"In Venezuela, an ongoing struggle for power amid a growing humanitarian disaster" PBS NewsHour 12/29/2020
Excerpt
SUMMARY: Next week in Venezuela a new parliament is set to be sworn in, after members of the opposition boycotted elections earlier this month. It leaves opposition leader Juan Guaido in an even more precarious position, and the country with an uncertain future. Special correspondent Marcia Biggs reports.
SUMMARY: The political power struggle in Venezuela took a violent turn Tuesday, as opposition leader Juan Guaido appealed to the military to turn against President Nicolas Maduro’s regime, and for the public to take to the streets. Thousands turned out in support, but it was unclear whether the armed forces are indeed ready to shift allegiance. William Brangham reports on a volatile day in Venezuela.
SUMMARY: After Tuesday’s violent clashes, Wednesday dawned quiet in Caracas but eventually grew chaotic again. Police threw tear gas at Venezuelans demonstrating in support of opposition leader Juan Guaido. Meanwhile, it was unclear why Guaido’s earlier talks with military leaders about joining his campaign to unseat President Nicolas Maduro appeared to have fallen through. William Brangham reports.
SUMMARY: As the standoff over transition of power in Venezuela continues at least 50 countries including the U.S. have thrown their support behind Juan Guaidó whose recent calls for military support and for mass demonstrations have not been successful. Columbia University’s Christopher Sabatini joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the power struggle, Russia's role and the U.S. government response.
SUMMARY: Mozambique’s official death toll from a deadly cyclone in March has topped 1,000. In the storm’s aftermath, survivors face lack of power, food and supplies, plus deadly outbreaks of diseases like cholera and malaria. Amna Nawaz talks to David Beasley executive director of the World Food Program about his organization's response to that catastrophe, as well as those in Yemen and Venezuela.
SUMMARY: Venezuelan security agents descended in the dead of night, seizing opposition leaders from their homes. Their arrests came after Sunday's deeply divisive election to fill a new assembly tasked with rewriting the country's constitution. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports on the unrest in Venezuela and the American response.
SUMMARY: Venezuela is in freefall after years of recession, skyrocketing inflation and a formidable food crisis, sparking outcry and protest. It's pushed angry Venezuelans to take to the streets on a regular basis, demanding that President Nicolas Maduro step down, and inspired a fierce government crackdown. Special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico report.
SUMMARY: In Venezuela, hundreds of thousands came out in protest against President Nicolas Maduro, whose approval ratings have reached record lows. The cause for discontent: Food is now incredibly scarce and far too expensive to buy, and the hunger is leading to and caused by growing corruption. Nathan Halverson of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting reports from Caracas.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): In Caracas, today, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans turned out to protest against President Nicolas Maduro's government and called for an end to his rule.
The country has been plagued by a deepening economic crisis, corruption, crime, all of which have contributed to a worsening food shortage.
Nathan Halverson of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting recently visited Caracas,.
NATHAN HALVERSON, Center for Investigative Reporting: Well before sunrise, hungry Venezuelans are waiting outside grocery stores praying for food trucks to arrive. By mid-morning, with streets crowded with anxious faces, there is little hope.
WOMAN (through translator): There is only butter and oil. We need them to send us more food.
QUESTION (through translator): When did you get here?
WOMAN (through translator): At 4:00 a.m.
MAN (through translator): I got here at 8:00 p.m. last night.
As Venezuelans watch their country crumble and their desperation and hunger spill into the streets, their anger with President Nicolas Maduro and his party has become explosive.
WOMAN (through translator): This is what's happening in Venezuela. We're starving. We're struggling, thanks to this government. It's the Maduro diet.
NATHAN HALVERSON: Police now guard grocery stores across the country, holding back the hungry and volatile mobs.
MAN (through translator): Why are you taking me out of line? I was here early. I also need food.
NATHAN HALVERSON: Some 90 percent of Venezuelans now report that food has become too expensive to buy. Hungry mobs are increasingly rioting and looting bakeries and food trucks. This has forced everyday people to try and calm desperate crowds, like this grocery store manager.
SUMMARY: The economic disaster in Venezuela caused by tumbling petrol prices — oil production is the main industry — is also behind an environmental one. Lake Maracaibo, which sustains the Añu indigenous group, is being contaminated by oil spills and the leaky drilling infrastructure, all made worse by rampant gas smuggling. Special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico report.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): We return now to a Venezuela in crisis.
We recently brought you a report from Caracas on the collapse of the economy and the health care system and the lawlessness run rampant there.
Tonight, again in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on crisis Reporting, special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico report from western Venezuela on Lake Maracaibo. It is the hub of Venezuela's oil industry, the country's lifeblood, which is now a trade in serious trouble.
NADJA DROST, special correspondent: The drop in oil prices has not just devastated the Venezuelan economy. It's causing an environmental crisis as well. An oil spill that happened in May still covers the shoreline of Lake Maracaibo.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA, Fisherman (through translator): Lately, we have been seeing a lot of oil spills. It wasn't like this before.
NADJA DROST: Jose Gregorio Garcia is part of the Anu indigenous group, who live in the lake area. Anu means people of the shore, and fishing has long been their sustenance. But leaking oil is damaging their livelihood; 15,000 barrels of oil have spilled into the lake in the last two months, according to the state oil company.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA (through translator): There were species that we don't see now. We think it's because of the contamination.
NADJA DROST: Shrimp are gone completely, and the lake's once-thriving blue crab fishery is also disappearing.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA (through translator): The oil goes to the bottom of the lake. That's where the crab is. It migrates, or dies, or gets covered with petroleum, and when it's stained like that, no one will buy it.
NADJA DROST: Oil wells have been abandoned, and production has slowed to a 13-year low. That means money that was supposed to be set aside to stop oil spills has dried up.
Alfredo Dominguez, who checks oil platforms for the state company which operates all the oil fields, says there's a lack of everything, equipment and the parts to fix it and oversight by management. Plus, thieves have also wrecked the infrastructure.
ALFREDO DOMINGUEZ, Field Operator (through translator): They rob cables from the oil stations, bulbs, everything that can be melted down. They take apart the tubes. The wells keep pumping and sending the oil to the station, but the cables and tubes have been cut, so the oil ruptures and spills into the lake.
NADJA DROST: For decades, Lake Maracaibo has been a symbol of Venezuela's oil wealth, but, today, it's in a state of decay. Beneath us, there is a massive network of interlaced tubes transporting oil and gas. Locals refer to it as a bowl of spaghetti.
SUMMARY: "Plummeting worldwide fuel prices have damaged several economies, but perhaps no country has been hit harder than Venezuela. Once flush with oil money, the nation now faces a collapsing economy, skyrocketing inflation and a wave of looting and crime driven by mass food shortages. For more on the dire situation in Venezuela, Gwen Ifill talks to Nicholas Casey of The New York Times.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The fall in world oil prices has likely hit no country as hard as it has Venezuela. Once flush with cash, the country is now in crisis, with a collapsing economy, skyrocketing crime and inflation rates, and major food shortages, all this as the government of President Nicolas Maduro tries to maintain control.
For more on this situation, we turn to Nicholas Casey of The New York Times, who is reporting tonight from Caracas.
Thank you for joining us.
So, Nicholas, give me a sense about how long this collapse — it feels like a slow-motion collapse — how long has it been going on and what has caused it?
NICHOLAS CASEY, The New York Times: It's been going on for a couple of years now.
And it's been tied to the collapse in oil prices in Venezuela. Venezuela gets almost all of its revenue from oil. So, when these prices started to collapse, the first thing you saw was that some of the foods started to disappear, not in huge quantities, but enough that there were lines in front of stores.
The electricity started to disappear. There's even problems with water right now because the government doesn't have the money that it needs. Now, what's happened with the food is that there has been so much which has gone at this point, that people are starting to get hungry.
And last week, and the week before, we saw a wave of lootings of stores. People basically left these lines that they were gathered in and started to go directly into the stores, break down the doors, and take things that were inside.
GWEN IFILL: You say that the lack — the collapse of the oil — of oil prices contributed to this. How much was that tied up with the collapse in faith of this current leadership, of President Maduro? How much of one thing creating the other?
NICHOLAS CASEY: Well, it's not just, as you point out, the collapse of the oil prices which has caused what's happened here.
There are other countries, like Mexico and Brazil, which have a lot of oil revenues themselves, and don't have the same problems as Venezuela. Venezuela and Maduro came after years of what a lot of economists say was economic mismanagement by Hugo Chavez, who totally transformed the economy here.
The government spent lots of money, lots of money, and didn't save much for a time when the price of oil wouldn't be as high as it was before. So, now Venezuela finds itself in the position where it needs money. It doesn't produce a lot of food. It needs money to import food, and it doesn't have anything right now.
So, in the short term, it's the price of oil which has got us here. But in the long term, it's a lot of economic changes that took place in this country in the so-called Bolivarian Revolution that came from Hugo Chavez.
SUMMARY: Falling oil prices around the world are usually considered a good thing. But for countries whose economies depend on oil exports, the price drop means impending catastrophe. Scott Tong of Marketplace recently traveled to Venezuela, where 96 percent of all export revenue comes from oil and import prices are skyrocketing. Tong joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the country’s economic freefall.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The oil-rich South American nation is in the throes of a deep economic crisis, as its version of socialism faces the crash in global oil prices and political turmoil.
Jeffrey Brown has our look.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): A symbolic burning of the Judas, something of an Easter tradition in some Catholic countries. Effigies of unpopular figures are set ablaze.
This year in Venezuela, those figures were politicians, including President Nicolas Maduro and a local mayor. But President Obama wasn’t spared. The U.S. has long been a favorite target of Venezuelan anger.
And Venezuelans have much to enrage them right now. The global price of oil, the country’s main commodity, has fallen dramatically, crushing the government’s bottom line. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan Central Bank began printing money at record levels, the result, massive inflation in this socialist country.
The cost of consumer goods increased 275 percent last year, according to the International Monetary Fund. And that number is expected to double in 2016. Long lines and empty shelves have come to define life for many, as well as anger at the Maduro government.
In elections last year, the opposition party won a majority of seats in the national Parliament. Earlier this month, after weeks without water, protests erupted in this San Cristobal neighborhood. Meanwhile, in Caracas, nurses protested a lack of medicines and equipment, while, across town, demonstrators called for the president’s resignation.
And for a look at the crisis facing Venezuela, we welcome Scott Tong of public radio’s Marketplace. He recently returned from a reporting trip there.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In March of last year, the 14-year rule over Venezuela by the controversial and charismatic Hugo Chavez came to a dramatic end when the leader died of cancer.
His handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, was elected president soon after. As Maduro marks the end of his first year in office tomorrow, divisions have deepened in a country that has become violent in recent months.
Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports.
MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour): Late last week, after more than three months of sometimes deadly street protests throughout Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro met with his political opposition.
The six-hour televised session brokered by the Vatican and three South American foreign ministers attracted record ratings on Venezuelan TV, reflecting the nation’s anxiety at the street violence that has killed more than 40 and posed the biggest challenge to the government in more than a decade.
The alternative to finding an accommodation, said Maduro, is a dark one.
PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO, Venezuela (through interpreter): Imagine, it would be the beginning of an armed, violent civil confrontation, bloody, bloody, and no one would win anything.
MARGARET WARNER: What began in January as demonstrations against rising crime mushroomed in February into massive marches, with hundreds of thousands protesting the scarcity of goods, insecurity and the arrest of demonstrators.
Today, there remain smaller, but fervent localized protests in neighborhoods fortified with barricades. The target of all this? President Maduro. Maduro has struggled to maintain Chavez’s aura, but he is being swamped by an economic slide that has brought this oil-rich country 57 percent inflation and near empty store shelves, and a further explosion in Venezuela’s rampant crime, creating what the U.N. says is now the second highest murder rate in the world.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): A month of protests reached a boiling point this week in economically strapped Venezuela. At the center of the uproar is a charismatic leader seeking to oust the current government.
Demonstrators burned trash, chanted, and made noise any way they could outside a Caracas court where a top opposition leader faced criminal charges.
Leopoldo Lopez is accused of fomenting protest during a tumultuous three weeks in Venezuela. The Harvard-trained economist surrendered to police yesterday, after imploring supporters to keep up the pressure on socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
LEOPOLDO LOPEZ, “Popular Will” Party (through interpreter): Every Venezuelan who wants change, gather ourselves, organize ourselves and hold nonviolent protests. I swear to you, we will overcome and very soon we will have a free and democratic Venezuela.
GWEN IFILL: The protesters have denounced Maduro’s stewardship of the oil-rich Venezuelan economy, also at issue, rampant crime, controls on media, and food shortages.
Five people have died in the last week, as protests turned violent, a turn many blame on so-called colectivos, a paramilitary citizens militia allied to the Maduro government.
MARIA SANCHEZ, (through interpreter): We cannot support Maduro. He’s a bad man. He’s worse than Chavez. There are no medicines. There’s nothing in this country. For how long are we going to continue to suffer in this country?
GWEN IFILL: Maduro, in turn, has minced no words in denouncing the protests.
PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO, Venezuela (through interpreter): I have been personally overseeing the operations, so that I can guarantee peace in the face of the fascists gathering today with their armed gangs, with their trained groups, so that there would be peace.
GWEN IFILL: Maduro was elected last April by a razor-thin margin. He’d been vice president for the late Hugo Chavez, who feuded with successive American presidents and accused the U.S. of orchestrating a 2002 coup.
Maduro has leveled the same charge this time. On Monday, Venezuela’s foreign minister ordered three American diplomats to leave the country. It’s been four years since the U.S. posted an ambassador there.
The White House rejected claims the U.S. is promoting unrest.
For now, a tense calm prevails in Caracas, as both sides wait for whatever comes next.
SUMMARY: Less than a year has passed since the death of Hugo Chavez and the election of President Nicolas Maduro, but the problems driving unrest in Venezuela have been building for a decade. Carl Meacham of the Center for Strategic and International Studies joins Gwen Ifill to offer background on the “snowballing” of anti-government sentiment and why neighboring countries have been shy to speak out.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And now to Venezuela. The South American country voted on Sunday for a new president to succeed the late Hugo Chavez.
And, as Ray Suarez reports, the results were far closer than many expected.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): The streets of Caracas were mostly quiet this morning, as Venezuelans digested the photo finish election and the immediate calls for a recount.
MARGLELIS QUINTERO, Venezuela: The gap was very small. Actually, I was expecting it to be bigger. But, well, the people expressed their will and it was the popular will, so it's necessary to respect the results.
GILMAR DOMINGUEZ, Venezuela: The difference was very, very little. And it's possible that there were mistakes during the counting. I agree they should have asked for a recount so we can clear the doubts.
RAY SUAREZ: Venezuela's electoral authority declared acting President Nicolas Maduro had won by a whisker, with just 50.7 percent of the vote.
TIBISAY LUCENA, Venezuela Electoral Authority: These are the irreversible results that the people of Venezuela have decided with the electoral process.
RAY SUAREZ: Maduro is the handpicked successor of President Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer last month after 14 years in power. Under Chavez, relations with Washington were strained, even as Venezuela became America's fourth largest supplier of crude oil.
Instead, Chavez transformed his country into a socialist ally of Cuba's Castro regime. Last night, with the vote in, Maduro told supporters they have done the will of the late leader.
PRESIDENT-ELECT NICOLAS MADURO, Venezuela: Long live Chavez, long live Chavez, long live Chavez, until victory forever. Let's go to the streets to defend this victory, to defend the triumph in peace, and in order to celebrate with the people and to remember that we have complied with the commander.
RAY SUAREZ: Still, opposition candidate Henrique Capriles said today Maduro's margin of just 235,000 votes demands a recount.
HENRIQUE CAPRILES RADONSKI, Venezuelan Presidential Candidate: I want to say to the government's candidate, the loser today is you. And I say that firmly. You are the loser, you and your government. We will not recognize the results until each and every Venezuela vote one by one has been counted.
RAY SUAREZ: Maduro said he's open to that idea.
And, in Washington, the State Department also endorsed it.
PATRICK VENTRELL, State Department Deputy Spokesman: The results reveal a Venezuelan electorate that is roughly evenly divided. In order to meet all of Venezuelans' democratic expectations, it makes sense that such a recount should be completed before any additional steps, including official certification of the results, occurs.
RAY SUAREZ: The poor showing for Maduro, who campaigned with all the advantages of government backing, may signal Venezuelans are weary of chronic inflation, shortages of basic goods and high levels of violent crime.
SUMMARY: Nicolás Maduro will be Venezuela's new president following Hugo Chavez's death in March. Ray Suarez talks with Cynthia Arnson of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research about Venezuela's election system, economy and how the United States is responding to the results.
MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): The announcement of the Venezuelan leader's death came late this afternoon by the country's vice president, Nicolas Maduro.
Chavez had shown remarkable staying power, ruling the South American country for 14 years. He survived a coup that briefly deposed him, a constitution that term-limited him out of office, and won an October election after his first bout with cancer.
He and his brand of revolutionary socialism antagonized three U.S. administrations, as he cozied up to the world's most isolated regimes in Cuba, Iran, and Syria.
For more on his death and what it means for the future of Venezuela, I'm joined by Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, and Carl Meacham, head of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): There was surprising news for many Venezuelans this morning, as they got word that their leader, Hugo Chavez, who had been away from his country for months, had returned there in the middle of the night.
Ray Suarez reports.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Venezuela's minister of information, Ernesto Villegas, proclaimed the news on state television: President Hugo Chavez had returned.
MINISTER OF INFORMATION ERNESTO VILLEGAS, Venezuela: Congratulations to the Venezuelan people for the strength and maturity you have had during all of these days of companionship and solidarity with Commandant Chavez.
RAY SUAREZ: The fiery leftist leader seen in these photographs from Friday had spent more than two months in Cuba for cancer treatment. The photos showed Chavez, his two daughters, and that day's newspaper, as if to quash rumors that he had died.
But today, unlike previous returns from medical visits to Cuba, there were no images of his early morning homecoming. Still, supporters celebrated outside the military hospital where the 58-year-old Chavez is continuing treatment.
MAN: Venezuela waits for you with open arms, my commandant. We love you. We want you. And there's an entire population that will support you always.
RAY SUAREZ: And Chavez in his first direct communication with the world since departing for Cuba updated his followers via Twitter. "We have returned to the Venezuelan fatherland. Thank you, my God. Thank you, my beloved people. We will continue the treatment here." He added, "I remain attached to Christ and trusting in my nurses and doctors."
And he echoed the words of Cuba's Che Guevara: "Onward to victory forever. We will live and we will conquer."
Meanwhile, opposition leaders continued to criticize the secrecy surrounding the president's health. He won reelection in October and had been slated to be sworn in again in January, but the country's Supreme Court ruled the inauguration could be postponed until his health improved. That led to questions about who was actually running the oil-rich nation.
Chavez's main opponent in the last election, Henrique Capriles, who accused the government of lying about Chavez's condition, said today he hopes that now the government can refocus on the challenges facing the country.
HENRIQUE CAPRILES RADONSKI, Former Venezuelan Presidential Candidate: During the last few weeks, the only thing we have heard from them are insults, words of hate, which are making Venezuelans turn against each other. I also hope the return of the president means that the country is going to begin to know that things will be spoken of truthfully and furthermore to dedicate our time and energy to what is important.
RAY SUAREZ: No specifics were given today on Chavez's current state of recovery or when he might officially be sworn in to his new term in office.
SUMMARY: The return of Hugo Chavez inspires a myriad of questions about the president's health, the state of the country and who is really running Venezuela. To help address those questions, Ray Suarez interviews Ian James, Caracas bureau chief for the Associated Press.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): It's being billed as a battle between David and Goliath. Known as 7-0 for the 7th of October, when Venezuelans head to the polls, the election marks a watershed moment for the world's second-largest oil-producing nation and a critical supplier of crude oil to the U.S., its number one customer.
Towering above the race is incumbent President Hugo Chavez.
PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ, Venezuela (through translator): We will raze the competition on Sunday the 7th. No one should have the smallest doubt.
RAY SUAREZ: And with him, legions of red-shirted supporters known as Chavistas from the United Socialist Party.
RAMON PINO, agriculture union leader (through translator): Starting on October 8, we social organizations are going to join the president to make radical changes to this country, so we can impose the revolution, and finally have a socialist system firmly set in Venezuela.
RAY SUAREZ: Through three U.S. administrations, the 58-year-old Chavez has shown remarkable staying power, surviving a coup that briefly deposed him, a constitution that term-limited him out of office, And for more than a year, his battle with cancer, all while openly antagonizing the United States, as he's cozied up to the world's most isolated regimes.
