The Ricochet Podcast - Annika Rothstein Alive from Caracas

Episode Date: February 26, 2019

Annika Rothstein, an independent journalist, has been reporting for some time on the miseries – and resilience – of the Venezuelan people. Last weekend she went to the Colombian border, where government forces had assembled to keep an aid convoy from entering the country. The story she got was one she was lucky to survive. We speak to her in relative safety, where she recounts the story of a very... Source

Welcome to a special edition of the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lilacs. If you were with us in the flagship podcast a few weeks ago, we spoke to Anika Rothstein, who was an independent journalist covering events in Venezuela. Last weekend, she went to the Colombian border where a humanitarian aid convoy was attempting to bring much-needed supplies to the Venezuelan people. And if you follow her account at Truth and Fiction on Twitter, you know that it was a harrowing day for Venezuelans and for Anika. Welcome. We're glad you're with us. Are you safe? Thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, I'm in Caracas, so I'm much safer than I was 24 hours ago and

definitely safer than I was 36 hours ago. So I'm counting my blessings. Indeed. Let's tell that story and set the scene. I remember waking up and you had posted a little video of yourself heading off in a bus to the border and you were in a good mood. Tell me who you were with, what the mood was and what they thought was going to happen. 22nd. And the plan was to go, like you said, to meet the convoy at the Colombian border. And I had initially planned to fly into Colombia, but since they started closing the borders on the 21st and 22nd, I realized that the only way forward was to fly into Caracas and then take a car the 12 to 14 hours to the Colombian border and travel through basically

Venezuelan no man's land in order to get there. So that was my, that was my first step. And, and I hired a driver and a security guy in order to do this. And, and we drove through the night. And of course that was, you know, that was harrowing in and of itself. That could be, you know, that could be a story in and of itself. That could be a story in and of itself had the other thing not happened. But we travel and we get to the state closest to the border called Tachira State. And the moment we get there, the mood is significantly different.

You can tell there's a large military and police presence. But not only that, there's also colectivos everywhere or paramilitary groups. And the military is closing down all the roads. As I get into Tatira, the military is closing down all the roads that lead to the border. And so we decide, the security guy and I, to take the back roads to the border. And let's say maybe that was maybe not the first mistake, but at least among them. We pay someone to guide us to the border, a guy on a motorcycle who lives in a nearby village. We pay him to guide us to the border.

And maybe five minutes into that journey, I see one colectivo. And seeing one colectivo is a scary thing because there's never just one colectivo. I know that from spending my last three weeks in Caracas, and I've met with them, and I've been stopped by them and had to deal with them in different capacities. So I know they travel in large groups groups and I only saw one at first and then I saw 10 and then I saw 15 and then they were everywhere. And they stopped our car and we had no choice, of course, but to get out of the car at this point. And when we get out of the car, they, well, they come for me immediately.

The moment I entered San Antonio de Tachira, which is the city or the town in which this happened, I took on, I put on a security vest, a bulletproof vest. So I'm wearing a vest. I'm also wearing my credentials from Iran because I spent some time reporting from Iran and I assumed that that would help me if I had to run it with the collectivas. I assumed that that would somehow keep me safe, but it did not. The man who seemed to be the leader of this group, he started yelling periodista, periodista, journalist, journalist, and pointing to me.

And at that point, 10 different collectivas were surrounding me and they were heavily, heavily armed. Much different than the ones I was used to. The ones I had seen before, you kind of get used to everything here. And the ones I was used to, they had, you know, handguns. So I expected handguns, but these were automatic and semi-automatic weapons. They looked more military and more guerrilla than they looked colectivo. It was a very, very, very different experience.

The first guy who was obviously intoxicated or high on something, my guess is cocaine, he wanted to rip the vest off of me. He wanted my vest because it's a good Kevlar vest. And because my shirt was sort of tucked into it, he couldn't get it off. He got angry and he slapped me across the face. And at this point, my driver and my security guy are being kicked in the stomach, in the neck, and in the face by the other co-privates. They're already on the ground, and after the guy finally gets my vest off,

he puts me on the stomach face down on the ground as well. And a few minutes later, we all have guns to the back of our heads. And they're yelling at me, and I try very hard not to speak English because I know that the more English I speak, the more in trouble I'm going to get. So I'm listening to them yelling at me, you're destroying this country, you're carrying contraband,

you're here to infiltrate Venezuela, things to that effect, while I have a very cold gun to the back of my head. While this is going on, I can see all of my things because I came straight from the airport, traveling to Tatra straight from the airport those 14 hours. So everything I own, basically, or not own, but everything I brought with me is in the car.

We had two cars, one that I was in and my security people, and then another car with fuel because you can't get fuel anywhere anymore. That has been impossible for the last few days with fuel and food and other things. And also my bags. So they're throwing everything I own, camera, computer, you know, everything from toothpaste and underwear to, you know, my valuables. They're throwing it on the ground and purposely destroying it, yelling contraband, contraband, and telling me that what I'm doing here is illegal. And they're yelling Maduro,

Maduro, Chavez, Chavez, while they're doing this. And this goes on for perhaps 20 minutes. And after 20 minutes, the guy lifts me up by my shirt and up to on my knees. And I'm assuming at this point, because things seem a little bit calmer, I'm assuming that we might be safe, that they're going to steal the stuff. They found $900 in cash in my bag that I carried in order to pay the security guys. They found that so that it was Christmas for them, you know, and I thought, okay, they're calm now. They'll be happy. And maybe they'll let us go because they don't want to kill a journalist. But then, you know, one of the guys is rummaging through one of the cars and I hear them yelling again and louder this time. And they're waving a piece of paper and apparently they found my

driver's gun license, but he's not carrying the gun that is attached to the license. And that's a problem. So they start yelling again, where's the gun, where's the gun, where's the gun. And of course there's no gun. So now it's different.

It's, I can tell even with my very limited Spanish, I can tell the mood is different. Now, um, immediately we're on the ground without the, how do I put it? See hat tricks of yelling about politics. Now I'm just on the ground and the gun is in the back of my head and I can hear them, them, the safety is now off. I can hear that click of the safety being

off the gun. And, uh, and yeah. And at that point I thought this is it you know this is it because they're not they're not really yelling anymore they seem ready and they seem to be out to kill and that

goes on for another few minutes while an argument suddenly breaks out between two of the colectivos that are crazier than the others and what seems to be, you know, El Jefe, the big boss. And I can tell that the boss doesn't think they should kill me. So he's trying to tell the others that they should not kill me. And I hear the word periodista, periodista, and I assume that they're having an argument about whether or not to keep me alive. But they seem to have decided to kill my driver because of the missing gun. And because I assume they want to make an example out of the situation and they already have us on the ground. The driver is pleading with them, saying, I already lost my mother. I

already lost my father. Uh, my sisters have nobody. Uh, I'm the only one in the family. Please save me. Please save me. And then, you know, maybe, you know, this has been going on for 30 minutes, something like that, 40 minutes. And then out of nowhere, they yell, you have five seconds and then you die. And I thought that meant that, okay, they're going to shoot us in five seconds, but the driver jumps to his feet and says, go, go, go. So apparently it meant, you know,

you have five seconds to get into the car, and they yell, uno, and we're running to the car, and dos, and they start firing into the air, and by tres, we're in the car and we're speeding off as they're shooting at the car and they start firing into into the air and by press we're we're in the car and we're we're speeding off as they're shooting at the car so so yeah that's the that's the short version of the first part at least charming lads about these collectivos i they're they're not sanctioned by the government they're volunteer, but you have to assume there's some sort of coordination somewhere with the state apparatus. They must get something out of it other than their filial devotion to Chavez and Maduro, right?

What is the relation? Well, I mean, it's a very clear relation now because in the past week, Maduro and the government have been releasing prisoners from the prisons, and especially in Tachira State. So the people that I ran into were newly released prisoners, and they're more guinea, and they get weapons, and they get carte blanche to, you know, commit crimes under the auspices of the government and the police and the apparatus of the state, and they get money. So it's a very clear-cut business operation between the colectivos and Maduro and the state. Right. You described the situation you were in and the place

that you were in. It seems odd that they would feel there'd be any repercussions to killing a journalist. What would happen? What kept them from doing the worst thing they could have possibly done? I'm assuming that there was someone, you know, with a plan. Someone had a plan or someone was wise enough to know that it would look bad to kill an international journalist. At this point, they've been deporting us and they've been jailing us and they've been manhandling us. But so far, we haven't been killed. And the Maduro government is still, you know, they're still on the line of saying that,

oh, it's the opposition is causing all this. The opposition is burning cars. The opposition is doing this and that. And perhaps, perhaps it was, you know, the one brain, you know, the one noble laureate in the leadership of this colectivo gang, or maybe, you know, I'm, I happen to be a woman of faith. Maybe, maybe it was the fact that I said the traveler's prayer before I set off from Caracas. You know, I don't know.

So of all the coked up bands of roving militias, you got the rational ones, and thank God. So after that, I imagine your heart is in your throat. You've got to get away. Then where do you go? What do you do after you've been given five seconds and you actually got away? What next? Well, I mean, what I realized is that, yeah, we sort of got away because we travel for five minutes, maybe not even five minutes. And then I really get to see the strength and the glory of the Venezuelan people because we're headed down a hill. And then suddenly a family comes out from a farm,

from a finca nearby, and they flag us down. You know, they're waving in the air, they're flagging us down. And we roll down the window and they say, colectivos, colectivos, and they point down the hill. And apparently there's another gang of colectivos down the window and they said, colectivos, colectivos, and they point down the hill. And apparently there's another gang of colectivos down the hill. So now we're surrounded by colectivos, you know, up the hill, down the hill. We're trapped. And we asked them, can we hide here? And they offer this family who I wish I knew the name of. I wish I could think

in some way because there's little doubt in my mind that they saved a lot of lives that day. They hide us inside of their farm. They allowed us to drive into their shed and hide there for two hours while there was a gunfight down the hill and a gunfight up the hill. And we were trying to stay out of sight for that time until my security guy says that we're sitting ducks. We actually need to move because the sun is going to set. And when the sun sets, there's no way out of this. So we debated. We're about six people in the shed who have hidden in there. We have two cars and two motorcycles, and we agreed to make a run for it. So the two motorcycles go ahead first down the hill, and then we go in a caravan because, you know, there's, I guess, some safety in numbers in some way. So we go down the hill where the colectivas were just shooting.

And, you know, 30 seconds from where we were, it was obviously a bloodbath. Later, I learned that 12 people were shot there. And as we're driving through, I see, you know, a woman in her 60s, 70s, maybe, shot through the cheek. She seemed to have been hit by a stray bullet. She's lying with her head out from a car with the open door. There are people bleeding in the street. It's mayhem. We pass through.

We can't stop, of course, because we need to get out of the village. We really need to get out of the village because they know that I'm a journalist. And they now have my phone and my computer, and it's a matter of time. If they're smart enough to open it or look at it in any way they'll soon find out that that i'm more of a target than they expected so um so we're making a run for it while these people are bleeding in the street basically and we drive in absolute silence for 30, 40 minutes until we get to a town called San Cristobal where we find the nearest hotel. And when we enter it, it's filled with people

who have been held by the colectivos and held at gunpoint or manhandled or roughed up by the colectivos. And among them, there are five or six members of the Assemblea Nacional, the National Assembly, who were held for four hours by the colectivos with guns to the back of their heads. So we have a bit of a reunion at that hotel that night. So this is the part that doesn't make it into most American stories about Venezuela.

Mostly we hear about, yeah, there's nothing in the supermarket, oil production is cratered, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But this element, the people of Venezuela are terrorized by their government, by scarcity, by deprivation. And now when you add the colectivos into this, though, people were thinking that maybe this would be the weekend that there would be some fractures in the military because everybody expects that that's the thing that has to crack for things to turn around. But even so, you have this unnumbered group of people who have no connection to law whatsoever. They're just simply criminals, and they have a vested interest in maintaining the state as it is. How big a stumbling block are the colectivos? Well, I mean, the system that they belong to, because they're not, you know, they don't exist in a vacuum. They are a huge stumbling block, because this was a show of strength for Maduro. I mean, because, you know, San Antonio was not the only place where this happened. And pair that with what is now a pretty hurt, an opposition that seems to be in shambles, to be honest.

Like, they had a rough couple of days. The colectivos, you know, they represent one fraction of this intersection of this society that no matter what happens, Maduro, no Maduro, or even a lot of the very, very poor barrios here in Venezuela. And they run the show now. And there is no monopoly on violence in this country. I mean, I've been detained once in Iran, and it's very different. I mean, it's scary in one way, but it's also very different because you know who you're speaking to and you know where the threat comes from. And you kind of know that they won't kill you. You know that you might disappear or you know that they're smart enough to make a conscious decision. But here, it's a very, very fractured society that is constantly simping with this low-key civil war. And so it's a threat, for sure. So you make it back to Caracas.

And pardon me for not pronouncing that like my NPR colleagues. Caracas! And I apologize for being super annoying and pronouncing it exactly like your NPR colleagues. No, you're there. I completely understand. I'm here in Minliap, please. Well, I didn't get back to...

So this is the issue which reveals another thing about the society. We all, of course, wanted to make the trip, even if it's 12, 14 hours, we all just wanted to get back. But there's no fuel. They stole our fuel. And because there's no, all the gas stations are now closed. So they cut off the water in you can pay someone who knows someone in the government and you buy gas on the black market, which was what we ended up doing at 6 a.m. the next morning. So they, my driver and my security guy got a ride to a town called Merida where they bought gas on the black market so that we could get back to Caracas. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to do that. So, yeah, this oil-rich state has no gas. So when you finally made it, it must have been a relief to get back to the place that itself was also fraught with danger. I mean, is there any place that feels safe? Well, it's become this very relative term, I guess.

It's safer, it's so much safer than touch. I mean, so much safer. But now you have a different thing because once you're on the radar of the Venezuelan Secret Service, then there's like a new level. You level up, you know, and there's a new level of threat. And the first thing that I did once I was able to borrow a phone was that I tweeted what had happened.

And that tweet was picked up and definitely here in Venezuela and alternative media, meaning, you know, WhatsApp groups and this kind of black market media that they have. And it went viral in Venezuela to the point where I'm now recognized in the streets in Caracas. You know, there's an upside to fame and there's a downside. Well, yeah, well, so, so the issue is that yes, it's much safer than, than Pacheco, but, but it's also, I, I, you know, I keep my head on a swivel now because, because it's, it's scary in a different way. And of course, like me, I'm now reporting, I'm still reporting on the colectivos. I'm still reporting from the poorer areas and Venezuela is still Venezuela. You know, there's still. There are still shootings every day. There are still threats from every corner of this society, from the very top to the very bottom, socially and economically.

But it still felt like a huge sigh of relief when we entered the city and I saw that sign. Last question for now, because we'll want to talk to you later down the road. According to a tweet that you put out today, a total stranger gave you a laptop, which is sounds like a wonderful gesture. And how do you not know that that thing is loaded with Chinese spyware at this very moment? Oh man, I don't. First of all, I don't, but, uh, but I will say this, the, the thing, the thing that strikes me most about Venezuela, it's going to sound super sappy, but I still want to believe that the colectivos don't represent Venezuela. And the people, you know, down the road who fly this down, they represent Venezuela. To me, at least.

And I put out, you know, a random question on Twitter because I don't have anything. You know, I don't have money. I don't have clothes. I don't have a laptop. And of course, as any journalist, the first thing on your mind is, when can I write this story? You know, while it's still fresh and while I'm still feeling it. So I put it on Twitter and I said, if anyone by any chance has a laptop that I could borrow. And within an hour, 156 people in Venezuela and in Venezuela, where if you have a laptop, it's not like one of many laptops, let's say like it's, it's a, it's a luxury, uh, a rare luxury they offered to, to give me their laptops. And I spoke to, let's say I just used certain channels to get to the person and

to verify that this person seemed okay and checked out. And we met at a secure location. He, you know, he dropped off the laptop. And I choose to believe in the kindness of strangers and that there are good things in this world and definitely in this country, because otherwise it would be much more difficult to keep it together. And what was the password for the laptop account? Venezuela Libre. We can only hope. And should it happen, you'll be there and we'll talk to you again.

Anika, thank you so much for talking to us today. And we'll speak again and stay safe. We're all watching your story and following you at Truth and Fiction on Twitter, where the Venezuelan story as told by Anika unfolds. Thanks again. Thank you so much.