Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
In the early morning hours of Jan. 3, Anatoly Kurmanaev, a New York Times reporter in Venezuela, messaged his colleagues that Caracas was under attack. It wasn’t yet clear what was going on, but the Times team that for the past year has been covering the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the Maduro government was hearing from its contacts that the United States was involved.
At 4:21 a.m., President Trump announced on social media that the United States had captured Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian leader of Venezuela.
“Times reporters, photographers, editors and other journalists have focused on the region for decades,” said Greg Winter, the managing editor of The Times’s International desk. “All of their experience is being brought to bear for this story.”
Here’s a look at some important periods when Times journalists in Venezuela delivered breaking news to readers, covered milestone events or found ways to continue reporting despite attempts by the country’s government to restrict their work.
Early Dispatches From Venezuela
The Times has published dispatches from Venezuela since at least the 1880s. Readers were, for instance, treated to a travelogue titled “La Guayra, the Sea Port” on March 9, 1888.
Much of the coverage in the early 20th century chronicled developments in the oil industry after Venezuela’s first major oil field was discovered in 1914.
In 1928, the country was gripped by another fervor: a visit to Caracas by the American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh.
“Venezuelan officials have sent to Porto Rico for American flags with which to deck the streets,” The Times reported on Jan. 17, 1928. “They will festoon all the avenues with lights and banners and flowers.”
When Mr. Lindbergh arrived a few weeks later in his single-engine silver plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, thousands gathered in the streets of the capital to catch sight of him.
“It is inconceivable that this city would have been so eager to greet any other man alive,” a Times correspondent wrote.
A Presence in Caracas
Around 1970, after years of covering Venezuela through freelance correspondents and staff reporters visiting from bureaus in cities such as Buenos Aires, Havana and Mexico City, The Times put a bureau in Caracas.
In February 1989, reporters provided on-the-ground coverage of the Caracazo riots, which erupted in response to economic hardship and highlighted deep social divides.
The Times continued to report on the scene in the capital for months: “You can feel the atmosphere of tension in the supermarket,” a woman told The Times’s James Brooke for an article that appeared in print on Aug. 23, 1989. “People say, ‘I can’t pay.’ Instead of filling a cart, they do addition on pocket calculators.”
The Chávez Era
By the time Hugo Chávez, the founder of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, rose to power in 1999, The Times was reporting on the country from other bureaus in South America.
But reporters regularly traveled to Venezuela to cover this socialist-inspired movement to use the country’s oil riches to improve living standards, consolidate political power and assert greater influence in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC.
The tumult that followed, including a 2002 coup that briefly removed Mr. Chávez from power, led Simon Romero, a Times reporter, to move to Caracas and stay for the following five years as bureau chief.
It was a markedly different era: Venezuela’s economy was booming, and there was greater access to government officials and more freedom to travel. Mr. Romero went with Mr. Chávez on his Airbus plane when the actor Sean Penn visited Venezuela; reported from inside the country’s prisons, including an infamous one run by inmates on Margarita Island; explored remote jungle areas like the Caura River basin; and covered Mr. Chávez’s efforts to assert power over the media, legislators and the judiciary.
A Reporter Is Barred
Nicholas Casey moved to Caracas to report on Venezuela from inside the country in 2016, three years after Nicolás Maduro came to power. He frequently attracted the ire of the Maduro administration for his coverage of the country’s severe economic collapse, hyperinflation and political crises.
“When I first arrived in Venezuela, they put my picture on television and said I was someone who was aligned with the opposition and was also joining in the effort to destabilize Venezuela,” Mr. Casey told Columbia Journalism Review in 2017.
The attacks became more aggressive and more frequent, he said. In October 2016, when he was returning from a vacation in Mexico, he was told by immigration officers that he could not re-enter Venezuela.
Nevertheless, he continued to report on the economic crisis from Colombia, relying on phone calls to sources in Venezuela and the deep knowledge of the region he had gleaned over the previous 10 months.
Economic Extremes Under Maduro
Since Mr. Maduro was elected, Times reporters have documented economic hardship in the wake of mismanagement and U.S. sanctions.
A May 2019 article described chronic shortages and the collapse of public services, with former laborers scavenging through garbage piles for leftovers and dejected retailers making dozens of trips to the bank with wheelbarrows of bills made worthless by hyperinflation.
But The Times has also drawn attention to Maduro’s supporters among the Venezuelan elite, who live in luxury while the rest of the country struggles to afford food.
Mr. Kurmanaev and Isayen Herrera reported on the scene in wealthier areas of Caracas in February 2020, where the sons and daughters of Maduro supporters sipped champagne at mountainside bars and attended a packed music festival with a $70 entry fee — the equivalent of 14 months’ worth of the country’s minimum salary.
Rising Tensions With the U.S.
Over the past year, tensions have escalated between the United States and Venezuela. Times journalists have reported on Mr. Trump’s invocation of a 1798 law to imprison Venezuelan migrants, deadly U.S. strikes on supposed drug-carrying boats, the seizure of two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and a U.S. military buildup off the country’s shores.
The ongoing coverage put reporters in position to contextualize the events that led up to the seizure of Mr. Maduro.
“Over the years, I have reported from 22 of Venezuela’s 23 states and written stories on everything from the price of Venezuelan bonds to the price of contraception,” Mr. Kurmanaev who has spent years covering Venezuela, said in an interview.
“When Americans attacked, I was in the country,” he said, “and ready to work the phones.”
Simon Romero contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.
The post How The Times Is Drawing on Over a Century of Reporting in Venezuela appeared first on New York Times.
