Venezuelan government blames ‘sabotage’ as capital faces major power outage

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelans woke up Friday to a major power outage in the capital, Caracas, and in several states.

President Nicolas Maduro’s government blamed the outage, which it said began around 4:50 a.m., on “electrical sabotage.”

Freddy Nanez, the communications minister, said officials were working to restore power. “No one will take away the peace and tranquility of the Venezuelan people,” he wrote in a message sent to journalists on Telegram.

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Nanez said in a voice message on Telegram that all of Venezuela’s 24 states were at least partially affected. He characterized the blackout 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.

Venezuela in 2019, in a period of political turmoil, suffered from regular blackouts that the government almost always blamed on its opponents, but which energy experts said were the result of fires that damaged transmission lines and the poor maintenance of the country’s hydroelectric infrastructure.

Many of the energy problems have eased as the South American nation’s economy has stabilized, high inflation has eased and a de facto dollarization has eased shortages of imported goods.

Still, after last month’s disputed presidential election, officials are quick to blame opponents for even minor disruptions. That was the case on Tuesday, when an outage affected Caracas and several central states.

“This is a constant strategy of the opposition, the enemies of this country, to have an impact on the population,” said Diosdado Cabello, the new interior minister who is believed to be the second most powerful man in the country, after the previous blackout.

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 of being unable to communicate with family members due to a lack of cellphone service.

Alejandra Martinez, a 25-year-old salesperson, said she noticed the power cut when a fan stopped working. “I thought the power would come back on and I went back to sleep,” she said as she tried to catch a bus to work as dawn broke over Caracas. “But when I woke up, I realized there was a blackout.”

Venezuela’s power grid relies heavily on the Guri Dam, a giant hydroelectric plant that was inaugurated in the late 1960s. The power system has been burdened by poor maintenance, a lack of alternative energy sources and a loss of engineering talent, as an estimated 8 million Venezuelan migrants have fled economic misery in recent years,