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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...The convoy carrying the opposition lawmakers was attacked in Caracas while they were on their way to the national assembly
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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).
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Thousands trek to Sorte Mountain each year to perform fiery rituals in tribute to the goddess
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...Opposition leader plays down images but analysts say they could prove highly damaging
Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan politician fighting to topple Nicolás Maduro, is facing awkward questions about his relationship with organised crime after the publication of compromising photographs showing him with two Colombian paramilitaries.
In an interview on Friday, Guaidó played down the significance of the pictures, in which he posed alongside two members of the Colombian criminal gang the Rastrojos identified as El Brother and El Menor.
Continue reading...Trump’s anti-interventionist instincts likely to come to the fore in flashpoint countries
Donald Trump’s abrupt dismissal of John Bolton, his national security adviser, may reflect the near breakdown in personal relations between the two men, as well as Bolton’s rivalry with the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, but it will also have implications for US foreign policy in a range of flashpoints.
Related: John Bolton fired as Trump's national security adviser – live news
Continue reading...‘Various contacts’ made, says embattled president, amid reports he is negotiating a way to stand down
Nicolás Maduro has confirmed top Venezuelan officials have been talking to members of Donald Trump’s White House, after reports his second-in-command had been negotiating his downfall with the United States.
“I confirm that for months there have been contacts between senior officials from Donald Trump’s government and from the Bolivarian government over which I preside – with my express and direct permission,” Venezuela’s authoritarian leader said in a televised address on Tuesday night.
Continue reading...Claims that Nicolás Maduro’s number two official is working with the US are an attempt to ‘stoke paranoia’, experts say
He is one of the most influential and infamous figures in Venezuelan politics – a hardcore Chavista who uses his weekly talkshow to preach permanent revolution and excoriate the evil empire up north.
But two reports in the American media now suggest Diosdado Cabello, Nicolás Maduro’s number two official, has been engaged in “secret communications” with United States officials designed to force Hugo Chávez’s successor from power.
Continue reading...The president is heading into 2020 with no major successes and looming crises – so many expect him to attempt to reverse the trend with dramatic deals
Donald Trump is heading into the 2020 elections with no clear-cut foreign policy successes, some dramatic failures and a string of looming crises around the world that could undermine his bid for re-election.
For that reason, many expect the president to try to reverse the trend with dramatic interventions around the globe with uncertain outcomes – which will make the next 16 months even more volatile than his presidency so far.
Continue reading...