disappear that you couldn't imagine disappearing and then what's going to happen when that's gone. Nick, thank you very much. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Thank you. On Wednesday morning, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was poised to win a fourth consecutive term, edging out his biggest rival, Benny Gantz, a former military chief, in a closely watched election. Thank you very much. From now on... Despite his apparent lead,

the election represented a humbling political test for Netanyahu, a conservative figure whose decade-long record of economic progress and diplomatic victory was overshadowed by high-profile indictments over his alleged abuse of power. Shalom. The final results may not be known for dates until the ballots of soldiers, prisoners and hospital patients are counted. This process is going along very well. And my original timetable of being able to release this by mid-April stands. In testimony before the House of Representatives on Tuesday,

Attorney General William Barr said he would deliver the special counsel's report to Congress within the next week. I identified four areas that I feel should be redacted, and I think most people would agree. The first is grand jury information, 6E material. The second is information that the intelligence community believes would reveal intelligence sources and methods. The third are information in the report that could interfere with ongoing prosecutions. Barr said he would redact passages, but said he would identify the reason for each redaction,

an assurance that prompted skepticism from Democratic leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer. Do you trust Barr? Do you trust that these redactions are going to be done in compliance with the law? Look, I'll wait till I see it, but thus far I don't think Barr has conducted himself in a manner that earns people's trust. Color me dubious that he's going to be fair unless he proves otherwise. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.