Category Archives: Venezuela

US indicts Nicolás Maduro and other top Venezuelan leaders for drug trafficking

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  • $15m reward for information leading to president’s capture
  • William Barr alleges plot involving Farc guerrilla faction

The US has charged the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and 14 members of his inner circle with drug trafficking, “narco-terrorism”, corruption and money laundering, and offered a $15m reward for information leading to Maduro’s capture and prosecution.

Unveiling the indictment, the attorney general, William Barr, said the Venezuelan leadership collaborated with a dissident faction of the former Colombian guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, operating on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, which Barr described as an “extremely violent terrorist organization”.

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‘Mask, gown, gloves – none of that exists’: Venezuela’s coronavirus crisis

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Continuing chaotic sitation under Nicolás Maduro leaves hospitals and health services desperately unprepared

There is no ideal time for a pandemic, but fewer countries are less equipped to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak than crisis-ridden Venezuela, warn doctors and public health experts.

Bed shortages, a lack of isolation areas and short supplies of soap are already a daily reality at one hospital in Ciudad Guayana, a city in the country’s east. There is a nearby centre set up for the pandemic response but workers there say there are not enough ambulances to ferry patients.

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‘A generation that decided to fight’: making music amid chaos in Venezuela

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As they endure a political crisis that has led millions to flee, Venezuela’s musicians are striving to make life worth living

‘Everything here happens at gunpoint,” someone tells me when I arrive in Caracas. Venezuela is in crisis, suffering from a lack of power, water and basic supplies and enduring widespread violence on the streets: the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence estimates that the country has the world’s highest murder rate at 81.4 per 100,000 people. According to the UN, around 4.5 million people have fled since 2015, escaping an economy in a state of hyperinflation and the authoritarian rule of president Nicolás Maduro.

The chaos has intensified recently, as opposition leader Juan Guaidó – recognised as the true president by more than 50 countries – was forced to storm a barricade of riot police to gain access to the country’s national assembly. Donald Trump has now rolled out economic sanctions to try to squeeze Maduro out of power – but they will squeeze an already embattled Venezuelan public, too.

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One in three Venezuelans not getting enough to eat, UN finds

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  • World Food Programme says 9.3m people are food insecure
  • People struggling for minimum nutrition amid economic crisis

One of every three people in Venezuela is struggling to put enough food on the table to meet minimum nutrition requirements as the nation’s severe economic contraction and political upheaval persists, according to a new study by the UN World Food Programme.

A nationwide survey based on data from 8,375 questionnaires reveals a startling picture of the large number of Venezuelans surviving off a diet consisting largely of tubers and beans as hyperinflation renders many salaries worthless.

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‘They wanted a better life’: the young Venezuelans escaping into Brazil alone

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After six years of economic crisis in their neighboring country, Brazilian officials say more and more unaccompanied minors are arriving

Jesús Pérez was 16 when he crossed into Brazil in June, fleeing a life of hunger on the streets of his disintegrating homeland.

In Pacaraima, the Brazilian border town that is the main entry point for fleeing Venezuelans, he told social workers he hoped for a fresh start.

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A million children left behind as Venezuela crisis tears families apart

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As the country battles economic collapse, parents have been forced to migrate, leaving their offspring in the care of family, neighbours or sometimes alone

It has been four months since Isabel Carrasco skipped her crumbling country, entrusting her daughters to a neighbour to join modern South America’s largest ever exodus.

Carrasco’s destination was Guyana, although the woman now raising her children isn’t sure which part.

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Venezuela: a year on from the failed uprising

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Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, is back in Venezuela a year after the start of a dramatic, but so far unsuccessful, attempt to topple Nicolás Maduro. While conditions in Caracas appear slightly improved, outside the capital conditions in schools and hospitals are appalling – and getting worse. Also today: Jess Cartner-Morley on pockets

A year ago, the crisis in Venezuela reached a new pitch as the politician Juan Guaidó led an attempt to overthrow the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. As the bulk of Venezuela’s military remained loyal to the president, the attempt failed and Maduro maintained his grip on power. In the months since, he has boasted that Venezuela has enjoyed “the highest levels of nutrients and access to food”. But outside of the capital Caracas, the story is very different.

The Guardian’s Tom Phillips tells Anushka Asthana of his journey through the crisis-hit country and how the worst effects are being felt by children. Hospitals are falling into disrepair, schools are being repeatedly looted and some parents have fled the country, leaving their children behind.

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‘All we have are walls’: crisis leaves Venezuela’s schools crumbling

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Schools across the country in dire straits as teachers abandon the profession or skip the country amid one of the worst economic downturns in modern history

There are 723 pupils at the José Eduardo Sánchez Afanador school but no electricity, no computers, no tables and no chairs.

The windows lack glass, the toilets have lost their sinks and its metal classroom doors have been plundered by thieves, allowing pigeons to colonize several of the filthy spaces.

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‘It’s a pain you will never overcome’: crisis in Venezuela as babies die of malnutrition

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As Venezuela enters its seventh year of a crushing depression, doctors are seeing a rise in infant mortality rates due to deprivation

Her coffin was little larger than a shoe box. Her life had lasted three short months.

“She was a calm little thing,” the girl’s grandmother, Yamilet Zerpa, remembered as mourners filed into her sitting room to say their last goodbyes.

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Venezuela: opposition lawmakers barred from assembly building as convoy attacked

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Lawmakers hold session on outskirts of capital after people dressed in civilian clothes target their vehicles

Government security forces and armed motorcycle groups loyal to Nicolás Maduro have forcefully blocked opposition lawmakers from entering Venezuela’s national assembly building, prompting them to hold their session on the outskirts of the nation’s crisis-torn capital.

It was the second time this month that lawmakers have been barred from the building that houses the only branch of government that remains out of control of Maduro’s socialist government.

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Aid workers toil amid crisis and corruption to give Venezuelans the drugs they need

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In Venezuela, hospitals lack the basics and medicine shortages are common, forcing humanitarian groups to pick up the slack

Feliciano Reyna masterminds a drug running network that spans Venezuela. His organisation moves substances through ports, trucks them across the country, and deliver them into customers’ hands. But he is not on any DEA watchlist.

“I am the biggest dealer in Venezuela,” says Reyna – though he is quick to qualify the remark – “If we’re talking about legal drugs.”

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Yemen heads list of countries facing worst humanitarian disasters in 2020

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Venezuela also in top five as IRC’s David Miliband warns of devastating impact from war, floods, droughts and disease

Yemen has topped an annual watchlist of countries most likely to face humanitarian catastrophe in 2020, for the second year running.

Continued fighting, economic collapse and weak governance mean that more than 24 million Yemenis – about 80% of the population – will be in need of humanitarian assistance this year, according to analysis by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which found that another five years of conflict could cost $29bn (£22bn).

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Maduro accused of parliamentary ‘coup’ after replacing Guaidó as president of assembly

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Troops blocked presidential rival from entering the parliament building in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas

Venezuela’s opposition has accused president Nicolás Maduro of masterminding an illegal parliamentary “coup” after an apparent bid to decapitate the challenge from his presidential rival Juan Guaidó by replacing him as head of the country’s opposition-controlled parliament.

Guaidó shot to international prominence last January after he was elected president of Venezuela’s national assembly and used that position to declare himself the country’s legitimate interim leader.

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Josep Borrell: can EU’s new diplomat- in-chief strengthen bloc’s global standing?

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The veteran Spanish socialist has a reputation for plain speaking, and a brief to build a more assertive EU

It has been called Europe’s “valley of tears”. But it isn’t in National Geographic; rather it is the monthly pilgrimage of the European Union’s 28 foreign ministers to Brussels or Luxembourg to discuss the woes of the world.

And the man who coined the phrase, Josep Borrell, a socialist veteran of Spanish politics, was not paying a compliment. He described the EU foreign affairs council as “more a valley of tears than a centre of decision-making” because “it’s where all the open sores of humanity come. They tell us their sufferings, we express our condolences and concern … but no capacity for action comes out of it and we just move on to the next one.”

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Evo Morales ousting brings new hope to Venezuela’s flagging opposition

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Toppling of Bolivian president reignites movement to remove leftist ally Nicolás Maduro

Venezuela’s flagging opposition movement has hit the streets for its first major protests in months, as leaders sought to reignite their campaign to force Nicolás Maduro from power after his leftist ally Evo Morales was toppled in Bolivia.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets on Saturday morning in towns and cities across the crisis-stricken south American country, hoping the dramatic sea change in Bolivian politics might portend similar change in Venezuela.

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‘Living a daily tragedy’: Venezuelans struggle to survive in Colombia

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Driven from their homeland by economic chaos, tens of thousands of people are living a precarious existence on the dangerous streets of Maicao in northern Colombia

Axleny Machado has slept on a piece of foam outside Maicao’s main bus terminal since she arrived from Venezuela a year ago. She’s one of thousands who live this way in the arid border city in La Guajira, northern Colombia, which is now struggling with the huge influx of migrants and refugees.

Machado, 24, has a small trolley she rents for 90p a day to sell cigarettes, coffee and sweets to commuters. If lucky, she makes about £4 a day – enough to look after herself. She wants to leave Maicao for another Colombian city and look for opportunities, but money doesn’t permit.

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Venezuela wins UN human rights council seat despite record of abuses

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Other seat for Latin America went to Brazil, whose far-right leader has expressed contempt for the concept of human rights

Activists have responded with outrage after Venezuela won a fiercely contested vote for a seat on the UN’s human rights council on Thursday, despite its well-documented record of human rights abuses.

The 193-member world body elected 14 members to the 47-member council on Thursday for three-year terms starting in January, with Venezuela claiming one of the two seats allocated to Latin America with 105 votes.

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Oil contaminating Brazil’s beaches ‘very likely from Venezuela’, minister says

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Government says foreign ship appears to have caused the spill, in accusation likely to further strain Brazilian-Venezuelan relations

Thick crude oil that has stained hundreds of miles of pristine Brazilian beach in recent weeks probably originated in Venezuela, the Brazilian government has said, in an accusation likely to further strain relations between the two countries.

Related: 'Chaos, chaos, chaos': a journey through Bolsonaro's Amazon inferno

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