CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela can seem like a place of dissonant extremes.
Since the United States invaded and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, in January, the country’s political elite has been talking about an economic recovery, driven by President Donald Trump’s promises to “unlock prosperity” by taking control of Venezuela’s struggling oil industry.
At the same time, hundreds of political prisoners, many emaciated and traumatized after years of deplorable conditions in fetid prisons, were released. Most are afraid to talk about their suffering, afraid that the government, essentially the same except for the loss of Maduro, will return to arrest them. Hundreds of others remain incarcerated.
But between the blessed and the cursed, there is a vast middle ground where almost all other Venezuelans — teachers, doctors, construction workers, street vendors — spend their days sorting through the rubble of a devastated economy. For this considerable portion of the population, US intervention has changed little so far and offers only a vague prospect of improvement.
Recently, four political science and economics professors gathered to drink coffee around a plastic table on the campus where they teach, the Central University of Venezuela, in the capital, Caracas. They recounted how a downward economic spiral over Maduro’s 13 years in power pushed them into poverty.
“In the last five years, the currency has devalued so much that my salary was equivalent to US$4 a month. In other words, I forgot I had a salary,” said Pedro García, 59, who now heads a retired teachers’ union.
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Over time, he said he canceled more and more classes to sell homemade food to people waiting in line to fill up with subsidized fuel at a gas station near his apartment. Then he sold his mother-in-law’s bed, her freezer and his bicycle. His pension is a pittance — “not enough to keep me from starving,” he said.
His colleague, Carlos Hermoso, an economist, leaned forward, furrowed his eyebrows and said that the US promise to reinvest profits from the sale of Venezuelan oil in the country could give the illusion of “growth”, but that it would be a “mirage” for the vast majority of Venezuelans.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hope the United States turns Venezuela into its factory in the competitive war with China,” said Hermoso, making a point of clarifying that he would never have such a desire if the situation weren’t so desperate. “That would be a step forward for us.”
The Trump administration says it has begun sending millions of dollars from the sale of Venezuelan oil to the government in Caracas and that it will “ensure these funds are spent transparently and for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.”
Rebuilding the oil industry alone could cost more than $180 billion and take more than a decade, according to analysts at Rystad Energy, a research firm. Even so, the country would produce less than at its peak, in the 1990s.
The value of the Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, has continued to fall since Maduro’s overthrow, with a devaluation of at least 36% since January, which leaves the monthly minimum wage at an exorbitant level of 27 cents on the dollar.
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Although the United States has been active in the Venezuelan economy, it has not taken steps to reinforce the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves, as it recently did with Argentina.
On Thursday, Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez announced that while the minimum wage would remain the same, workers would receive bonuses totaling $240 per month. Independent studies show that, on food alone, a Venezuelan family of five spends, on average, US$610 per month.
Public coffers remain practically empty and basic services such as transport, education and health are in shambles. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans fled the country during Maduro’s twelve years in power, and very few saw enough hope in his successor to want to return.
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Pessimism and distrust
Venezuela’s transition is still in its early stages, and reversing years of decline will not be quick or easy.
But for now, pessimism dominates.
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One morning in Caricuao, once considered a desirable dormitory town in Caracas, nestled amid greenery near a zoo, a line to board rickety buses stretched hundreds of people long. Many of the buses were welded parts: a Dodge cab to a Chevrolet chassis.
The line passed under a metro station in the city — once considered the best in South America — but throughout the morning commute that day, not a single train appeared.
Despite the humiliation, the scene was order and calm. Or perhaps resignation.
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Yelmira Jiménez, head of an association of bus drivers in the region, said queues were always long because most buses were stuck in queues at gas stations. Drivers can spend days waiting to fill up.
She explained that the Venezuelan government imported 7,000 Chinese buses in 2011 and, in 2015, inaugurated a half-billion-dollar program to purchase new vehicles.
She explained that the Venezuelan government imported 7,000 Chinese buses in 2011 and, in 2015, opened a half-billion-dollar factory for a Chinese company to produce them locally. But mismanagement and corruption forced the factory to close a few years later.
With the local currency in free fall, few drivers could afford repairs, let alone regular maintenance. They made do with what they could.
“Look at the passengers packed in like sardines — all their dreams have been stolen from them, even though this is supposedly an oil-producing country,” she said. “The only thing that has changed since Maduro took power is that I feel more comfortable talking to a foreign journalist.”
In the poor neighborhoods on the hillsides surrounding Caracas, the despair is even more acute. Residents described schools with just one teacher for each age group, stores without fresh produce and years of fruitless job searches. Petty criminals had left the country, some residents said, because there was so little to steal.
Not enough income
According to a rare study on poverty in the country, conducted by the Andrés Bello Catholic University in 2024, three-quarters of the population did not have enough income to meet daily needs and more than half experienced what the study called “multidimensional poverty”, which goes beyond income and includes education, housing and employment.
In a study conducted by the same university a decade earlier, around the time Maduro took power from his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, both numbers were about 50% lower.
Many said they saw the situation as Maduro’s corruption of Chávez’s legacy. Ana Bracho worked as a low-level government official and had Chávez’s image tattooed on her wrist. His neighborhood had enthusiastically supported the socialist revolution in the 1990s and 2000s.
A few years ago, she quit her job, removed the tattoo and replaced it with one of a flower. She said her increasingly public criticism of Maduro caused socialist party officials in her neighborhood to block her from accessing social assistance programs that provide basic food and cooking gas.
“In the old days, the motto was, ‘Together, anything is possible,’” Bracho said. “I think that ‘everything’ included theft and malnutrition. Unemployment to death — that’s what we have.”
The four teachers gathered for coffee seemed to agree. The enormous volatility of the economy, the scarcity of formal jobs, the decade or more of mass emigration—all seemed difficult to understand, even for longtime scholars who have devoted themselves to these same questions. Who had time to keep up with all this anyway? Everyone was trying hard to survive.
Bet on baseball
For many, the dream of escaping the routine is recurring. Nélida Salazar gave up on her own career, but invests everything in her youngest son, Santiago Jesús Díaz, 15, who has shown great potential as a baseball player. He dreams of being a major league right outfielder.
To pay for a training gym, a new glove every now and then and a specific diet for athletes for his son, Salazar sold everything he had of value. Her husband and oldest son contribute almost everything they earn as police officers.
She makes sweets at home and earns a few dollars a day selling them. When he doesn’t have money to buy fresh eggs for his son, he grinds discarded eggshells to make a type of protein powder. She avoids opening the refrigerator when he is home because seeing it empty makes her cry and she realizes the immense pressure he is under to succeed.
“When I pray, I say, ‘Please God, give me work, give me work, give me work,’” she said. “If someone told me, ‘Come clean my house, clean my bathrooms,’ I would go. But no one is asking.”
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