It’s about a year since the beginning of days of a nightmare that hasn’t happened before in Venezuela. On Thursday, March 7, 2019, at 4:55 p.m., a blackout began that would end up being the biggest in the country’s recent history: it was a power outage that lasted at least 96 hours in Caracas, and up to seven continuous days in other states of the country. It was caused by a failure in the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant, in El Guri Dam, in the south.
At least 18 of the country’s 23 states were affected. The impact was greater because the blackout included the capital region, where power cuts are not as frequent as in the interior.
In Venezuela, there were already continuous interruptions in service since 2009. In 2010, then President Hugo Chávez decreed the “electrical emergency”. Although the official argument was “the drought” caused by the climate phenomenon El Niño, there are journalistic reports that show public disinvestment in the electricity sector and the subsequent corruption in the granting of contracts for the equipment and construction of electric plants. Electricity rationing has since become regular in the interior of Venezuela, Zulia included. Zulia is the oil state par excellence, now one of the most affected by the power cuts.
During the days of the great blackout that began on March 7, 2019, food was spoiling in the refrigerators; water also left when the pumps were turned off; shops closed; equipment in hospitals and other health centers stopped working; the subway was paralyzed; telephony, both cellular and fixed, stopped.
As the Guardian reported at the time, the opposition counted 26 deaths as a result of the long power outage.
Only a few privileged people had a power plant.
With the crisis, speculation soon appeared (much in dollars instead of bolivars), but also solidarity among networks of neighbors, friends, family, and even strangers.
In all these months after the great blackout, the crisis in the electricity service has continued in the interior. Rationing has been one of the main causes of the most recent migrations from there to the Venezuelan capital. A report by Rosanna Battistelli and Alfredo Morales for El Pitazo shows data from the Committee of People Affected by Power Outages: “23,860 power failures throughout the country” between January and May 2019 –this includes months before the big blackout–. The report also quotes a study by the Venezuelan Public Services Observatory (Ovsp), according to which the cities of San Cristóbal (Táchira), Maracaibo (Zulia) and Barquisimeto (Lara), in western Venezuela, “registered power cuts almost every day”, during May and June 2019.
“My children were crying because they were tired, it was those tears that made me pack my bags and move to the so-called branch of heaven,” Francisco Acosta, who moved with his family from Barquisimeto to Caracas – “the branch of heaven” – told the authors of the article. Energy rationing in that city, the capital of the western state of Lara, is a daily occurrence. After March 7 up to to July 2019, there were four more blackouts there.
Another article by Francisco Rincón for Cinco 8 says that power cuts increased in Zulia since the big blackout. “In the sectors where electricity service was rationed at least 12 hours a day, people have spent 4,248 hours without light, some 177 days.”
In this state, the great supplier of Venezuelan oil manna, they cook on firewood “or they go to bed without eating,” reports Rincón. Zulia is a hot zone. The wind chill temperature can reach 40 degrees. “Children cry because they feel so hot. It’s hard to tell them that we don’t have cold water [to drink]. We don’t know if it’s rationing or a blackout. Every time the light comes on, we all scream,” Sara, a Zulian woman, tells the reporter.
José Sánchez, who lives in a neighborhood in northern Maracaibo, the capital of the state, also gives her testimony: “We see how the water is lost because of all the leaking in the street, and we can’t turn on the pumps because we don’t have electricity. We feel powerless because sometimes we don’t even have anything to wash the children with.”
Acosta writes that for everyday actions such as making a bank transfer or communicating with family members, many people have to travel long distances to reach places where there is a telephone signal and internet. “This reality forces them to walk even kilometers or to move around in vehicles, which exposes them to insecurity. In the particular case of women, it also makes them more vulnerable to physical, psychological and sexual attacks.”
This year, with the anniversary of the great blackout very near, the specter of those difficult days of the big blackout is once again haunting. Some fear another one coming.
Between February 29 and March 1, there were power outages in the states of Mérida, Trujillo, Barinas, Portuguesa, Táchira, Cojedes, Apure, Yaracuy, Lara, Amazonas, Carabobo, Falcón, Zulia and Guárico. The information came from the NetBlocks internet observatory, which identifies the internet service drops in Venezuela. As a matter of fact, due to the interruptions in the electrical service, on Sunday afternoon about 35% of the connectivity in Venezuela was off.
That weekend, the Caribbean city of Puerto Cabello, in north-central Venezuela, went over 48 hours without electricity service.
In Caracas, people reported power outages in parts of the center and east.