2024-07-28 23:15:23
A large black spot of Petroleum over green tea-colored waters sprinkled with drops of Gasoline: It is not a work of abstract art, but the sad reality of Maracaibo lakethe largest of South America and symbol of the vertiginous decline of Venezuela.
Maracaibo was the prosperous oil capital of Venezuela, but today it is a city hit hard by the crisis: blackouts are daily, fuel is scarce and its population was forced to leave. The city symbolizes the deterioration that gives context to the presidential elections of July 28in which the leftist Nicolás Maduro will seek re-election against the opposition Edmundo González Urrutia, representative of the disqualified leader Maria Corina Machado.
The shores of the lake are black. Rubber boots are stained with oil, shirts soaked with sweat. In the stifling heat, fishermen shovel away the sticky oil that accumulates on the shore and hampers their work. It’s a piece of work.
“We don’t want the lake to run out. We cry, we suffer with what is happening,” he says. Yordi Vicuña, 34-year-old fisherman, saying that fishing has dropped dramatically and that they continually have to replace ropes and nets damaged by oil.
Experts believe that the collapse of the oil industry, subject to US sanctions since 2019, began much earlier and is a response to mismanagement and corruption in PDVSA.
In Cabimas, on the eastern shore of the lake, only a few seesaws are in operation. Dozens of small hotels and restaurants look abandoned and give the place the appearance of a ghost town.
Close to the Bajo Grande refinery, the beach Puyo It also appears black with oil.
“Families from all over came here to visit, to eat fish and sancocho, and to bathe as well.
But now, down there, more than 30 centimeters thick of oil, nobody comes,” he says. Guillermo Albeniz Cano, 64 years old, who survives on barter.
Only one table is occupied. The crab fishermen are playing dominoes. They would rather work, but there is too much crude oil in the water. “We wait until the oil recedes.”
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2024-07-28 23:15:23