Going Undercover In Venezuela | Foreign Correspondent

it's a city on the edge of destruction with a poori garbage and gangsters rule now you have your finger prints on this country has more oil than Saudi Arabia but under populist presidents it's blown the lot it's broken it's absolutely broken listen it's it's so amazing what is going on in Venezuela and so unnecessary you can't believe it foreign camera crews have been banned from reporting on this disaster so tonight we're going undercover as foreign tourists [Music] our secret journey starts on the resort island of Isla Margarita [Music] it's too expensive for locals but one of the few places foreigners still come to beat the ban on journalists producer Matt Davis and I have smuggled in small cameras and brought a surfboard for coming for the next week we'll be risking arrest as we try to film what the government wants to hide it doesn't take long to see how absurd this once oil-rich economy has become now the first thing you do when you come to a place like this of course is change money but nobody goes to a bank for that because today's official exchange rate is about 1/5 the black market rate so I'm off to see a guy who's been recommended by a guy to change 400 u.s. dollars he suggested I bring a big bag I'm about to experience firsthand what Venezuelans go through every day their currency has collapsed even faster than the price of oil so you hand over for $100 notes you get more than a million bolivars which is what the local currency is called and in socialist Venezuela a Bulevar really is worth not much more than the paper it's printed on [Music] [Applause] [Music] the next day we fly to the capital Caracas one of the most troubled cities on earth [Music] this crowded metropolis of 5 million people once had all the trappings of a rich Petro State petrol is still cheap you can fill your car for less than a dollar what people can't afford is food or medicine they have to queue for government handouts [Music] [Applause] [Music] every day before dawn residents start lining up for their weekly food rations competitive arena bologna copay is over in a school party Bhavana [Music] these cues have often turned into riots police and soldiers now guard food stores many supermarket shelves are empty if at all my from leader in Venezuela Ora [Music] [Music] a very calm person on the penny grow Oh me gatinha cuatro meses en cuatro menos you know solution Perez de la Roca you know solution when okay Tom Viet all CJ CJ McCollum look where's Hennessy it's hard to imagine this was once seen as a model of socialist success in 1998 Venezuelans elected a firebrand former Army Colonel to build a new fairer society Hugo Chavez lavished oil money on the poor and nationalized private companies capital e de naye sawaal da not a civil Dalma irrational samba de panteleyev tesha tanto la violencia social policy our karma marks and Aquila tiara is insane even as his popularity grew so did his power when I was last here in 2009 the army police even the courts had come under his direct political control this was not a regime sustained on rationale this courses this was a regime that was standing on charisma and a very strong charismatic leader with a lot of money you know [Music] but the money started running out Chavez destroyed the market economy leaving the country entirely dependent on oil and industry the Socialists proved incapable of managing [Music] Margareta lopez Maya has been chronicling her country's rise and fall Venezuela today has the biggest reserves of oil in the world but the problem there has been that during these the Chaves era if the company has deteriorated its seriously especially in the last year's and we are reducing our oil production they have killed the Golden Goose when Chavez died in 2013 he was replaced by a former bus driver named Nicolas Maduro soon after world oil prices started falling and revenue more than halved the crisis became a catastrophe all the improvement that the chiristmas did during the boom years very fastly deteriorated when the when the earth price fell [Music] we head out to what was once the heartland of the revolution the slums that surround Caracas it takes an hour to reach the district of auntie mano one of the city's biggest shanty towns with more than 200,000 people the poorest live at the very top of the hills taxis don't even go there communal buses and motorbikes take people up and down the potholed roads [Music] [Applause] [Music] Leon Guerrero's stretches are living ferrying neighbors to one of the highest areas where he lives with his wife Andre and three children no no mayor call me oh not always I'll be a second say when I say the magic a salad Rob Heineman drama comedy film a semi Cinderella graphics here will be corny pave danila Integra average a moto taxi mucho below me who velocity on the right a la gente el esta Rio's todavia a foyer la revolucion Lolita no no no Rhonda called open-concept resident agent Moreno killing some copper oh c'mon tipo like a turmoil ahora okay Walter Nina was like a birthday [Music] more than 80% of Caracas residents live in these shanty towns known as Barrios Chavez gave them a chance to dream he built sports facilities health clinics new ruse and concrete steps even public exercise equipment [Music] people still speak fondly of him when in the West Avenue hostage hunting for fish have a solution our total problem except anymore either but even diehard supporters like 72 year old Josefina Lopez struggle to say anything good about president Maduro only wait let me get down in traction he has no charisma spurt so what he has is that Chava says if something happens to me this is my successor that's his his legitimacy rests on that finger of Lugo Chavez that said if something happens to me he is the one has to succeed me because he is the one I trust in he knows my legacy the light president's eyes are painted on public buildings as if watching over the revolution Chavez has become the embodiment of all wells Big Brother but they are this man even chattering the eyes onto his forehead lucha Remo vivy Raymond lucha Remo Charlie viva la pata silly cha viva la pata CKC le ma la la Sol and remindin Atacama Desert supremo gotta fetch our Priya lol oh oh ho camera angle manto de petal mundo [Music] [Applause] [Music] and that is Venezuela's conundrum people clinging to a dream as it becomes a nightmare when I was last here there was a real fervor in the barrios for what Chavez was doing and I hoped that things would get better now today it's much more muted but the government still has strong support here where most of the population lives they remember how bad the Conservatives were when they ruled Venezuela and how they neglected these slums so as bad as things are many still prefer the devil they know to the devil they don't Leone Guerrero has no time for politics he's too consumed with trying to make enough from his motorcycle to feed his family [Music] his wife Andre and her best friend Kat try to bring some Beauty to their lives keeping pride and dignity as their country collapses but they don't see opposition politicians offering any alternative yeah yeah yeah the view from their barrio is a daily reminder of the city's historic inequality the East is where the middle-class lives [Music] it's also where you find most of the opposition parties hunkered down behind tight security the regime dismisses them as remnants of the old a leat and is doing everything it can to crush them Maria Corina Machado heads veinte one of 20 opposition groups she's fighting a barrage of criminal charges including allegations she plotted to kill president Maduro everybody that dares to to criticize the destruction of the country after 15 years of the biggest oil boom in history everybody who criticizes is considered an enemy and straightest as such the irony is that government supporters have actually tried to murder her on camera the group of these paramilitary came and attitude us we had to get into a vehicle and and one of art my colleagues was was hurt and on her head and for unfortunately fortunately it wasn't it was a minor hurt but it was withdrew but she was shot and she was just beside me Machado has paid a high price for being a face of opposition albeit on the few media outlets not controlled by the regime she had to send her three children to grow up in the u.s. after receiving repeated death threats the government won't give her an exit visa to see them they are the main reason for me to to keep on moving ahead I mean I'm determined to see my kids as well as all when his own children living in a nation full of opportunities with solidarity innovation and prosperity and freedom but many in the barrios see these middle-class politicians as entitled and out of touch [Music] you can still see glimpses of the old wealth the once divided Caracas into haves and have-nots but it's fading fast the revolution really is creating a more equal society in which almost everyone is porn the economy shrank more than 10 percent last year prices rose by eight hundred percent it just has gone west now they say something that had never happened in the 20th century Venezuela is that the extreme poverty is growing faster than poverty which is something that never happened that we know of it since we had official numbers had never happened in the city center you see people queuing for day work on construction sites or scavenging for food and everyone lives in fear of violence the economic collapse has caused an explosion in crime Caracas has close to 4,000 murders a year right now we're about to meet what most people would call a bad hombre we've managed to make contact with one of the many criminal gangs terrorizing Caracas and the leader has agreed to meet us now we've left his name and address with a lot of people and we've organized to bring the boss of the barrio deceive me to say we're okay so hopefully he'll just talk to us [Music] well lit up some stairs then taken a gunpoint to a holding cell where the gang keeps its victims there are six young men and two women all heavily armed I begin by asking the leader what kind of work they do [Music] do you worry about the police they proudly show me some of their weapons from the US Brazil and Austria after taking out the bullets he hands me his pistol you know I held one of those people now you left your fingerprints on see he tells me business is good I want to ask about the morality of what they do but with so many guns I don't do instead I asked if he planned to become a gangster when he was a kid [Music] critics say the regime itself has turned to narco-trafficking to raise money on our fifth day in Caracas the US slapped sanctions on the vice-president Turok Ellis I mean calling him a drug kingpin state TV denounced the move as a CIA plot against the revolution todo McCallum or Nogales diplomatic of Politico nationally internationally inappropriate antonio para contratar parody monetary thing Tommy solo second Tommy Boy [Music] everyone here is looking for a scale the somme it's retreat into an extremity of their own choruses annual tattoo Expo is the biggest in Latin America and one of the most intense [Music] the big entertainment of the Expo is a band called public disorder they sing of the millions who have fled Venezuela maybe the most violent city in Latin America might be Caracas and due to this reality a lot of people is live in the country a lot of young people is looking for new york horizons in different countries different places all around the world even in Australia and we sing about about this reality Londo Giovanni into money he said us thank God [Music] [Applause] some choose to stay in Venezuela and fight for change on our last day in Caracas the opposition staged demonstrations across the city it's a dangerous business one opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez has been sentenced to 14 years in jail aureate Allah desmos father Antonio the former mayor of Caracas has spent two years under house arrest it's still a much but numbers have fallen drastically since last year when hundreds of thousands would take to the streets opposition parties won control of parliament only to see president Maduro ignore its rulings they fear he will ban opposition candidates from next year's presidential election even though today over 80% of the population is desperate for a profound change and I would say it's not only political it's existential they they have realized that they no longer can have even uncompetitive elections having chosen a populist Savior Venezuelans are finding it impossible to shake his legacy and some say it's a warning to the world where men look at Trump this is populism right and left populism is very similar and so what we have to see more carefully is how population comes emerges when you don't pay attention to certain problems in the society poverty and social exclusion a lot of inequalities and when you have that in a society and you find a charismatic leader it's like putting the light on the candle I mean people are seduced by that because they want to punish those political elites that have not delivered the goods that they have offered but we are seeing in the United States is very similar to what we saw in Venezuela at the end of the last century [Music] after nine days we managed to smuggle our footage through airport security and fly to the US it's hard to see any peaceful solution for the 32 million people we left behind [Music] [Music]

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 4,555,749

Keywords: venezuela, undercover, gangs, poverty, crisis, South America, foreign correspondent, hunger, revolution, murder, foreign correspondent venezuela, venezuela news, venezuela noticias, venezuela documentary, venezuela gangs, venezuela crisis 2019, venezuela maduro, maduro, venezuela hunger, venezuela underground, venezuela regime change, is venezuela starving, is venezuela headed towards civil war, is venezuela dangerous, gangs in south america, gang documentary, crime documentary 2019

Id: 3QjufrxigE4

Length: 27min 37sec (1657 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Clemenx00]

Ugh, como odio que achaquen 100% la situacion a los precios del petroleo.

Lo peor es que la señora venezolana es la que mas lo dice y tiene el tupe de decir "todas las mejoras del chavismo desaparecieron" Cuales mejoras señora?

[u/Clemenx00]

Maldito Chavez hijo de la gran puta que suerte tuvo de morirse.

Que nauseas me da como hablan bien de el la gente. Eso va a costar curarlo.

[u/EpicChiguire]

Ugh, y todavía hay gente que defiende esto. Me pica burda.

[u/RadicalLarry_]

No sabia que Maria Corina hablaba tan bien el ingles

[u/geeeorge15]

Dígame el que tiene los ojos de Chávez tatuados en la frente