120 Hours Into Obscurantism
“Energy experts, Venezuelan power sector contractors and current and former Corpoelec employees have dismissed accusations of sabotage, saying the blackout was the result of years of underinvestment, corruption and brain drain”. Anatoly Kurmanaev, New York Times.
1st Day, Thursday 7th
The core and extended teams of Proyecto Hikola, part of the Presencing Institute Societal Transformation Lab, met in the morning to work on a “Team GRID” dynamic in order to complete the structure and functionality of our whole team. At noon we had finished half of the grid and convened to meet the following monday. I am also a real estate agent, and later on the day, I expected to receive an offer for a house that I am selling. We did not know it yet, but we were in for a nasty surprise later on the day.
At five o’clock in the afternoon, my wife called me from the supermarket letting me know that the lights had gone out at the mall. I was at my home office working on a real estate deal and noticed that we had run out of electricity too. At first I thought that this was one of the “apagones”, power outages circumscribed to certain areas, that had been increasing in frequency in the last years, but at dusk I noticed something odd. I have a privileged view of the eastern part of Caracas, which lights up at dusk just like any big city, but this time I sensed that something terribly wrong was happening when all that I could see was a huge, dark shadow were the city was supposed to be. There was also this strange, deep silence, broken only with the sound of the emergency power plants of the industrial park located just below my neighborhood.
That night we frantically tried to look for any information of what was going on and we kept hitting walls, no phones, no cellular signal, no cable, no TV, no WhatsApp, no-nothing. I felt an empty space in my cognition where all those stimuli used to shove each other apart just a short time ago. A sense of urgency took its place with phrases like “where are the batteries?”, “have you seen a candle somewhere?” “I remember seeing that flashlight somewhere near here”, meanwhile, we were lighting our way up and down with our cell phones’ flashlights, which we would regret later on. We are fortunate to have a gas kitchen and we were able to cook diner.
After dinner I sat at the terrace observing the deep blackness of the city underneath, and the unusually clear sky filled with bright stars, and thought about our own vulnerability, and the fragility of our tiny minuscule life. I reflected on how busy we are in our lives pursuing mostly material and futile things down here, while the majesty of eternity watches us from above, just like I was watching the dark shadow of the city below. With that overwhelming feeling I went to sleep, trusting that the next morning the situation somehow would be resolved.
2nd Day, Friday 8th.
I was wrong, having grossly underestimated both, the gravity of the situation, and the ineptness of the regime to solve the problem. The only information that we could gather was by word of mouth, and every mouth we listen to had a friend at a high place who had told him that…, you get the picture. Therefore, when the energy minister tweeted that the #Blackout had been caused by “a sabotage that was part of the electrical warfare against the estate…” , I got really scared, because I instantly knew that this power failure was serious s…, not because the country might have been attacked by aliens, or worse, by the government´s favorite scapegoat, @realDonaldTrump, but because this minister was the same guy who had blamed every power failure that had happened in the country in the last years on causes like “vandalism”, “a rat”, “the Colombian ultra right movement”, or, and this is my favorite, to “a bamboo stick”.
The lack of electricity was a major problem in itself, and eventually you can survive without phones, Internet, TV, social media and the likes. But there is a service that function with electric power on which your life depends. It is the water system! Water is life, you cannot possible survive without that vital liquid. Caracas is a metropolis with 5 million inhabitants, most of them living in high rise buildings and slums located in the hills surrounding the city.
Furthermore, Caracas is located 800 meters above sea level, on a narrow valley surrounded by mountains. The city’s water supply comes from a series of dams located more than 50 miles away at the sea level. Thus, the water is pumped up trough three systems that feed the city’s water grid. Even if the water reaches the city it has do do it with enough pressure to reach the highest buildings and hills. It is not an easy job, but like the electrical grid of the country, they need adequate planning, investing and maintenance. The XXI Century Socialism that has ruled the country for the last two decades, not only failed on all three, but they also added a fourth element, massive and widespread corruption. (For the sake of transparency, I have added two more links that support the corruption statement, Pacific Standard, and Transparency International)
It is impossible for me to report with much detail. Nor trying to imagine the public health system which had already collapsed by the government’s neglect before the blackout began. Hospitals that did not have even medicine and other basic supplies, including lack of emergency plants, are shot down, and the ones that had the latter can only function for a limited time until the plants run out of fuel or burn out for lack of maintenance. Again, nobody is taking care of that except the medical personnel themselves. It was impossible for me to imagine what would happen if this crisis lasted one or two more days, I felt overwhelmed by the lack of veracity in the information and the irresponsibility of the government, and I felt that I needed to get away from it, so, I decided to go to where nature offers us such a relief , the Avila mountain.
A Trail In El Avila
The physical effort, the contact with nature, the view of Caracas from above, and practicing my favorite hobby, shooting pictures away, allowed me to literally soar above the problems, and to observe the observer — myself from another point of view, allowing me to redirect my attention away from the problem and to focus on my response to the crisis.
When I was on my way down, I stopped at a spot where I had a beautiful view of the city below, and to the extreme right, I could see one of the towers that held the high tension lines that bring electricity to the city. I was taking a picture when I suddenly heard this loud rumbling sound, at first I thought of an earthquake, but nothing was moving, then it hit me, it was the sound of the high tension electrical current flowing through those dead wires. I was listening to the sound of light! Llegó la luz! I screamed, and the people walking close by looked at me and smiled. How cool was that? Our troubles were over. Or so I thought…
Driving back home, it caught my attention that the city was chaotic to say the least. The street lights were not working, people walked hurriedly, and the traffic was crazier than usual. When I got home, the energy had not arrived yet. It turns out that only certain areas of the city had electricity, because I could see large spots of it in total darkness.
3rd Day, Saturday 9th.
We entered the third day with the electricity going out again in the areas that it had come the day before. In the home front, the food in the freezer was getting warm, and we continued with our new routine of bucketing water out of our emergency tank. We spent most of the day looking for drinking water and ice. As it turned out, most people in the city were doing the same. At the end of the day, after expending precious fuel, we managed to buy 4 bags of ice. However, some of the most unfortunate ones took extreme measures, like bucketing water from the Guaire river, which is polluted by the city sewer system.
“I’d rather die of a disease later, than of thirst now”. A man drinking water from the Guaire river.
Most gas stations in the country were shut down, only a few remained operational because they had emergency plants, they had long lines of vehicles waiting to be served.
Food was another urgent issue that the government hadn’t even begun to address. People in popular areas, who were already hungry and desperate, were instigated by the “colectivos”, bands or government armed thugs, to loot the businesses of the “capitalist pigs”.
This strategy serves the government in two fronts: First, by increasing chaos Maduro easily, but irresponsibly, takes the public attention away from the real causes of the crisis. Second, not only he produces fear in the population, substituting the rage that they are feeling, but also he shows to the opposition that he is capable of extreme measures to keep himself in power, regardless of the cost in human lives.
After two days of chaos, Maduro the usurper appeared on national TV “facing his responsibilities” and attributing the cause of the blackout to @realDonaldTrump , who supposedly had “cyber attacked the electrical grid of the country”.
He forgot to mention that the electrical grid, and most hydro and thermal power plants were built between the seventies and nineties of the past century, their controls are analog, not digital, and they are not networked. Neither he referred to the humanitarian crisis caused by the blackout, nor he said when and how the electric power would be restituted.
It was a weird night, I could not sleep at all, my worst nightmares seemed to materialize that night, and I decided to do what I knew was going to channel all those worries out of my system — writing. I woke up from bed at 1.00 o’clock in the morning and began to write about the blackout with the help of a candlelight and a little lantern.
4th Day, Sunday 10th.
We woke up sunday to a breakfast composed of the food most likely to rot. Later we focussed on locating family or friends who might have electricity and were willing to spare some freezer or refrigerator space. We found them and took our food there.
It was amazing how the sense of community showed up in this crisis, every chat, group of neighbors, family, friends, etc, offered help, shelter, food, refrigeration and water to their kind.
At nine o’clock pm the electricity came to large parts of the city, including my neighborhood. We used the rest of the night trying to communicate with family and friends who were very worried because the lack of news and of communications. Sleep came easy because I thought that the worst part was over, so tomorrow would be about catching up on things.
5th Day , Monday 11th.
We woke up the next morning to find out that we were without electricity once more. It turns out that a substation that serves 1/3 of the city blew up. Later in the day the usurper went on national tv, showed videos of the explosion and said that “The United States’ imperialist government ordered this attack”.
Later, it was revealed that the inexperienced and incompetent personnel of the electrical ministry connected the power that goes to a city or town so hurriedly that the sudden overcharge blowed up the transformers at the substations.
He also said that they had detained two people and that they were “talking” (Everyone in Venezuela knows that when one of these kleptocrats speaks about their police detaining someone, is an euphemism that means “we are torturing him until he dies or sings”. Take the example of Fernando Alban, who according to the regime, “committed suicide by jumping off” the 10th floor of the secret police headquarters).
America’s Society/Council of the Americas gives this summary for the day. “Venezuela marks its fourth day of a national blackout, and outage experts say could continue indefinitely, according to a report from The New York Times. The article details how the San Geronimo B substation, which supplies power from the Guri hydroelectric dam to 80 percent of Venezuelans, failed on Thursday. The Maduro government tried four times since then to restart the Guri’s turbines with no success; the latest attempt even caused a second substation to explode and internal reports suggest a major equipment failure. Government plant workers were told to stay home on Monday, and the Maduro government called a national holiday, closing schools and businesses across the country”.
“Energy experts, Venezuelan power sector contractors and current and former Corpoelec employees have dismissed accusations of sabotage, saying the blackout was the result of years of underinvestment, corruption and brain drain”. Anatoly Kurmanaev, New York Times
6th Day, Tuesday 12th.
Early tuesday the electricity to most areas of Caracas was restituted. The country woke up to the news that one of the detainees for the “sabotage” that originated the blackout was Luis Carlos Diaz, a young radio anchorman, blogger and human rights activist who specializes in 2.0 networks. It is interesting to know that he had a complete record of the regime’s interferences and blockades of the social networks and independent news stations operating on the internet. Those are the only means that the people in Venezuela have in order to be reasonably informed, due to the draconian censure that the regime has imposed on radio, the cable operators, and open signal TV.
On sunday, he had left the radio station and went home on his bicycle to be with his cancer patient wife. He never made it.
His wife, who is under cancer chemotherapy treatment, reported him missing on the social media. At 4.00 am monday, she suddenly woke up to a horrific nightmare, finding his handcuffed husband surrounded by a swat team armed to the teeth with their faces covered by sky masks, that had stormed her home and were searching for Luis’ computer and other belongings. He managed to say to her “they kidnapped and hit me”.
The next day, #LiberenA LuisCarlos (Free Luis Carlos) was Twitter’s 10th trending topic for the day. The government, faced with such international pressure, quickly arranged him to court that night, and released him provisionally under the charges of “instigation of rebellion”, prohibiting him to publishing or declaring anything. Paralelly, Geovany Zambrano, apparently the second detainee, a Guri dam worker, had been missing for 20 hours (to the date of this publication, he is still missing). Previously, Angel Sequea, an engineer from the same facility, who had denounced on WhatsApp the condition of the dam and turbines, had been forcibly detained by the secret police, and killed in his cell.
At mid morning the regime’s General Prosecutor announced that he was pressing charges of “Conspiracy” against Juan Guaido, the opposition leader who has galvanized the national resistance against the regime.
According to The New York Times, “There is no end in sight for the blackout”. Here is an extract from the article:
“Energy experts, Venezuelan power sector contractors and current and former Corpoelec employees have dismissed accusations of sabotage, saying the blackout was the result of years of underinvestment, corruption and brain drain. The San Geronimo B substation connects eight out of Venezuela’s 10 largest cities to the Guri hydropower plant via one of the longest high-voltage lines in the world. When visited on Sunday, the substation’s usual buzz of high-voltage cross currents had been replaced by total silence. A cow roamed amid the transformers. Several National Guard soldiers and a unit of police commandos were at the substation, but no employees were there. The substation is vital “to supply the country in a stable way,” said José Aguilar, a Venezuelan power industry expert based in Chicago. Its paralysis means power is unlikely to be restored nationally… The government declared Monday a holiday for schools and public workers”.
Later Developments
The US government withdraws the personnel of the US Embassy in Caracas. American Airlines suspends flights in and out of Venezuela amid unrest.
Conclusion.
As you might have guessed, there is no conclusion to this ever deepening crisis, at least not before we get rid of this regime somehow.
When any member of the kleptocracy has tried to explain any system breakdown that the country has faced in the last twenty years, be it in the economy, the environment, the government services, the basic supply of food and medicines, the national debt, etc. In everything they do, you can identify a basic language manipulation structure. I explored that language manipulation in my article How To Stand Up To A Populist Regime.
Everyone, from Maduro down to the last kleptocrat, will give you the same type of explanation: First, they deny the problem, the real issues are never addressed, like lack of expertise, lack of maintenance, widespread corruption, etc. Second, they give an excuse — “a rat”, “a sabotage by”, and of course “the ____ war”, fill the blank with economic, electric, cybernetic, hydric, food, medicine. Again, take your pick or make one up. And last but not least, they look for a convenient scapegoat — the opposition was the favorite of the regime until @realDonalTrump appeared in the political scene. The regime’s policy therefore, is crystal clear. Problem denied, problem that does not exists, and if it does exist is someone’s fault. If you believe the latter, we the people of Venezuela, are on our own.
@realDonaldTrump is everyone’s favorite scapegoat, and when in january of this year the people of Venezuela raised against the regime once more, but this time with coherent actions taken by the new interim President Juan Guaido, the regime found their lifesaver in “this is a coup from the empire led by Donald Trump against a government of the people”. Please, take a minute and imagine that this is the latest chapter of the Stars Wars saga, and Trump is Darth Vader (I know that you probably are going to say “yes, he is!”). If that is true, then Maduro the Butcher is Obi-One Kenobi. As it turns out, neither is true.
Dear reader, you have to understand that this is the land of the “XXI Century Socialism”, a political philosophy that has the dubious honor of having bankrupted in two decades a once thriving country, that has caused the worst Complex Humanitarian Emergency (CHE) that the world has seen in this century, forcing 4 million people to migrate causing the worst crisis of its kind in Latin American history. They have turned the country into a sort of Macondo, using “realismo mágico” (magic realism) as their leadership style. But I, and 30 million Venezuelans know better.
Why? First, because when you live in an authoritarian kleptocracy, or a mafia state (take your pick), whose leader Nicolas Maduro is better known as The Butcher, and lately The Usurper, and whose top military brass direct the Cartel of the Suns, you develop a sixth sense that helps you detect the real reality that lies underneath the magic realism that those leaders try to impose on you. Second, the Venezuelan people are freedom lovers, and we will keep on resisting until sooner or later the truth surfaces, specially when it does with hurricane force.
Please take a look at your everyday life independently of the country where you live. Every day to day act that people do, transparently and almost automatically in the rest of the world, like finding food in the supermarket, medicines in the pharmacy, getting medical attention at a hospital, water from the tap, cash from the bank, turning on the lights, filling the tank with fuel, buying a spare part for the car, and so on, is a miracle in Venezuela.
All of those failed day to day acts are the symptoms of the multisystemic collapse of a failed state. This is a country that has been destroyed and burned out in the bonfire of the XXI Century Socialism vanity.
And what about the Venezuelan people? Please pay attention to what I am going to say to you.
If something is not done soon enough to remedy this situation, Maduro the Butcher will go down in history to the place where he belongs, side by side with Milosevic, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler and the likes. But then my dear friend, it would have been be too late. A genocide by any other name would have been committed, while the world, once more, remained silently watching by the sidelines.
May we all be blessed
Helio Borges
