{"id":210243,"date":"2019-04-16T04:28:15","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T08:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=210243"},"modified":"2019-04-16T04:28:15","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T08:28:15","slug":"after-years-of-crisis-venezuelans-wonder-what-is-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/04\/16\/after-years-of-crisis-venezuelans-wonder-what-is-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"After years of crisis, Venezuelans wonder what is ‘normal’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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At first glance, the graffiti reading \u201cUn pais normal?\u201d seems ambiguous in Venezuela’s frayed capital, where the government brandishes slogans like clenched fists and the opposition lobs insults at President Nicolas Maduro. (File photo<\/a>: Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CARACAS, Venezuela \u2014 A normal country?<\/p>\n

At first glance, the graffiti reading \u201cUn pais normal?\u201d seems ambiguous in Venezuela’s frayed capital, where the government brandishes slogans like clenched fists and the opposition lobs insults at President Nicolas Maduro. Actually, the message on a Caracas wall is a tart comment in a place where talk of what is normal, or should be normal, has become common and touches nerves.<\/p>\n

Normalcy elsewhere in the world doesn’t fit Venezuela, where extremes are the norm.<\/p>\n

Two men say they are president. The worst nationwide blackouts last month played havoc with millions of people. Hyperinflation has slashed many monthly salaries to the equivalent of a few dollars. One-tenth of the population \u2014 over 3 million and growing \u2014 has fled, causing Latin America’s biggest migration crisis.<\/p>\n

Don’t think of Venezuela’s chaos as the new normal, warns opposition leader Juan Guaido.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere can’t be normality when we Venezuelans can’t even communicate with our family members and some have to look for water in the Guaire (river) to slake the thirst of their children,\u201d Guaido tweeted during electricity outages in March.<\/p>\n

Guaido’s supporters worry that anger over the country’s escalating problems will fade and therefore extend the rule of Maduro, whose re-election last year was denounced as illegitimate by Guaido as well as the United States and about 50 other nations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not normal,\u201d read a cardboard poster at an opposition rally in Caracas this month. It listed miserable conditions now synonymous with Venezuela: a lack of water and light, commuter trains that resemble saunas (when they work), hospitals without enough medication, and self-exile as a way to survive.<\/p>\n

Maduro, meanwhile, tries to project reassurance, saying the water supply is \u201cnormalizing\u201d and announcing an electricity rationing plan as the grid stabilizes, for now, in Caracas and other politically key areas. But he also stokes an idea of crisis with references to a \u201cpermanent battle\u201d against the United States and other perceived enemies allegedly bent on unraveling Venezuela’s \u201cBolivarian Revolution\u201d and its socialist system.<\/p>\n

Maduro’s government has described migration from Venezuela as \u201cnormal\u201d and denied there is a humanitarian crisis, despite considerable evidence that there is. In tacit recognition that it can’t cope on its own, the government has agreed to allow the\u00a0International\u00a0Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to begin delivering medical aid this month.<\/p>\n

While a Peruvian foreign minister once described Maduro as \u201cnot a normal person,\u201d the Venezuelan leader can dish it out as well. Last week, he said U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence’s behaviour was \u201cabnormal\u201d because he so frequently \u2014 obsessively, in Maduro’s view \u2014 criticizes the Venezuelan government.<\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is also talking up normality. On Sunday, he met with Venezuelan migrants in the Colombian border city of Cucuta and said Venezuela lacked medicine and other basic items \u201cwhich under normal circumstances, in any normal country, would be readily available.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Maduro and Guaido spar over what normal means and who is to blame for Venezuela’s shocking decline, a lot of Venezuelans are too preoccupied to gauge their own diminishing expectations.<\/p>\n

Some residents of the poor Caracas neighbourhood of La Vega say the flow of tap water to their homes hasn’t been reliable for more than a year, long before Venezuela’s recent shortages. This week, several dozen blocked a road and banged pots in anger over the current system of receiving water from cisterns.<\/p>\n

\u201cPiped water \u2014 we want to get water the way we did before,\u201d said protester Jhony Peraza. \u201cBecause what do we do with water for one day, two days? And then? Afterward, we don’t have more water and then we have the same problem again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Venezuelan catastrophe has unspooled for years, fueled by corruption, incompetence and oil dependency. The reality is wrenching for a nation whose idea of normal in now-distant good times encompassed flowing oil revenues, booming construction and generous government handouts.<\/p>\n

A column in El Impulso, a Venezuelan media outlet, reflected on a country seemingly going off the rails.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is out of place. Everything and nothing is the same thing in the country. Salaries and basic needs aren’t aligned. The normal country that we once knew is lost, mutilated, abducted,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve become,\u201d the commentary concluded, \u201can abnormal country.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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