When the State Wilts Away

Venezuela was unraveling even before Hugo Chávez died in 2013. The situation has only gotten worse since. Despite having the world’s largest oil reserves, inflation has soared to 500 percent, the murder rate is the highest in the world, and chronic shortages of food, water, and medicine make daily life a struggle. A man was recently burned alive outside a supermarket in Caracas for stealing the equivalent of $5. “The country has been on a downward spiral for so many years,” says Cynthia Arnson, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program, “you wonder what is going to be the final straw.”

Recently, it looked like it might be the weather. Six months ago, a devastating El Niño-induced drought damaged crops, left the capital short of drinking water, and caused rolling blackouts. In April, as a lack of rain crippled the Guri hydropower project, the country’s biggest electricity supply, President Nicolás Maduro announced a two-day workweek for civil services. (He also suggested women stop using blow-dryers: “I always think a woman looks better when she just runs her fingers through her hair and lets it dry naturally.”) In May, Maduro changed the country’s time zone by half an hour to save power. “Drought and electricity cutbacks have created a new moment that will have its own dynamic,” Arnson says. “The level of inefficiency and breakdown of public services has been so rampant that any natural disaster has been magnified.”