New York Times Reporter: The Current Crisis In Venezuela Is 'Almost Unimagnable'

A demonstrator takes part in a protest against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, March 31. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

NPR: An 'Almost Unimaginable' Crisis In Venezuela

Venezuelans have been suffering one calamity after the next, but in recent weeks, much of Venezuela has had to go long stretches without electricity.

New York Times journalist Nicholas Casey was in Maracaibo, Venezuela, in March when the country was hit by a six-day blackout, considered at the time the worst in Venezuela's history. He says people initially assumed that the outage had been planned and that power would be restored after a few hours. But as hours stretched into days, the country fell into chaos.

"By the fourth day of the power outage, that was when you started to hear shots getting fired in the street," Casey says. "People were beginning to loot, and the store owners were coming out to defend their stores."

As Andes bureau chief for the Times, Casey has been covering the deepening economic and political chaos in Venezuela. He says the current crisis in the country is "almost unimaginable."

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WNU Editor: These two paragraphs from the above post sum up why the current migrant crisis in Latin America and Venezuela's part in it is becoming very dangerous to everyone ....

.... On one end, these countries are trying to pressure [President] Maduro now to step down, because they know that this migrant crisis is going to get even worse the more politically unstable the country gets. Countries like Colombia understand that Venezuela used to be a country that took their immigrants, especially during the darkest days of the paramilitaries and the guerrilla fighting, but at the same time, they understand they can't take every Venezuelan that comes.

And not only that, because of this crisis that's getting worse and worse, because of lack of medicine mainly, people are coming into these countries with diseases that should be controlled in Venezuela — diseases like diphtheria, malaria, tuberculosis have made a huge comeback in Venezuela. So if you're a neighboring country like Brazil or Colombia or a country like Ecuador or Peru, who are farther away but are also taking immigrants, this is a very scary situation that's right on your doorstep.