Déjà Vu in the Dark in Venezuela

The heat woke me up. “Damn it, the fan stopped working. I should have taken that deal to buy an air conditioner in installments,” I thought amidst absolute silence.

I got up to take a look, but upon moving the switch back and forth, nothing happened. I thought maybe there was a problem in my block, which sometimes has short isolated electrical outages. But as I gazed out the window, everything looked dark.

I grabbed my cell phone, turned on data and barely had reception. All I managed to get was a message from a Telegram news channel. Venezuela’s communications minister reported that at 4:50 in the morning on that Friday, August 30, the country had suffered an electric sabotage that affected several states.

“More than one hour ago? How many states are we talking about?” I asked myself. Usually, Caracas has the privilege of being spared of blackouts. I tried to get on Twitter, which now requires activating a VPN, but there was no connection.

“This must be serious,” I thought. My cell phone was down to 10 percent battery. “That’s what you get for believing that your phone might explode if left connected all night,” I chastised myself. It was almost 6 am, so at any moment my next-door neighbor would fulfill a time-honored tradition when there is no power in the morning: bringing me coffee. My stove is electric while she has an old gas cylinder, which is often a nightmare to refill but occasionally becomes a privilege.

And there my neighbor was. “Here you go darling, I put it in a thermos so it will stay hot. There’s no power in 17 states, so this will last a while,” she told me.

Seventeen states? Another connection spasm let me know it was all 24. My mind immediately flew back to 6 pm on March 7, 2019, when we thought power would come back “any minute now” and we ended up living the biggest nationwide blackout in recent history. It was five days of darkness, uncertainty and chaos.

During those days, water ran out, there was no fuel or public transportation. There was no way to purchase things, hyperinflation had run bolívares (in cash) out of circulation, electronic payment networks were down, and up until this moment it was very uncommon for people to use US dollars. Food scarcity became the norm, and though there was inspiring solidarity, there was no shortage of opportunists charging people to recharge phones. There was also a self-proclaimed “interim president” attempting a coup, though that seems less and less serious every time we look back.

The traumatic memories led my anxiety to shoot up, but this time it was 6 am and not 6 pm. People were not rushing out of work as darkness fell. So later in the morning, I went out for a walk. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see the streets quite differently. Between buses, cars and motorbikes, there was a lot of movement. Kids were fortunately on vacation from school. Most businesses were open, and not under candlelight like in 2019, plenty had working generators, others made use of rechargeable lightbulbs. Some card payment terminals were running on batteries, digital payments worked intermittently, and US dollars are now much more common.

I also took the opportunity to buy fruit, bread and some canned food with a $20 bill. In contrast, in 2019 I felt like the richest woman alive when I was able to buy a 20L water jug thanks to $1 I had hidden in my wallet thanks to this weird Venezuelan holiday tradition of tucking away a “lucky bill” that will bring prosperity in the new year.

Still, the underlying issue was the same: no one had electricity. With no idea how long it would last, people started wondering if they should head home early to avoid being stranded in the street after dark. Everyone wondered about the fate of the food in their fridges.

After the walk, I got in my car to charge my phone and see if the radio would shed light (pun intended) on the situation. Private networks said nothing because the official sources were likewise mum, save for a couple of early messages on social media. 

Some broadcasters echoed a complaint: the police were forcing people to circulate and not gather in certain spots along the highway or far into the wealthy east where there was better reception. I don’t know if this was to avoid big concentrations or simply instill a sense of normalcy. The latter was confirmed as soon as I switched to the public stations, which had unified their messages: an electric attack but there was absolute peace, calm and normality. So, an attack against the electric grid but business as usual.

A few reports went further, talking about people going to this or that church, going out to walk their dogs, street vendors offering strawberries with cream, etc. Having worked for ten years in state outlets, I immediately recognized an editorial directive from above. Still, I have to admit that the peaceful atmosphere helped me, and surely many others, reign in the stress.

When high-ranking officials finally spoke, hours after power began being restored, we heard about something that could have been the worst attack in history. But we did not get any further explanation, only a pledge that the guilty ones would face justice. We are still waiting for updates.

The present condition of the electric grid, with its frequent fluctuations and regular outages away from the capital, is an absolute mystery. We don’t know whether it’s generation or transmission that is under strain, there are no energy-saving campaigns and the power cuts are never announced.

Though the response from authorities meant that the situation was handled much better than in 2019, the government’s communications policy hasn’t changed much. There is still a belief that resorting to euphemisms will make reality more manageable and an addiction to the strategy of “announcing announcements” that seldom arrive.

However, and perhaps most importantly, the Venezuelan people’s response abilities and the economic dynamics have transformed. Solidarity networks, the immediate concern for our neighbors, remain intact. And response times have clearly improved as well. We only spent around half a day in the dark.

Maybe we have all learned something, even if in far-from-ideal circumstances. After all, when compared to five days (and that was the best-case scenario), a 12-hour blackout does not sound so bad!

Jessica Dos Santos is a Venezuelan university professor, journalist and writer whose work has appeared in outlets such as RT, Épale CCS magazine and Investig’Action. She is the author of the book “Caracas en Alpargatas” (2018). She’s won the Aníbal Nazoa Journalism Prize in 2014 and received honorable mentions in the Simón Bolívar National Journalism prize in 2016 and 2018.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Translated by Venezuelanalysis.