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When the Lights Go Out: An Examination of Venezuela’s Unraveling Things Are Never So Bad that They Can’t Get Worse By William Neuman ’84
How do you turn a failed coup into a successful, de facto dictatorship? For Hugo Chávez, it seemed easy. When the military action to overturn Carlos Andrés Pérez and his elected government failed on February 4, 1992, a 37-year-old Chávez took to the airwaves to surrender. His coherence and confidence made an indelible impression on the many Venezuelans watching the ordeal unfold on their televisions. For William Neuman, this moment reveals much about the history, present, and future of Venezuela—a country that adulated revolutionary leaders like Chávez. In Things Are Never So Bad that They Can’t Get Worse, Neuman excavates the story of Venezuela, a country that has seen its natural reserves of oil and complex leadership bring both great wealth and epic failures. He focuses on the expected names—Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó appear alongside the “Liberator of Veneuzela” and first president Simón Bolívar and Chávez—but in a surprising and fresh way. In a blend of journalism and history, Neuman interviews ordinary people. Their perspective is what grounds the stories of these almost mythic men. Through the prism of the well-known and the everyday, Neuman elucidates what happened to a country that was once “a land of plenty.” He doesn’t anesthetize the cruelty of the past or present, but portrays the highs and heartbreak of the complicated country with lucid language. Neuman’s record is incisive rather than expansive: some years are condensed in one paragraph. Other moments, particularly 26 Reed Magazine march 2022
those focused on its leading figures, slow down in fascinating detail. Neuman’s Chávez is hubristic and unwavering, inspiring followers to Chavismo, the “deeply conservative” political philosophy: “He wanted the nation to go backward—back to a golden age when Bolívar and other titans strode the land and Venezuelans were pure of heart . . .” Maduro, the handpicked successor of Chávez, appears as a coarse yet still-savvy younger brother figure. Neuman shares an anecdote when Maduro would send his reports to Chávez and “Chávez would send them back with the spelling and grammatical errors marked in red pen.” These moments of specificity about the people involved make these major players come alive in a sea of political machinations. However, Neuman doesn’t linger long on the men. For a book that includes so much detail, the major players remain a bit elusive. More idiosyncratic consideration is given to the people of Venezuela, to excellent effect. Neuman clearly spent much time travelling and talking to people in the country. Standouts include the author Luis Britto García, an aging Chavista and intellectual; Hilda Solórzano, who lives in extreme Caracas poverty with pragmatism; and José Chacón, whose bookstore contains only eight books. Neuman allows us to see the store vividly: “It was dim inside Chacon’s shop, not because the power was out but because the bulbs had burned out and not been replaced. Instead of books, the shelves held oversize models of insects made by a local aficionado.” These stories are whirlpools of emotion in the midst of political intricacy, and it is easy to fall into their eddies of human
experience. Although Neuman acknowledges the still-present divide between the rich and poor Venezuelans, he rarely tells the story of those not in extreme straits. A loose organizing theme, one marked in chapter names, is the “blackout.” Neuman writes, “There was only darkness. The headlights of cars slashed white channels through the night . . .” Interspersed throughout the account, these describe the many instances when Venezuela’s electrical grid falters—due to human error, political ineptitude and greed, or something as straightforward as a blown
These stories are whirlpools of emotion in the midst of political intricacy, and it is easy to fall into their eddies of human experience. transformer, an incident which the government blamed on “cyberattacks and electromagnetic pulse attacks and snipers firing on transformers.” The chapters act on the reader perhaps much like the loss of electrical power does on Venezuelans, incessantly reminding us of the failed promise of leadership. Neuman shows how the events, people, and motivations that take place across decades are firmly connected, and still unfolding. Towards the end, Donald Trump makes an appearance along with Juan Guaidó, both shown to be acting in a rush of odd decisions and brute planning to try to replace Maduro with the opposition leader. As readers know, neither was successful. By the end, when Guaidó’s efforts seem sure to fail, what is left? What remains, Neuman makes clear, is the “glorious green expanse of the elongated Ávila mountain,” and, enveloping that breathtaking landscape, the promise of more trouble. —NORA HICKEY
