In the capital, water is so expensive and scarce that residents wait for hours with bottles at the side of a mountain where it trickles out onto the highway.
In the countryside, sugarcane fields rot and milk factories lay idle, even as people carry bags of money around to buy food on the black market in every city and town.
And here in this port that once fed a nation, everything looks bare. Where a dozen ships once waited to enter, only four could be seen from a hilltop fort built long ago to guard against raids from sea.
No one would pillage Puerto Cabello today. There is nothing to take anymore.
And it is all about to get much worse.
Inflation is expected to hit 720 per cent this year, the highest in the world, making Venezuela reminiscent of Zimbabwe at the start of its collapse.
The price of oil, this country’s lifeblood, has collapsed to lows not seen in more than a decade.
For the last month, I have been writing about Venezuela every day, chronicling its people, politics, language, quirks and culture through the eyes of a correspondent who moved here just as this country was heading deeper into economic disarray.
It was a month-long project where fleeting moments carried the story: shouting matches during the first session of Congress; soldiers at the tomb of President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013; letters from expatriates who had left Venezuela because of crime and longed to return.
Writing this way, about everyday interactions and exchanges, some themes became even more apparent. In Venezuela — a country where hospitals already lack syringes, supermarkets struggle to stock basic goods, and the government has declared an economic emergency while sitting upon the world’s largest reserves of oil — the strains just keep growing. — New York Times News Service
