Drinking water in Cumaná is running extremely low. Daily blackouts plague the city. Wind howls through the looted remains of its once illustrious university. Scavengers sift through garbage dumps for scraps of food.
Much of Cumaná, a city in eastern Venezuela once a crown jewel of the country’s industrial base, has the air of a battle-scarred war zone.
This coastal city is a starkly different world from Caracas, the capital, which is on the cusp of an upswing that is largely insulated from the decay across much of Venezuela.
After U.S. forces ousted and captured the former leader, Nicolás Maduro in January, oilmen and crypto tycoons have been rushing to Caracas to explore deals.
Cumaná tells a very different story — that of the gutted economy in the rest of the country that might take generations to rebuild.
In May, I drove across eastern Venezuela, a dawn-to-dusk trip through more than 20 military and police checkpoints, to see living conditions outside the capital firsthand.
“You know those missile strikes in Ukraine they’re always talking about?” said José Luis Sánchez, 56, the president of Cumaná’s Association of Economists, a business group. With a hint of gallows humor, he added, “Sometimes we say our city looks like Kyiv.”
It was not bombing that laid waste to much of Cumaná. Instead, one-party rule, disastrous economic management and ideological vengeance campaigns are to blame, say those now openly expressing dissent in the city of half a million people as Venezuela’s authoritarian restrictions on freedom of expression start to ease.
When Hugo Chávez rose to power 27 years ago, Cumaná figured among other industrial hubs like Ciudad Guayana and Valencia in helping make Venezuela a regional power. Cumaná was an epicenter of the industrial fishing and canning industry for the entire Caribbean basin, processing a staggering amount of the tuna and sardines consumed across South America.
Shipyards that built commercial fishing vessels were thriving. Cumaná’s major point of pride was a Toyota plant churning out Land Cruisers, the legendary four-wheel drive vehicles that became a staple across Venezuela.
Then Mr. Chávez embarked on a wave of state takeovers of private companies, a linchpin in his plan of building a socialist economy under his control. Cumaná and the surrounding state of Sucre, a Chavista bastion, became a laboratory for these efforts.
Expropriations initially aimed at guaranteeing domestic food security starved Cumaná’s canning industry of private capital. Collapsing production at other state-owned companies elsewhere in Venezuela then deprived the canneries of what they needed most: metal cans.
Many canneries are now either limping along or temporarily shut down or completely abandoned, like one in the Caigüire neighborhood, adding to Cumaná’s landscape of ruin.
Toyota’s assembly plant, paralyzed repeatedly by government-supported strikes and union standoffs, scaled back in phases. The spiraling of the economy into hyperinflation a decade ago finally forced it and its entire ecosystem of local suppliers to close.
With its manufacturing sector eviscerated, Cumaná now relies, like much of the country, on Venezuela’s government for its basic needs.
This new chapter is not going well.
A rockslide in February inside a tunnel at the reservoir supplying Cumaná’s water triggered a collapse across the system. Unable to fix the problem, officials ordered a severe rationing program aimed at preserving whatever water could be trucked in.
Scenes of chaos now accompany the arrival of these trucks with residents pleading, sometimes screaming, to be allowed to fill up plastic jugs. Soldiers grasping semiautomatic rifles stand at the ready to prevent clashes from breaking out.
When public trucks do not arrive, private tanker trucks fill the gap. But inflationary pressures have caused water prices to skyrocket, with a single 20-liter jug costing as much as $8 — a significant burden for families already subsisting on low wages and a $240 monthly subsidy from the government.
Those who cannot afford bottled water are forced to trek to public collection points or makeshift wells. Businesses have shut down. Schools have suspended classes because facilities lack water for basic sanitation and bathrooms.
Yamileth Sotillo, 43, a maid who lives in Brisas del Golfo, a squatter settlement, said she had expected things to improve after U.S. forces captured Mr. Maduro in January, and replaced him with Delcy Rodríguez, his vice president.
But the water crisis made an already bad situation much worse, she said.
“Todavía no se ve queso en la tostada,” Ms. Sotillo said, using a popular Venezuelan expression that can be loosely translated as, “You still don’t see cheese in the grilled cheese.”
Another way to put it: Nothing is better yet.
Others in Brisas del Golfo said they were afraid to speak to a reporter. They said they still feared retribution from the leaders of their Communal Council, the organizational cell in Venezuela that manages local governance and serves as the eyes and ears at the street level for the governing party.
Council leaders monitor social media posts and everyday conversations, these residents said, and could limit subsidies like basic food staples or cooking fuel if they believe someone is disloyal to the state.
Another tragic symbol of Cumaná’s dysfunction is the campus of the Universidad de Oriente, founded in 1958 when Venezuela entered a period of democratic renewal. Situated on a hill overlooking the Caribbean, it became one of Latin America’s most important marine research centers.
Once serving more than 15,000 students, now it lies mostly in ruins. After emerging as a center for antigovernment protests, local authorities retaliated around a decade ago by allowing scavengers to steal items like copper wiring, air-conditioning units, bathroom fixtures and pipes, former professors and students said.
When protests reignited a few years later, so did the looting.
Working at night, ransackers lit books on fire so they could see what they were plundering, said former workers at the university. One blaze destroyed thousands of volumes in the Central Library, they said, the charred pages of which can still be seen today.
Now building after building on the campus look like they were destroyed in drone attacks. Only about 2,000 students remain, studying in hastily built structures clustered around the university’s entrance.
The collapse of the water and education systems are just some of the problems in Cumaná, which lays claim to being the oldest continuously inhabited European-settled city in South America, predating the founding of Caracas by more than half a century.
In an open-air garbage dump near decaying hotels that once welcomed sun-worshiping tourists, older people scavenge for food, firewood and aluminum cans to recycle.
As in other parts of the oil-rich country outside Caracas, electricity goes out for several hours nearly every day.
This makes something mundane, like going to a shopping center, a surreal experience.
Around noon on a recent day at the Hipergalerías mall, the parking garage was completely dark, forcing those arriving by car to use their phone flashlights to find their way.
Inside the mall, escalators and elevators had stopped working. Without air-conditioning, and with temperatures outside approaching 90 degrees, the cavernous structure felt like a sauna.
Even so, a few shoppers circulated. Most stores had gone dark, but a handful with their own generators stayed open.
“Obviously this is terrible for business,” said Taís Mago, 35, who manages a restaurant in the mall that has to close its doors whenever blackouts hit.
Elsewhere in Cumaná, pro-government murals blanket walls across the city as if to remind people who is still in charge. While images of Hugo Chávez have faded away in much of Caracas, they are still ubiquitous in Cumaná.
Among the slogans they blare: “Tourism is the secret weapon of Venezuela’s new economic model.” “Hope is in the street.” “When determination exists, nothing is impossible.”
Despite Cumaná’s beaten-down feel, it is not hard to find people who still believe in the socialist-inspired revolution that produced many of the city’s ills. Marisol Gómez, a street vendor who sells clothing downtown, is one.
“Who could have imagined a rockslide would happen?” Ms. Gómez, 35, said when asked about the water crisis. “That is completely out of the government’s hands.”
She said everyone in her home, from her three children to her elderly father, were regularly trekking to collect water in plastic jugs.
“Until this nightmare passes I have faith that the government is going to fix this,” said Ms. Gómez, a self-described Chavista. “It’s not easy to be patient, but there’s no other choice. We just have to wait.”
Nayrobis Rodríguez contributed reporting.
