The Associated Press Departs From Venezuela

[Right_in_Virginia]

The Associated Press Departs From Venezuela
Powerline, Aug 2, 2017

The time comes when a country has spiraled so far downhill that it is no longer safe for journalists to cover its demise. That time has arrived in Venezuela. Hannah Dreier, who has been the Associated Press’s reporter in Venezuela since 2014, writes that she is going home: “Departing AP reporter looks back at Venezuela’s slide.” While her article doesn’t say this, it sounds like she won’t be replaced.

I don’t know Ms. Dreier, and I assume you have to be left-leaning to work for the Associated Press. But Dreier’s reporting from Venezuela has been clear-eyed and at times harrowing–appropriately so for a country in the last stages of socialism.

Dreier’s farewell article begins with her apprehension by a pair of Maduro’s thugs:

The first thing the muscled-up men did was take my cellphone. They had stopped me on the street as I left an interview in the hometown of the late President Hugo Chavez and wrangled me into a black SUV.
 ***
“What should we do with her?” the driver asked. The man next to me pulled his own head up by the hair and made a slitting gesture across his throat

.


More:  http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/08/the-associated-press-departs-from-venezuela.php

[Oceander]

Hopefully an older, more civilized Venezuela will be reborn from the ashes. 

[Right_in_Virginia]

Interesting  eye witness account:

Departing AP reporter looks back at Venezuela’s slide
Associated Press, Aug 3, 2017

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The first thing the muscled-up men did was take my cellphone. They had stopped me on the street as I left an interview in the hometown of the late President Hugo Chavez and wrangled me into a black SUV.

Heart pounding in the back seat with the men and two women, I watched the low cinderblock homes zoom by and tried to remember the anti-kidnapping class I’d taken in preparation for moving to Venezuela. The advice had been to try to humanize yourself.

“What should we do with her?” the driver asked. The man next to me pulled his own head up by the hair and made a slitting gesture across his throat.

What might a humanizing reaction to that be?

I had thought that being a foreign reporter protected me from the growing chaos in Venezuela. But with the country unraveling so fast, I was about to learn there was no way to remain insulated.

I came to Caracas as a correspondent for The Associated Press in 2014, just in time to witness the country’s accelerating descent into a humanitarian catastrophe.

<snip>

The collapse has been so quick that the trappings of flusher times have not yet disappeared. The capital is still filled with fine restaurants, though tables are often empty. Luxury car dealerships still line the streets and lure people with access to dollars or who have gotten rich off corruption. Many Venezuelans have bodies sculpted by plastic surgery and movie star smiles from years of braces and professional whitening.

At the same time, crime has become so pervasive that it fades into the background of even the swankiest places. One afternoon, I walked past two men in motorcycle helmets talking with customers on a restaurant patio. When I asked the cashier inside for a bottle of water, she gave me a funny look. Once the men left, she explained that they had just robbed everyone outside at gunpoint. Hadn’t I noticed?



Much more:  https://apnews.com/b951badb1ac24ce0b3d0e8d7b8acf903

[thackney]

From the original source article:

Departing AP reporter looks back at Venezuela’s slide
https://apnews.com/b951badb1ac24ce0b3d0e8d7b8acf903/Departing-AP-reporter-looks-back-at-Venezuela's-slide

Then true hunger crept into where I lived. People started digging through the trash at all hours, pulling out vegetable peelings and soggy pizza crusts and eating them on the spot. That seemed like rock bottom. Until my local bakery started organizing lines each morning, not to buy bread but to eat trash.

People waited for their turn to hunt through black bags of bakery garbage. A young woman found a box of muffin crumbs. A teenage boy focused on finding juice containers and drinking whatever remained.