2 weeks Ago By ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelans awoke Friday to a major power outage in the capital, Caracas, and several states. President Nicolas Maduro's government blamed the outage, which it said began about 4:50 a.m.
, on "electrical sabotage." Freddy Nanez, the communications minister, said officials were working to restore power. "Nobody will take away our peace and tranquility of the Venezuelan people," he wrote in a message shared with journalists on Telegram.
Nanez said in a voice message on Telegram that all 24 of Venezuela's states were at least partially impacted. He characterized the outage as a "desperate" attempt by Maduro's opponents to violently oust the president. "The entire national government has been activated to overcome this new aggression," he said.
During a period of political unrest in 2019, Venezuela suffered from regular power outages that the government almost always blamed on its opponents, but which energy experts said were the result of brush fires damaging transmission lines and poor maintenance of the country's hydroelectric infrastructure. Many of the energy problems subsided as the South American nation's economy stabilized, high inflation eased and a de facto dollarization reduced shortages of imported goods. Still, following last month's contested presidential election, officials are quick to blame opponents for even minor disruptions.
That was the case on Tuesday, when a brownout affected Caracas and several central states. "This is a constant strategy of the opposition, the enemies of this country, to impact the population," Diosdado Cabello, the newly appointed interior minister, said after the earlier outage. Residents of the capital took Friday's disruption in stride.
Traffic during the normally busy rush hour was lighter than usual and some people complained about being unable to communicate with family members due to a lack of cellphone service. Venezuela's power grid relies heavily on the Guri Dam, a giant hydroelectric power station that was inaugurated in the late 1960s. The electrical system is burdened by poor upkeep, a lack of alternative energy supplies and a drain of engineering talent as an estimated 8 million Venezuelan migrants fled economic misery in recent years.
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