People Can Wait for Hours—Or All Day—And Still Go Home with Nothing

A food line: People can wait for hours—or all day—and still go home with nothing. The economy is in ruins. Full-scale food riots

48 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 LETTER FROM VENEZUELA A FAILING STATE

Food shortages in a land of plenty.

BY WILLIAM FINNEGAN

sometimes break out. “Rice, pasta, sugar, cooking oil, bread, coffee. We produce these things. Or used to. Now they all require lines.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY OSCAR B. CASTILLO he medical student told me Three weeks earlier, he had been am- bullet out if we can. But, either way, to use his name. He said he bushed on his motorbike and shot three the wounds need to be drained.” T didn’t care. “Maduro is a don- times, in the chest and the left arm. Were the police investigating the key,” he said. “An asshole.” He meant “They were going to shoot me again, robbery? Nicolás Maduro, the President of Ven- but one of the malandros”—bad guys— Nestor looked down. The naïveté ezuela. We were passing through the “said I was already dead. They took of the question left it beneath reply. wards of a large public hospital in Va- my motorbike.” Nestor spoke slowly, Venezuela has, by various measures, the lencia, a city of roughly a million peo- his voice uninflected. His skin was world’s highest violent-crime rate. Less ple, a hundred miles west of Caracas. waxy. The wounds to his arm and chest than two per cent of reported crimes The hallways were dim and stifling, were uncovered, half healed, dark with are prosecuted. thick with a frightening stench. Some dried blood. There was a saline drip We had to go, the medical student were full of patients waiting silently in in his right arm and, at the foot of his said. Grace and Nestor thanked us, long lines outside exam rooms. Oth- bed, an improvised contraption, made though we had done nothing for them. ers were dark and deserted, with the from twine and an old one-litre plas- The medical student was worried about overhead lighting ripped out. The med- tic bottle, whose purpose I couldn’t what he called “spies.” He had smug- ical student, lithe and light-haired, kept figure out. gled me into the hospital through a us moving, peering through swinging Did the hospital provide the saline? broken back door. The regular entrances doors, conferring with colleagues in No. Grace brought it. She also to the hospital were all manned by uni- blue scrubs. brought food, water, and, when she formed personnel with rifles—National We ducked into a room stuffed with could find them, bandages, pain med- Guard, mostly, but also police, both rusted bed frames and dirty plastic bar- ication, antibiotics. These things were local and national, and other, less iden- rels, where in a corner a thin young available only on the black market, at tifiable militia. Hospitals in Caracas man was propped on a bed without high prices, and Grace’s job, in a ware- were even more tightly secured. Why sheets. He watched us weakly. A young house, paid less than a dollar a day. were hospitals so heavily guarded? No- woman in a pink T-shirt stood beside “The hospital doesn’t even give body threatened to invade them. The him, rigid with surprise. The medical water,” the medical student said. He guards had orders, it was said, to keep student gently asked if they would an- was watching the hallway. He studied out journalists. Exposés had embar- swer my questions. The young man Nestor briefly. “The lungs fill with liq- rassed the government. nodded. His name was Nestor. He was uid after someone is shot in the tho- Most of the elevators were out of twenty-one. This was his wife, Grace. rax,” he told me. “We usually take the order, so we took the stairs. At night, the medical student said, these stair- wells were dangerous—unlit and prowled by muggers. But how could muggers get past the guards? “They work together,” he said. “They share.” He took me down a grimy corridor to a heavy door, which he cracked open. Beyond it, I could see a gleam- ing, brightly lit hallway with freshly painted light-blue walls and a pol- ished white tile floor. “This is the area they show visitors,” he whispered. He peered at me to make sure I understood. Got it: Potemkin General. We hurried away. I was introduced to a surgeon, who took me outside to speak. We stood under a tin roof, near piles of garbage and a deserted loading dock. The surgeon was bearded, heavyset, nervous. He looked exhausted. He did not want me to know his name, let alone use it. “We have no basic trauma tools,” he said. “Sutures, gloves, pins, plates.” He ran down a list of unavailable medications, including ciprofloxacin, an all-purpose antibiotic, and clindamy- cin, a cheap antibiotic. The doctors lost surgical patients because they had no adrenaline. They could still do some survive.” He asked the man, whose she was out here. She was looking types of blood tests, but they could no name was José, about blood tests. after her mother, who was in the hos- longer test for hepatitis or H.I.V./AIDS. José said that he had raised the forty pital. The young woman taught pri- The electricity supply was a problem. dollars for the tests, partly by beg- mary school, and her students came At one stage, the operating room had ging on buses, after losing his job. to school hungry, and she had some been closed for a week. The waiting list Now he needed money for medicines, choice things to say about President for surgery was now three months. In none of which the pharmacies had in Maduro. Use my name, she said. She Maracaibo, a major city farther west, stock. “We must buy from the mafia,” wasn’t afraid. But I didn’t want to surgeons had been reduced to operat- he said. He meant the black market, put more than her first name in my ing by cell-phone flashlight. but not just the ubiquitous notes. If guards or the col- The surgeon headed back inside. profiteers known as bacha- ectivos saw my notebooks, Doctors had been fired, I knew, for queros. The medical stu- they might be seized. talking to reporters, even for simply dent understood. Some of filing complaints about hospital con- the security forces that he revolution being ditions. The government did not want were deployed, or self- T defended is usually to know. There were private clinics to deployed, to the hospital known, in Venezuela, as which high officials and Venezuelans were in the medical-supply Chavismo, for its chief pro- with dollars took themselves and business. tagonist, Hugo Chávez, their families. Those who could went The overstaffed en- who was the country’s Pres- abroad. trances—all the military ident from 1999 until his “I’ve seen public hospitals in Chile and police uniforms and firepower— death, in 2013. For decades, the coun- and Argentina,” the medical student began to make more sense. Cops and try had been ruled by two centrist par- said. “They’re clean, fine, efficient, like soldiers, militares, were notoriously ties that took turns winning elections they used to be here. We’re going back- underpaid. There was money to be but were increasingly out of touch with ward. All because of this government!” made here. We talked to other fami- voters. A move to impose fiscal auster- Public health in Venezuela is, in fact, lies camped on the walkway, and on ity was rejected, in 1989, with a mass getting rapidly worse. In 1961, Vene- concrete benches under an awning revolt and countrywide looting—a par- zuela was the first country declared free closer to the hospital buildings. Some oxysm known as the Caracazo—which of malaria. Now its robust malaria- people were surprisingly outspoken. was put down by the Army at a cost of prevention program has collapsed, and They denounced the prices charged hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives. there are more than a hundred thou- for examinations (in a system of sup- Chávez was an Army lieutenant colo- sand cases of malaria yearly. Other dis- posedly free health care), the corrup- nel, from a humble background—his eases and ailments long vanquished tion, the intimidation, the outrageous parents were village schoolteachers. He have also returned—malnutrition, diph- prices for sterile gauze, saline, food crashed the national stage in 1992, by theria, plague. The government releases (when there was food), and medica- leading a military-coup attempt. The few statistics, but it is estimated that tions. Some militares had the nerve to coup failed, and Chávez went to jail, one out of every three patients admit- accuse the families of profiteering, and but his televised declarations of noble ted to a public hospital today dies there. to seize their hard-won supplies when intent caught the imaginations of many State mental hospitals, lacking both they tried to enter the hospital. These Venezuelans. He offered a charismatic food and medications, have been re- were items that, often, they had bought alternative to the corrupt, sclerotic sta- duced to putting emaciated, untreated from other militares, who had looted tus quo. After his release, he headed a patients out on the streets. them from pharmacies, or from ship- small leftist party and easily won the We circled the hospital grounds, fol- ments meant for hospitals. The worst Presidency. lowing a tin-roofed walkway. It was a actors were the colectivos, gangs of bar- He soon rewrote the constitution, dim, greasy day, raining lightly. We rio toughs armed by the government concentrating power in the executive. came upon a long, narrow encamp- and deputized as “defenders of the Like his hero, Simón Bolívar, the Ven- ment: families who had strung ham- revolution.” Their main activity, as ezuelan leader who drove the Spanish mocks between the posts of the walk- runaway inflation and food rationing out of South America, he had regional way or laid mattresses on the concrete, gripped the country, was shaking down ambitions. He used Venezuela’s oil out of the rain. There were bags, bas- and monitoring their neighborhoods, wealth, which is vast, to help cement kets, baby strollers. People seemed to but they found opportunities around a close alliance with Cuba and then be camped long term. hospitals and seemingly answered to with a number of other neighbors in A dark-skinned man in a hammock no one. (Some colectivos could trace South America, Central America, and said that he had been there for three their descent to urban guerrillas from the Caribbean, creating a strategic and months. His four-year-old son was in the sixties who had never disarmed.) economic bloc to counter the traditional the hospital with a low blood-platelet A young woman in a wheelchair hegemony of the United States. count. “Viral infection,” the medical had been shot in the leg in a robbery, Chávez was a telegenic populist with student told me. “Maybe Zika, or den- and was unable to get the pain re- a gift for electioneering. He mesmer- gue. If he gets the right meds, he’ll liever she needed. But that wasn’t why ized the country with his Sunday TV

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 51 show, “Hello, President!,” on which he constituencies went into overdrive. Caracazo. “We first heard of Chávez railed for hours on end against his op- Chávez won nearly every important in 1992, when he attempted the coup,” ponents, particularly the country’s tra- election held over fifteen years, includ- she said. “My husband and I started ditional business élites and imperialist ing the recall effort. studying his words. From jail, he was Washington, told jokes and stories, Nicolás Maduro, a onetime bus sending out strategic lines, about Ven- sang, extolled the achievements of his driver and Chávez’s Vice-President, ezuela’s whole situation—historical, Bolivarian Revolution, and issued de- lacks the magic voter touch. He economic, national, international. It crees, some of them consequential— squeaked into office in a special elec- was a complete analysis, from 1811, more the expropriation of a factory, the con- tion held in April, 2013, six weeks than twenty constitutions. He was very signment of ten military battalions to after Chávez died. Maduro has a mys- wise. And we were convinced: This is the Colombian border. He even took tical streak, and has told the nation the man. He was a campesino, very to TV to order the jailing of a judge that a little bird speaks to him, bring- simple. Everybody would be equal. We who had released a hated enemy. (In ing news of Chávez from the after- started working for his release.” the case of the judge, the enemy was a life. He calls himself “the son of For the poor, everything got better banker who had been in jail awaiting Chávez,” and he and his government under the revolution, Ruiz said. Health trial for three years, which was longer justify, at least to their fellow-chavistas , care, education, housing, transporta- than the law allowed, and the judge much of what they do by insisting tion: “Many shacks in El Calvario got herself then spent three and a half years that it represents the will of the late new roofs. My mother, who always had in jail—where her lawyer says she was leader. In parliamentary elections in the intelligence, finally learned to read, raped—and under house arrest. Al- December, 2015, antichavista parties in her seventies.” In 2005, Ruiz became though she has never been tried, she won two-thirds of the seats in the Na- a member of the communal assem- is still forbidden to speak to the press tional Assembly. From that base, an bly—a neighborhood council meant to or leave Venezuela.) opposition alliance has been demand- counter the power of mayors. She de- Chávez propped up the Cuban ing a referendum to recall Maduro, scribed herself, smiling shyly, as “a sol- economy with cheap oil, and in return whose poll numbers have dropped dier of the revolution.” She went to the Cubans sent thousands of doctors, steadily. The Maduro government is work for the ministry of culture and to help start a network of health clin- stalling, throwing up procedural road- began to study, among other things, ics. After Chávez barely survived a blocks through institutions it still con- local history. She was carrying two bags 2002 coup attempt, the Cubans also trols, notably the Supreme Court and filled with books and papers, and told sent teams of military and intelligence the National Election Commission. me that she was writing a history of advisers who taught their Venezuelan If a vote is held, Maduro will very El Hatillo. Her family had lived here counterparts how to surveil and dis- likely lose. for eight generations, “and I really want rupt the political opposition Cu- to document the history of the place. ban-style, with close monitoring, ha- he eyes of Chávez are everywhere. I don’t want it to be lost.” rassment, and strategic arrests. T It’s a stylized graphic, just a few Her ancestors, who were black and The Bolivarian Revolution is not heavy black lines, depicting eyes and indigenous, were cafeteros—small coffee the Cuban Revolution. The “twenty- brows, and you see it on billboards, farmers—in the neighboring country- first-century socialism” that Chavismo T-shirts, flags, and the left sleeve of side. “But my great-grandfather had a seeks to build has relied on electoral a polo shirt on a man sitting across big hacienda, and eighteen children, democracy; opinion polling and elec- the airplane aisle. The eyes are the with the women who worked for him. tions qualify as national obsessions. first thing I see each morning when I My grandpa inherited one-eighteenth Chávez ruled in permanent campaign open the curtains in my Caracas hotel of the hacienda, and he lived well as a mode—there was always a referen- room—they’re painted huge, on the cafetero. Then modernity came. The dum, a parliamentary election, a Pres- building opposite. Evidently, many peo- family who had the first radio used to idential contest looming. These cam- ple find them inspiring, or comforting: put it on the corner for everybody to paigns, lively and technically “free and El Comandante continues to watch hear news and music. The government fair,” were not without risk for partic- over us. built roads to Caracas, and rich peo- ipants. In 2003, when three million True believers still abound. I sat with ple built big houses here. The cafeteros voters signed a petition calling for a Carmen Ruiz, a trim grandmother with dwindled away. But the militares who Presidential recall—using a mecha- merry eyes, in a breezy passage between governed us were always trying to ad- nism included in the 1999 constitu- shops in a small town near Caracas vance their own interests. They didn’t tion—their names and national- called El Hatillo. “My life has im- care about anyone else.” identity numbers were recorded and proved,” she said. Ruiz grew up in pov- I asked about the current food used to create a blacklist. Those who erty, in a hillside barrio called El Cal- shortages and failing hospitals. “It is had signed were fired from govern- vario, just above the old town of El an economic war totally orchestrated ment jobs, denied loans and contracts, Hatillo. She worked as a seamstress by fascistic factions on the right,” Ruiz and otherwise penalized. During an and a cook, and learned accounting, explained. “In every country, you have oil-price boom that began in 2004, while raising four kids. The living wasn’t an oligarchy, a bourgeoisie, working to the distribution of state largesse to key easy. She mentioned the terror of the prevent other groups from gaining

52 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 power. Our economic situation is im- posed by outside powers, by transna- tional companies like Polar.” The government constantly cites this “economic war,” secretly directed from Washington, to explain the gut- ted economy. Polar is Empresas Polar, Venezuela’s leading manufacturer of food and beer. Polar has been threatened with expropriation, and is ha- rassed and viliﬁed by the government as a treacherous bastion of capital, but it has become indispensable to feed- ing the country. Ruiz explained that Polar is responsible for shortages because it has reduced production. Po- lar’s management contends that it can- not import essential ingredients, because the government, which controls all foreign exchange, declines to provide the dollars necessary. These claims are false, according to Ruiz. “They have enough.”

had an unsettling experience in I El Hatillo. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and the old plaza, which is “Dear Diary: So I texted Julie and I told her that just because I’m planted with venerable shade trees and hanging out with Linda a lot it doesn’t mean I’m not her friend surrounded by small, brightly painted, anymore and she said she knows that but she just feels weird because tile-roofed houses and a pink and white she thinks that Linda doesn’t like her and because she thinks Linda colonial-era church, was packed with and I have more in common, so I told her to stop worrying about what families. I had just found a seat on a bench when a gunfight broke out, pop Linda thinks and she said fine but I could tell she was upset so I talked pop pop. People started running, to Linda about it and she said she does like Julie and was trying really screaming, snatching up kids. I ran hard to be nice to her and when I told Julie what Linda had said she with them, away from the gunfire. said she felt bad because she had been saying a lot of mean things about There were ten, fifteen shots. I ended Linda. Anyway, I had a day off so I decided to go to the aquarium…” up dodging into a pizzeria on a side street just before the owner slammed the door shut. People were shouting, •• whimpering, praying. “This never happens here,” a pizze- in mouth. Then the cops rushed a black fine. It was an unusual, almost corny ria worker told me. I must have looked man standing next to me who was tak- vignette: bad guys pick the wrong dude skeptical. “Secuestro, sí,” he said. Kid- ing a photograph with his phone. They to mug, get blown away. napping, yes. “That’s what happens in bundled him into a van. Did they think But that wasn’t right. As I learned El Hatillo.” he was press? A mafia staff photogra- afterward, in a café overlooking the crime The shoot-out had taken place across pher? As I pieced the story together, scene, the muggers knew that their tar- the plaza, near the entrance to a mod- their jumpiness became more under- get was a cop. They often attacked po- ern shopping mall. By the time I got standable. The gunfire had started when lice officers, hoping to steal their weap- there, the municipal police had control two malandros on a motorbike had tried ons. Robbing, disarming, even killing a of the scene. The casualties were one to rob an off-duty policeman. The cop—these were highly regarded feats killed, one wounded, according to a by- officer turned out to have a pistol in in criminal circles. It was one of the stander. There were cars parked at odd the waistband of his jeans. After a strug- many reasons that being a cop sucked. angles with bullet holes through the gle, he had shot both assailants. Now A hipster bartender, tattooed and po- windshields. The dead and the injured the officer was sitting on the sidewalk, nytailed, said that the café’s patrons had had been removed. But the police his back against a wall, his girlfriend hit the floor when the gunfire erupted. seemed jumpy. When I got too close, beside him, their shopping bags lined Once it stopped, though, people were a young officer in a black vest and a up on the curb. He had a scraped elbow, enraged. They wanted to go into the green shirt lifted a shotgun, pointing and he quietly vomited in the gutter street and lynch the malandros. the barrel at my chest. I retreated, heart once or twice. Otherwise, they seemed Looking around the café, I found

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 53 that scenario impossible to picture. Chávez worshipped at the feet of Fidel, day. It’s now late afternoon. She is still People had returned to their meals, who would not tolerate one-tenth of several hundred yards from the super- their WhatsApp chats, their conver- the disorder, street crime, and gun vi- market’s door. sations. I had read about an epidemic olence that plague Venezuela. To be You’re allowed to queue up for of lynchings in Venezuela, seen the fair, crime was already rampant when price-controlled items only on certain gory images of crowds beating accused Chávez came to power, and people days of the week, and those days are thieves and rapists, even burning sus- hoped that, as a military man, he would determined by the last digit on your pects alive. But surely those things hap- be able to rein in the malandros. But cédula—your national-identity card. pened only in desperate shantytowns, Chávez showed little interest in law Several people show me their cédulas. not in leafy, funky, elegant El Hatillo. enforcement. He even objected to the They all have numbers that end in 3— But I later looked online and found idea of a professional police force. That that’s today. A woman with a parasol images of men stripped, beaten, and would be a “police of the bourgeois says that last week she waited from left for dead in broad daylight by mobs state.” Crime was a result of poverty, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. and went home with in Chacao, the upscale Caracas area inequality, and capitalism. Today, re- nothing. Today, she’s hoping for flour where my hotel was. searchers estimate that the annual num- and toothpaste. A television repairman The mayor of El Hatillo, David ber of homicides is as high as ninety says that he arrived at 3 A.M. but de- Smolansky, said that violent crime— per hundred thousand people. The cided that it was too dangerous at that what everyone in Venezuela calls la in- government says it is only fifty-eight hour and left. “The National Guard seguridad—is deliberate policy. “It’s per hundred thousand. Whatever. In usually arrives around five-thirty, and part of the plan,” he said. “This anar- 1984, the number was between eight security improves after that. The store chy.” We were talking in the confer- and ten. opens at seven or seven-thirty.” There ence room of a small clinic, because it are often robberies in food lines— wasn’t safe, that day, for the Mayor to vanza, avanza.” Forward, for- “They’ll even take your glasses,” the be in his office. The government was “A ward. An old woman picks up TV repairman says—and, of course, jailing opposition leaders in advance her plastic chair. Another woman, fights. Full-scale food riots break out of a planned protest march, and Smo- Maribel Guzmán, hoists her bags. sometimes. Many supermarkets have lansky had calculated, probably rightly, Everybody shuffles a few yards. They’re been sacked. The National Guard can that he might be next. He is a hulk- waiting on a food line for a super- itself be dangerous, though not in this ing thirty-one-year-old, with a full beard market in the La Trinidad neighbor- neighborhood. and watchful eyes. Impunity, he said, hood of Caracas. The supermarket is Venders sell orangeade, single cig- made it difficult to fight crime even not in sight. It’s around the corner, up arettes, and cheap Popsicles to the peo- on the local level. In the first seven a hill, around another corner, on a ple on line. A sallow bank clerk waits months of the year, he said, his mu- different street. Guzmán is from Mona- with his dreadlocked sixteen-year-old nicipal police had arrested a hundred gas, in eastern Venezuela. “I came to son. I ask him about his work. “Com- and eleven suspects. Eighty-eight of Caracas to find food,” she says. She puter security,” he says. His wife is a them had been released without charges is forty-one. She left her family in hairdresser, now working out of their by corrupt judges. “The government Monagas and found a job here, in the apartment. She has started asking her knows it’s probably going to need those clients to pay her with food. This is gangs to maintain power.” He had fired their youngest child. The older ones dozens of cops for corruption and mis- are still at home, too. Young people behavior. A house robbery had been can’t afford rent. I ask why. The clerk caught on video surveillance. They studies me. He seems immensely tired were able to positively identify six rob- and sad. “Inflation,” he says. “Lack of bers. All six were cops, and not one of production. The government needs to them was in jail today. invest. The factories in this area all Smolansky was at least proud to closed. Chávez closed them in 2000.” say that kidnapping was down. Of Other people join in: “Rice, pasta, course, he admitted, he was talking capital, as a housekeeper. She has an sugar, cooking oil, bread, coffee. We only about reported kidnappings. Most agreement with her employer—she produce these things. Or we used to. were never reported; it was safer to try works an extra half day each week in Now they all require lines.” Polar is to settle them privately, with a nego- exchange for the day she needs to mentioned. Without Polar, there would tiated ransom. La inseguridad, he said stand in la cola to buy food. Her fam- be no arepas—corn cakes, the Vene- gloomily, “puts everybody in their ily back home depends on her: “Last zuelan national dish. houses by 6 or 7 P.M. Just like the dic- Wednesday, I got only toilet paper, tator wants.” and I thought, Oh, my God, what am resident Maduro, in his ram- It’s understandable that angry Ven- I going to send home? They need P bling, belligerent speeches on radio ezuelans talk about “the dictatorship.” food.” Today, she’s hoping for two ki- and TV, frequently accuses Polar’s Their rights are under siege. But real lograms of flour and two hundred owner, Lorenzo Mendoza, of waging dictatorships impose order. Hugo grams of butter. She’s been in line all economic war on Venezuela and on his

54 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 mayonnaise, and detergent. Yet it op- erates in an atmosphere of continual THE BRIDE TREE LIVES THREE TIMES uncertainty, its planners and logistics mavens never sure what roadblock or In willing textures where the wood rat lives subterfuge the government will toss the drought lets trees die twice. up next. Realism & magic steady one another I stopped in at Polar headquarters, & the hurt in your heart in Caracas. The press officer seemed from the human fact happy to show me around, although circles the edge of the park. The bride he insisted that I not quote employees. tree blooms late this year, its nature The government jumped on every stray stored at the edge of day— comment from Polar. Suffice it, then, to say that people seemed thrilled to some like to avoid the word “nature” be working there, and beleaguered by but what to put in its place official obstructionism and shortages, for ants & thoughts & parking meters, and determined to fight institutional stars & skin & granite, quarks, decapitation. Every single delivery of the world above & below … goods required a permit. Last year, When you are confused about poetry inspection teams descended on Polar & misunderstand its brown math, facilities around the country thirteen the sessile branches & a seal of awe hundred times. They disrupted work, and often carried off both files and per- attach the tree to the dark. sonnel. Managers and workers were ar- Someday, you’ll need less evidence; rested, accused of hoarding or price the missing won’t cease to exist. gouging or, in many cases, of offenses For now, you stop to eat the free fruit yet to be determined. Amid red tape, only you knew would appear harassment, shortages of nearly every- & for that you have your human hands, thing, and the chronic lack of hard cur- infinite nature, a single rency, few plants were operating at full body standing on this earth— capacity. Some were idle. I visited a Polar brewery in San Joa- —Brenda Hillman quín, west of Caracas. It was an enormous place, built in the seventies. Its eighteen towering yellow silos, topped government by deliberately creating estimates his net worth to be $1.5 bil- by a neon sign with the company’s shortages. He has called Mendoza a lion. He rarely gives interviews, or polar-bear logo, were visible from thief, a coward, a hypocrite, a traitor, a speaks publicly, but when he does de- miles away. SEBIN, the national intel- bandit, an oligarch, and a long-haired fend himself or his company he can be ligence service, had staged a raid in devil. He seems particularly offended trenchant. After Maduro accused Polar July and arrested the manager. The by Mendoza’s hair style—how it falls of failing to produce enough corn flour, factory was producing at only sixty per to one side, just so. But the real source Mendoza publicly offered to lease from cent of capacity. Still, when I saw the of Maduro’s obsession, according to a the government some of the corn-flour giant silver fermentation chambers, former Presidential aide, is his belief, plants it had seized from other com- different vats for different malts and expressed often in private meetings, panies. Polar could produce far more Pilsners, immaculate labs, conveyor that Mendoza wants his job. than the state did, he said. Nobody belts, forklifts, and trucks loaded with Mendoza denies having political seemed to doubt that assertion. “He’s product, that seemed like a huge ambitions. And Polar, which was so logical,” an admirer told me. “That’s amount. It was a glimpse of an alter- founded by his grandfather, as a beer what bothers the chavistas the most.” native Venezuela. company, in 1941, actually stands out Maduro did not acknowledge the corn- From the factory, one could see the among big Venezuelan enterprises for flour offer. hulking, rusting slabs of an unfinished its record of careful abstention from Polar employs about thirty thou- high-speed railway. It was part of a politics. But having survived seventeen sand workers (it is the country’s larg- mega-project that predated Chávez, a years of Chavismo—and innumerable est private employer) and is responsi- rail network intended to knit together threats of expropriation, as the govern- ble for more than three per cent of Venezuela’s ports, cities, and indus- ment seized more than a thousand fac- Venezuela’s non-oil gross domestic trial centers. Only a few miles had tories and farms—is itself a potent po- product. Besides corn flour and the been completed. This section, meant litical statement. Mendoza, who is country’s top-selling beer, Polar pro- to connect a distant inland town to a fifty-one, studied engineering at Ford- duces pasta, rice, tuna fish, wine, ice port in the north, had been abandoned ham and management at M.I.T. Forbes cream, yogurt, margarine, ketchup, five years earlier. Some of the migrant

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 55 reserves. Oil accounts for ninety-six per cent of the country’s export earn- ings. When the oil price plunged two years ago, it sparked the present economic disaster. But the price has since rebounded, and oil now trades in a middling range, and the Venezuelan economy continues to crater. The government’s foreign reserves are around a third of what they were in 2009, which forces difficult choices. Will the lim- ited dollars go to pay the government’s creditors or to feed schoolchildren? Venezuela’s largest creditor is China, which takes most of its payments in oil. The government has managed to stave off default so far, at the expense of its citizens. In the late nineteen-seventies, Ven- ezuela was the richest country per cap- ita in South America. The Concorde “The school wants all the mothers who come to pick was flying weekly from Paris to Cara- up in tights and crazy boots to dress better.” cas. But the “resource curse” that afflicts many mineral-rich, particularly oil- rich, nations—reducing incentives to •• develop other industries, exacerbating inequality as élites hog oil rents and construction workers left unemployed, shrank by nearly six per cent last year, fail to build a strong individual-income- I was told, had stayed in the area and and is expected to shrink by between tax base—began to hit Venezuela hard formed a gang known as the Aragua eight and ten per cent this year. Price in the eighties and nineties. The eco- Train—Aragua was the next state controls on staple goods, meant to nomic collapse, that is, had started long east—which preyed on local residents, keep those goods affordable and con- before Chávez came to power—in- businesses, and travellers on the na- strain inflation, have instead helped deed, the country’s growing despera- tional highway. The gang is part of a cause critical shortages. Currency con- tion led to the embrace of Chávez. Oil criminal network that’s headquartered trols—established by Chávez in 2003, had been nationalized in 1976, and dis- in a federal prison at Tocorón, just in an effort to stop capital flight—fix placed foreign owners had been com- across a lake from the Polar factory. the exchange rate of the bolivar, which pensated. Crony capitalism, irrespon- Tocorón is famous for many things. is accepted nowhere outside Venezu- sible policies, and long-term looting Ransoms for the return of kidnapping ela, and create a roaring black market of the country’s wealth were gather- victims or stolen vehicles can report- for dollars. A dollar is worth about ing steam. edly be paid in cash at the prison’s front sixteen hundred bolivares at the mo- Chávez promised to stop the loot- gates. The crime bosses in Tocorón ment. The official exchange rate for ing, and he did eventually direct a much have built a disco thought to be the importing essential goods is ten. Be- higher percentage of oil rents to hous- best in Venezuela. They live in de- tween those two figures, the space for ing, education, and health care for the tached houses on the grounds beside financial mischief is effectively im- poor. He cut the poverty rate, which manicured playing fields. They’ve even measurable. The government just keeps was spiking before he took office, nearly built a swimming pool. I didn’t believe printing money, with no relationship in half. Like many of his predecessors, the swimming-pool story until I to production, helping to fuel ruinous Chávez understood the need for re- checked it out on Google Earth. inflation. It has been reported that ducing the country’s dependence on high-denomination bills will be issued oil, and yet the opposite occurred. He enezuela has, by some measures, in December, but for now the largest deepened the state’s control of the oil V the world’s worst-performing Venezuelan note is still a hundred bo- industry and seized private businesses, economy. It suffers from the world’s livares. That’s six cents. To pay cash for factories, and large commercial farms. highest inflation rate—nearly a hun- a night in a hotel requires a suitcase The new management of these enter- dred and eighty per cent last year, with stuffed with bills. prises was rarely able to keep them projections for this year as high as The standard explanation for this alive. Overgrown fields, shuttered fac- seven hundred per cent, according to fiasco turns on the price of oil. The tories, empty warehouses, and aban- the International Monetary Fund. truth is more discouraging. Venezuela doned infrastructure projects litter the Meanwhile, the economy as a whole sits on the world’s largest proven oil landscape today. Non-oil exports fell

56 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 steadily as the productive economy wherever their passports will take them. nine hundred and fifty. In the past, a hollowed out. In Caracas, “For Sale” signs (“Se family of five would come in and buy In 2008, when the global financial Vende”) on houses and shops are com- five golfeados. Now, if I have golfeados, crisis battered the oil price, Venezuela mon. But the signs often lack basic a family of five will come in and buy got a foretaste of the current crisis. The contact information. That’s because, I one and divide it into five parts.” Army was put in charge of food dis- was told, it’s dangerous to advertise Romera’s mother was doddering tribution. Soldiers are not trained to your phone number. Criminals, know- around the shop. She was quite old, understand the global supply chain. ing that you own property, may call and had a timid, worried smile. Supermarkets emptied, people went with extortion demands and kidnap- “Here’s how things have changed,” hungry, and food ended up on the black ping threats. Better to let potential buy- Romera said. “When I got married, my market. Later, a hundred thousand tons ers ask around the neighborhood, where husband and I both worked and we of food was found rotting in ware- their faces can be seen. waited eight years to have kids. By then, houses at the ports. Today, there is a we had a house and a car. We sent our brigadier general in charge of cooking sther Romera, who is fifty-three children to private schools, to univer- oil; another is assigned to laundry soap, E and was born in Caracas, had some sity. Now my daughter, who is twenty- body soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and distant roots in Spain, so that was where six, can’t buy a car or afford an apart- deodorant. she and her family would go. Romera ment.” The three of them were leav- Over the years, senior officers dis- owned a sweetshop in El Hatillo, known ing for Spain in November. covered that import-export was a lu- for its golfeados—sticky buns with cin- I nodded toward her mother. Romera crative field. Chávez and his military namon and cane sugar. The first time shook her head, very slowly. They would had a warm relationship with the main I stopped there, she apologized. There not be taking her. guerrilla army in neighboring Colom- was no flour, therefore no golfeados. The bia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces bachaquero wanted eighty dollars for a omorrow morning, Romera said, of Colombia (FARC), which was in- bag of flour, and she couldn’t afford T she and her neighbors would be volved in narco-trafficking. Venezuela that. She had other sources, though. out on the Santa Fe autopista, march- had long been a main transshipment Maybe Saturday. ing. The opposition was planning a route for cocaine going north. Vene- Romera used to be a schoolteacher. major protest, calling it the Toma de zuelan generals ran the Cartel of the She raised two kids, and opened her Caracas—the Taking of Caracas—and Suns, referring to a military insignia. first shop, on the plaza in El Hatillo, the government was doing its best to Chávez and Maduro came to preside ten years ago. It flourished, and she ex- scare people away. Highways into Ca- over a kleptocracy. State contracts were panded, serving many types of coffee racas had been blocked. There were awarded without competitive bidding and golfeados. El Hatillo had good soldiers everywhere in the city, check- to companies connected to the leader- restaurants, which drew families from points at major intersections, machine- ship. Huge amounts of money have central Caracas, and also foreign tour- gun nests by bridges and tunnels. It simply disappeared. ists. “French, Italian, American,” she would be dangerous. I was surprised Few airlines fly to Caracas today. said. “Then la inseguridad got worse, that Romera was marching, consider- Paying bills owed to foreign air carri- ing that she was about to move to ers is not a government priority. Spain. “We got the signatures,” Romera Lufthansa left in June, swallowing a said indignantly. She meant that the loss of more than a hundred million opposition had collected close to two dollars. American Airlines wrote off million signatures, far more than le- more than half a billion dollars in Ven- gally required, to force a referendum ezuela earlier this year. At the Caracas on Maduro’s Presidency. “They have airport, unwary travellers are robbed, to hold the referendum. The march is and worse, by taxi-drivers. The sensa- a form of social pressure on the gov- tion of being monitored—by suspicious ernment to hold the recall.” officialdom, by scammers, by preda- “Sí, hay futuro.” Yes, there is a future. tors—is thick in the airport. But a mood and they stopped coming. The Chi- This plaintive battle cry is ubiquitous of grief is thicker still. People sob in nese, who work with the government, in Venezuela: on billboards, placards, check-in lines, on the way to security. kept coming, but six months ago even T-shirts. It’s the opposition’s slogan, Parents watch grown children shuffle they stopped.” but it’s everybody’s nagging worry. Is toward flights to afuera—the outside, Romera had to downsize, moving there, really, a future? “The opposition” the world beyond Venezuela—as if to a smaller place, off the plaza. Her is a blanket term for many parties that they might never see them again. It’s menu was on the wall, with the price have formed an antichavista coalition a mass emigration: perhaps two mil- list papered over and new prices scrib- called the Democratic Unity Round- lion already gone, many of them young. bled in. Every restaurant did that. In- table (MUD). The government routinely They go to Spain, Colombia, Panama, flation sent costs up too fast to do any- describes the MUD as “rightists,” al- the United States, the Dominican Re- thing else. “One golfeado used to be though few, if any, of the coalition’s public, Argentina, Chile, Mexico— fifteen bolivares,” she said. “Now it’s parties can be described as right wing,

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 57 as we understand the term. The big- vertise in El Nacional.” I could also see nice during the march, including to ger parties in the coalition are mostly how the local Holiday Inn managers bus drivers. His comic timing was good. social-democratic. There are far-left might think twice about having their Chávez, he said, was psychotic. The members. The most conservative ele- ads appear alongside carefully reported country was now suffering the terrible ments of the MUD are Christian Dem- accounts of torture. fallout from his fantasies and obses- ocratic and neoliberal. It’s a broad co- On the eve of the march, the MUD sions. But Ramos Allup’s body lan- alition, which is its main problem as it held a mass meeting in an old union guage was unaggressive, his hands limp, vies for power—it has no leader, no hall in downtown Caracas. The hall sometimes raised as if to protect him- single figure to coalesce around. was jammed and smelled of sweat. self. In recent opinion polls, Ramos Before the march, which was sched- These were working people, most of Allup was the public’s first choice for uled for September 1st, I stopped at them not young. A parade of speakers President, far ahead of Maduro. Now the offices of El Nacional to see how fired up the group. A congressman from I could see why. People were nostalgic the independent press planned to cover Caracas, who had been jailed for three for the era of bourgeois democracy, for it. A deputy editor, Elías Pino Iturri- months and then released without a Venezuela that worked. Not a soldier, eta, said that the hottest item would charges, shouted, “We’re going to take not a raving messiah in a red beret, but be the photographs. The organizers Miraflores!” People roared. I was star- a mensch in a baggy business suit who were talking about putting a million tled: Miraflores Palace is the White knew how to run a government. In people in the streets. The government, House of Venezuela. The Maduro gov- truth, Ramos Allup can be fierce, and determined to prevent aerial shots of ernment regularly accuses the MUD of he has a long history to live down— a big crowd, had banned drones and planning a coup, and the MUD always his political enemies might not all agree private airplanes over Caracas. “We’re denies such intentions. Was the plan that he’s a mensch—but the crowd that looking for roofs and the penthouses really to march on Miraflores? That night adored him. of tall buildings now, getting permis- was the plan when nineteen people sion,” Pino Iturrieta said. “The colecti- died in a march in 2002. n the morning of September 1st, vos will be out, attacking anybody with Caracas is laid out east to west, nes- O it was difficult to tell how many a camera, anybody writing anything tled in a long, lush mountain valley marchers had turned out for the pro- down. You can be standing on the cor- parallel to the Caribbean coast. The test. I wanted to follow the stream that ner painting the mountains, they’ll at- old downtown, El Silencio, houses the would be the spear point if the march- tack you. And the police will stand and seat of government power—Miraflores, ers headed for El Silencio. But on the watch. They attacked us yesterday the National Assembly, the Supreme previous evening the original gather- morning.” Court—and is near the west end of the ing place for that stream had been I had seen, on my way into the build- city. The march was organized to have filled by tanks and soldiers, so people ing, a crew cleaning its front windows. seven starting points, most of them massed about a half mile northeast, The glass had been pelted with bags miles east of El Silencio, with a plan outside the headquarters of the Dem- of excrement. “There were two Molo- to converge at some great junction. But ocratic Action Party. The narrow streets tov cocktails that didn’t explode,” Pino where would it go from there? The were packed in every direction. The Iturrieta said. “And pamphlets that protest would be peaceful, the organiz- protesters wore white—the opposi- called us a fascist newspaper. It was the ers said, but they always said that. The tion’s color—and sang, “It’s going to third attack this year. The police will government was planning a counter- fall! It’s going to fall! The government do nothing. No investigation. They march, convening thousands of loyal is going to fall!” Everybody was in have no interest in the security of em- chavistas near Miraflores. sneakers, prepared to walk or, if nec- ployees here.” The headliner at the union hall was essary, run. After years of government assault Henry Ramos Allup, the leader of the A drone appeared overhead, twirl- on the press, El Nacional is one of the National Assembly and the head of the ing between trees and telephone wires, last independent national dailies still Democratic Action Party. A slight, wiry red video light blinking, and march- standing. National television and radio man in his seventies, with big eyeglasses ers laughed and screamed and waved. stations were closed when their li- and a gray brush cut, he is a throwback Henry Ramos Allup emerged from his censes came up for renewal. Three to the pre-Chávez era. Democratic Ac- party’s building, in a scrum of body- years ago, a state company took con- tion was one of the two parties that guards, and the crowd set off south, trol of paper distribution, and it re- had traded the Presidency back and toward Avenida Libertador, a main fused to sell to El Nacional. The daily forth for nearly forty years, into the east-west thoroughfare. People thrust began buying from papers in Colom- nineteen-nineties. Unlike the scream- “HAY FUTURO” and “yo tE REVOCO” (“I bia, Peru, and Puerto Rico. “But we’ve ers and fist-shakers who preceded him, recall you”) placards skyward, and had to go from six sections down to Ramos Allup was calm, worldly, almost danced in place when forward move- two,” Pino Iturrieta said. “Thank God professorial. He talked about the sup- ment stalled. The critical question was for the Web.” El Nacional has the most port that the opposition had from other which direction this large, loud stream visited Web news site in Venezuela, countries in Latin America—and you of marchers would go when it reached but advertising has become a problem: knew that he had been speaking to the Avenida Libertador, which had “Companies feel pressured not to ad- their leaders. He urged people to be been closed to traffic.

58 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 The march went east, toward other the political binary that seems, at a dwellings, many of them multistory, all streams of marchers coming from that glance, to define Venezuela. Like most of them beyond the dull comprehen- direction. Spirits, which were already of their countrymen, they have cam- sion of building codes. Liendo charges buoyant, seemed to soar. There would pesino family roots but were born and forty-five bolivares a trip—less than a be no bloody confrontation near Mira- raised in the city. They grew up to- nickel. He belongs to an association of flores. National Guard soldiers, in riot gether in Petare, a sprawling hillside twenty-four jeep drivers. “We used to gear, began to appear in ranks, but they barrio in east Caracas, where they were work till 11 P.M., but now we knock off stayed at the margins of the wide, sunny high-school sweethearts. They’ve been at eight or nine, because of the delin- avenue. The march passed between red married for thirty-five years. She is a cuencia,” he said. He has never been brick high-rises—public housing built nurse; he owns and drives a Land Cruiser robbed or attacked—the malandros have by Chávez. Red flags and red shirts taxi on the steep and narrow streets of a special interest in his well-being. He hung from some apartment windows: upper Petare. He showed me his taxi ferries wounded fighters down the signals, middle fingers, from loyal rig one sunny morning. It’s a heavy- mountain to hospitals from places chavistas. White shirts and white bed- duty beast, built in 1980, now painted where no ambulance would come to sheets streamed from other windows: sky blue, with seating for ten on fac- get them. support for the opposition. The marching benches (two more up front) and, “Petare was all chavista,” Liendo, ers shook their fists in solidarity and stencilled across the windshield, “PAN- who is soft-spoken and solidly built, shouted, “The government is going CRACIO,” for the patron saint of the told me. Zambrano agreed. He remem- to fall!” young. Liendo drives two routes, both bered clearly the brief, electrifying ap- Caracas was not taken that day. The of them absurdly steep, with switch- pearance of Chávez on TV after the government succeeded in channelling back turns and clearances best mea- failure of his coup in 1992. Liendo the multiple streams of the opposition sured in millimetres. Riding with him had grown up in a Democratic Action march into different routes that never is a master class in pothole dodging home. He broke with the old party converged, and the stream I was in pe- and neighbor greeting. “Hola, guapo!” and voted for Chávez in 1998. So did tered out around noon, with a few “Hey, Jesús!” “Hey, Coyote! ” The cries Zambrano. Her mother, who read three speeches in front of a Burger King. But come from inside houses, from balco- newspapers a day, was devoted to the the government did not succeed at pre- nies and motorbikes. Petare is an as- Social Christian Party, the other major venting aerial (or penthouse) photo- tounding maze of improvised brick cliff party at the time, and she had been graphs, which showed an enormous, city-filling turnout. The street fighting started in the afternoon. I first saw a car set alight on a freeway in Chacao, and then armed officers firing tear gas and chasing scat- tered groups of demonstrators down a shopping street. The demonstrators seemed much younger than most of the people who had marched that morning, and, once the tear gas began, many wore vinegar-soaked bandannas pulled up over their mouths and noses. Others wore gas masks. A bookstall vender frantically tried to close up shop before a wave of sooty tear gas engulfed him and his kiosk. If he ran for it without locking up, his stock would be stolen by looters. He and his bookstall disappeared into a toxic smoke cloud while the rest of us rushed away from the advancing police.

lthough the opposition has A been growing in recent months, independents are still a major group. “Thirty-three per cent,” a local poll- ster told me. “They oppose Maduro but don’t support the opposition.” Hermogenes José Liendo and Yolly Zambrano live outside, or alongside, “You’re holding a lot of homophobia in your lower back.” mode. In late October, Maduro and his allies on the election commission, rec- ognizing that elections have become unwinnable, suspended the recall pro- cess indefinitely. The opposition staged angry protests throughout the country, and called for a general strike. The government threatened to expropriate businesses and factories that closed in support of the strike, and underlined the threat by surrounding Polar’s headquarters in Caracas and the home of Lo- renzo Mendoza and his family with heavily armed SEBIN agents. The strike fizzled. But the political crisis continues, and the Vatican has sent an envoy to convene a “dialogue” between the government and the opposition. This gam- •• bit effectively split the MUD. One of its main partners, the Popular Will Party, appalled when her daughter bolted, declared a state of emergency that al- whose leader, a former Caracas mayor in the early nineteen-nineties, to a lows him to rule by decree. named Leopoldo López, has been jailed far-left party. Zambrano, a handsome “¡Gringo, respeta!” is a popular since 2014, declined to join the discus- woman of fifty-one, gave me a nod. chavista graffito, and the slogan ex- sion. It is, to be sure, difficult to see Yes, she had been an ultra-leftist in presses historical grievances that are what there is to discuss. Maduro and her day. deep and wide throughout Latin Amer- the chavistas are determined not to re- Chávez built schools and health- ica. It’s true that the Maduro govern- linquish power, and seem willing to care clinics in Petare. The clinics were ment’s cruel and obtuse denial of its flout the law, denying Venezuelans the staffed by Cuban doctors, and were people’s suffering is often ascribed to right to choose their leaders. open seven days a week, even at night. chavista pride, but it’s more than that. The military is the wild card in every But corruption and bad management The crisis has a small but crucial con- scenario. For much of Venezuela’s his- began to take their toll, and by 2008 stituency, starting with the generals and tory, the military has had a hand in Petare had an opposition mayor. The other high government officials who ruling the country. Today, ordinary sol- clinics are now either abandoned or are thriving financially, mainly through diers are clearly suffering from the rarely open, with few medicines. Gar- smuggling, graft, and import fraud. same food scarcity as all poor Vene- bage lies uncollected, unlicensed vend- Then there are the boliburgueses, a new- zuelans. Liendo, who was once a con- ers jam the barrio’s narrow streets and money business élite riding high on script, told me, “The military loses re- stairways, and crime gets ever worse. government contracts, cronyism, and spect when you see soldiers selling “I don’t like any politician right now,” money laundering. A stampede of for- potatoes and onions at the side of the Zambrano said. eign do-gooders and international road.” One hears persistent talk about She works at two hospitals. Her spe- financial auditors into Venezuela would how Maduro is besmirching the mil- cialty is surgical preparation, but there probably mean trouble for them. itary’s dignity with his economic fail- are fewer surgeries being performed A Maduro-recall referendum would ures. The subtext is a wan hope that now, owing to a lack of basic supplies. be even worse. “He would lose, and the military will step in, perhaps by “I don’t know why the government where could these guys go?” a local an- forcing Maduro to follow the law and won’t accept international help,” Liendo alyst asked me. “What country would hold the recall election. No one says said. “People are dying while the gov- even take them? They won’t have a very this in public. ernment worries about its pride.” comfortable exile in Kazakhstan.” Re- Understanding Venezuela’s failing pression increased markedly after the state as just another failure of social- n January, the National Assembly death of Chávez, an escalation often ism, and of statism generally, is ahis- I declared a humanitarian emergency, attributed to a consolidation of power torical. Venezuela before Chávez was and in May it passed a law allowing by hard-liners in the government. The often extravagantly statist. Corruption Venezuela to accept international aid. circus-tent populism of Chávez gave has been a major problem in every era. President Maduro scorned the idea, way to an even less accountable, charm- Even dire food shortages are not new. saying on national television, “I doubt less tropical Leninism. And yet ideol- These things happened under capitalism, that anywhere in the world, except in ogy seems increasingly irrelevant to a too, as did intense political repression. Cuba, there exists a better health sys- true description of power in Venezu- Today’s crisis is for most people the tem.” Instead of accepting aid, Ma duro ela. The regime seems to be in survival worst in memory, but it is not all about

60 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14, 2016 socialism. The predatory state, the ex- lack of maintenance are the culprits Meleán, I turned off the highway at a treme insecurity, the sheer weakness most often cited. Crime gangs also Halliburton oil-treatment plant. It of the rule of law—these are problems exact a heavy tax. The state-owned oil looked deserted. Huge tanks and tow- more profound, at this stage, than a and gas monopoly, Petróleos de Ven- ers, connected by catwalks, baked in traditional left-right analysis can clar- ezuela (P.D.V.S.A.), was Chávez’s the heat. A roof panel had blown loose ify, let alone begin to solve. piggy bank. Between 2001 and 2015, from one of the tanks and now hung, it poured perhaps a hundred billion bent like a giant brown tropical leaf, he story of the oil bonanza is dollars into his favored programs. halfway to the ground. Even after all T inscribed on the land around Today, the piggy bank is nearly empty. the nationalizations, P.D.V.S.A. de- Lake Maracaibo, and on the lake it- Two-thirds of oil-export revenues go pends heavily on foreign oil-services self. It’s an enormous shallow estu- to paying the Chinese and other cred- companies like Halliburton and Schlum- ary, five thousand square miles, in the itors. Until recently, the monopoly was berger to get the drilling done. But hot, dry, northwest corner of Vene- able to use Citgo, its American refining Schlumberger recently closed four plat- zuela. Forty-three billion barrels of unit, to obtain loans in international forms on Lake Maracaibo, because its oil have been pumped from the Mara- credit markets, but the government bills weren’t being paid. Argentine and caibo Basin since 1914. Rusting tank has destroyed its credit rating, and it Peruvian oil companies recently did farms line the shores of the lake. Pet- is no longer able to borrow on inter- the same, for the same reason, except rochemical complexes glitter in the national markets. With the recent col- that they closed thirty-six platforms. brushlands at night. Oil platforms, lapse of the oil price, it is scrambling Halliburton was also cutting back. This many of them abandoned, stud the just to service its debts. was how production dwindled. Maybe lake’s surface. Snaking across the lake’s The oil won’t simply stop flow- it was for the best, I thought, on the bottom are fifteen thousand miles of ing. In the city of Maracaibo, it’s clear lakeshore, behind the Halliburton plant. pipeline. The water is dense with sul- that there’s still plenty of money Tar-soaked sandbags, tar-soaked palm fates, fluoride, nitrogen, detergent, around. Fancy new high-rises line fronds, tar-soaked trees and trash lit- fecal coliform. Huge blooms of nox- the lakefront on the north side tered the water’s edge. The smell was ious duckweed look, from above, like of town. Massive banks with blue heady and rank. It’s not as if oil were pea-green wigs spread out in the sun. glass walls loom downtown. José Fe- the fuel of the future. Oil leaks from the pipelines shine in liciano is coming to play in the con- An old pickup truck was backed gassy, muted rainbows. The leaks have vention center. I asked my driver, a down to the shore, in the shade of some reportedly multiplied since Chávez local woman, about the lakefront high- scrawny trees. A middle-aged couple nationalized seventy-six oil-services rises. “Money laundering,” she said were sitting quietly in plastic chairs in companies, in 2009. The government cheerfully. The apartments were in- the bed of the truck, a cooler resting blames the leaks on “sabotage.” Far vestments, she said, owned by mafiosos, between them. They were drinking more likely, they stem from lack of militares, narcotraffickers from Co- beer, having a picnic. They studied me maintenance and from the depreda- lombia, corrupt officials. The build- as I approached. Hola. Yes, it was much tions of thieves, who work the lake nicer in the shade. There was even a in boats. A long- running turf war be- little breeze off the lake, every now and tween rival mafias was reportedly set- then. This was a good spot, the man tled in recent years by dividing the said, because the only road to it was lake down the middle. La Familia the oil-company road, which had a Leal runs the western shore, which surveillance camera on it. includes the city of Maracaibo, Ven- So the plant was not abandoned? ezuela’s second largest, with a popu- Oh, no. lation of two million. La Familia Yes, they lived in Maracaibo. They Meleán runs the eastern shore, which had been married forever—kids, grand- has more oil facilities. kids. He worked in air-conditioner The bulk of investment in Venezu- ings were dark at night. Almost no- maintenance. “She waits in lines,” elan oil has shifted in recent years to body actually lived there. he said. It was a joke, but not really. new fields in the east, in a region called Maracaibo is only two hours from the The couple wearily denounced Ma- the Orinoco Belt, where the proven Colombian border. Colombian products, duro. “All these lines and bachaqueros reserves are immense. There are still presumably smuggled, fill the supermar- are his fault,” she said. If they got the nineteen billion barrels of proven re- kets. I saw a bachaquero set up at a table chance, they would both gladly vote serves in the Maracaibo Basin, though. in front of his house, in broad daylight, him out. That’s more oil than Mexico and Nor- and stopped to inspect his goods. He I was being bitten by tiny insects. I way combined have. was selling Polar precooked corn flour, asked if they ever went swimming here. And yet Venezuelan oil production at eight times the price on the label, but The woman laughed. “Yes,” she said. is steadily falling. Since 1998, it has he also had Colombian flour. “Sometimes. It’s nice to cool off. But declined by thirty per cent—by nearly On the eastern shore of Lake Ma- there’s too much oil. We come out look- a million barrels a day. Corruption and racaibo, in the territory of La Familia ing like Dalmatians.” 

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