Venezuela is on the brink. Grocery shelves lie empty as food becomes increasingly scarce and expensive. People are fleeing the country at record rates, flooding neighbouring countries. Inflation is set to reach 10 million per cent in 2019.
In this landscape of desperation, public outrage was already coming to a head when last week, Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader and head of the National Assembly, declared himself interim president. The recently re-elected President Nicolás Maduro has vowed to continue on, reports The New York Times.
International attention swiftly turned to the two men at the centre of the struggle for control of the country. But in the midst of the political push-and-pull, average Venezuelans are still struggling to get by in a country that has grown increasingly violent and where food shortages, electricity cuts and water shortages are the new normal. Deadly crackdowns on dissent are regular.
Anti-government demonstrations are planned for Caracas on Saturday, and with discontent growing, new groups are taking to the streets, including those who were once staunch supporters of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez.
We asked residents of the city to describe what their living situation is like these days,
and if it is a factor driving them to take part in the demonstrations.
"We are starving here."
The government benefits that Donawa and her family have long relied on - like many of those from poor neighbourhoods of Caracas - are no longer enough.
"We are starving here," she said, describing how she and her son Dixon Bront are struggling to provide for her grandchildren. "He has a 9-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old boy, and he can't buy anything for them. This is becoming impossible."
Donawa never voted for Maduro or Chávez, but her son was a supporter of the socialist government.
"I don't know if he voted for Chávez, but he sympathised with him," she said.
Bront and Donawa are beneficiaries of several government programmes like Misión Vivienda, which provides housing for the poor, and a food distribution programme known as "CLAP."
But Donawa said the government food box is often limited to sugar, pasta and powdered milk.
As benefits have deteriorated, Bront, once a supporter of the government, decided to join the protesters calling for its demise.
Two weeks ago, he was injured during demonstrations - shot in the stomach at close range by security forces - and is now bedridden after two surgeries, putting a further strain on the family.
"I can't be here in a hospital, sleeping in a chair," Donawa said from her son's bedside. "It's not that I do not agree with him protesting, he is doing it like any other Venezuelan that is unhappy with this communist government."
Her son has leukemia, but his hospital has no medicine.
"It is like the world opens in half and you just want to jump into the crack," said Cedeño, describing how she felt six years ago when she first found out her son, Miguel, had leukemia.
Things were still manageable then. Her son was moved from a private hospital to the public Central Hospital of Venezuela where he was given medical treatment paid for by the state.
He went into remission for years, but in 2017, Miguel's cancer returned. That's when, Cedeño said, everything changed. It was a race against time to get him proper treatment.
"I had to buy everything," she said. "The chemotherapy, the antibiotics, the needles. But now it's even worse. I have to buy gloves, cotton, alcohol, water, even the tubes for the lab if I need to ask for a blood test."
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