This report was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper
Finally!!!! After Jose left us hanging in Part 1 of How the Collapse of Venezuela Really Happened, he’s back with part 2. In the last installment, he’d been inadvertently swept up in a mob of protesters.
So, I found myself, at age 15 facing a mob coming right straight to me. And of course I did what anyone with common sense would have done: I left. Not running, because my parents always told me that whenever a bunch of people surrounds you, there are usually socially non-adapted thugs within it that will look to hurt whoever they can, and the more harmless they look, the better. These kind of sadistic individuals are in all countries, regardless the cultural or economical general level of it. Look at the hooligans in London if you don´t believe me.
I walked slowly, with the other friends I was with, and shaking myself like a jelly bowl of course, but never turning the back to the mob, and found shelter in a car parts shop owned by a friend of the family.
He came to the door, with the iron bar used to close the steel shutters in hand, just in case, (He is a pretty nice guy, he would make fun of me after years about how pale I was that day. God Bless him!). But the road direction steered away most of the people towards what would be the equivalent to the commercial district, with some large warehouses and bulk shops. Some of them told us not to follow, and to go home immediately. We saw in front of the boys of the high school we were going to, who came in the opposite direction to us, in a huge group and mixed with people of all kinds.
There was a huge mass of people of all ages who were shouting slogans. A huge cacophony was in the atmosphere, and the merchants, nervous, had already begun to close the doors of their shops.
After the mob, maybe 300 or 400 persons, passed, I decided to walk with my friends all the way home. For some reason, I accepted the invitation of my friend Leo and the rest of the kids. We started walking down the hill, along a large avenue with shops on both sides.
We wanted to hang around and have some fun, after all the school was closed. He wanted to show me a US military knife his brother had found in exchange for a work he had done. We still did not realize how bad things were going.
When reality finally hit
We had walked a good distance, when suddenly, a large semi truck with a load of corn flour, a product of common and daily consumption in the country, like bread in other latitudes, was quickly approached by a large group of people who climbed on its platform, and began to grab the corn flour packages of 12, with amazing speed. In a matter of seconds, at least 8 tons disappeared, that is to say, 8 thousand packages of 1 kg. Seeing this, I seriously considered the possibility that things were going to get difficult with the authorities. I did not think at any moment of being involved in a collective quarrel or something like that (how dumb can you be at 15??). So I headed home, with my friends, but that was not so easy.
When we reached a certain distance, a lady from inside a shop, reached out and told us that the authorities (police and national guard) were taking to detention centers all the uniformed students they found in their way and that we should be very careful. Barely starting to realize the danger, when approaching my house (I was the one who lived closest, in the “downtown” near the commercial district, and we thought it was better to stay together for safety) we realized the huge mass of people were looting the shops in parallel streets where my house was. Access was not going to be possible by that route. So, risking at all times to be victims of a (practical) abduction, we walked around the areas of greatest turbulence, walking the most lonely streets, and going through the town to reach the house of one of our friends, Leo. It is interesting to think, nowadays, that never crossed my mind the possibility of the looters invading our homes. It was a very possible scenario, and even more possible these days. But I was young, and that is my excuse.
My mom and dad were very anxious at this point, logically, as they did not know where the H…I was while the entire social fabric of the country was ripping apart before their own eyes.
Meanwhile, as good silly teenagers, we were able to buy some soda and cookies while going to Leo´s place, and fooled around with the new knife, making jokes like kids do about his growing camping equipment. Mine was just a battered cheap hunter small knife in a leather sheath; an old, banged up, aluminum canteen; a small messenger bag made of denim that my mom had used back in the 70s; and my old pair of tall snakeproof boots that are still lying around somewhere.
Back on topic, while we were at Leo’s place his auntie made a landline phone call to my mom (no cellphones those years), and after a while (communication grids were down, totally collapsed) she got her call through and let know my folks where I was (she was a very nice, kind and lovely lady, indeed).
How I finally got home
Leo´s aunt made me take off my uniform shirt, replacing it with an ordinary one that Leo gave me, kindly reminding me that please get it back after washing it, and with my uniform chemise in a small bag, I headed straight home. Which I did, in a single run. Upon arriving, my dad was at home, something odd because he never arrived before 12 M. It was close to 11 AM. My mom and he were watching the scenes of the looting in the major cities, that the channels keep repeating, and informing that the police were not enough to keep up with the looters.
This, of course, encouraged those people that had not dared to hit the streets yet, to go and loot. Jeez.
As our house was (and still is) in the middle of the town. Once the mob started to loot a large clothing warehouse, in a street where there are a lot of shops, the tear gas started to spread all over the place. I still remember how awful was trying to eat a bowl of rice with black beans and white cheese, while smelling tear gas. In Venezuela, most of the houses are open style, like the old Spaniard style of walls surrounding an inner patio. Perfect to enjoy tear gas. After a nice face cleaning with vinegar and a soft cloth, we sat on the veranda.
People with large bags of everything imaginable that they could loot were roaming in the streets. All of our neighbors were on their doorsteps or front porch, watching the incredible exhibition of looting. I even saw a schoolmate with two huge plastic garbage bags on his back, his face red by the weight of the clothes he had looted. He was a black sheep at high school too, so no surprises there.
It was much worse elsewhere.
As our town was relatively small we had it more or less light. The killing was in the major cities: Caracas, Valencia, and other similar ones. Being that Caracas the most densely populated, and the capital, most of the nasty stories came from there.
After the people looted, and nothing was left, then the recovering of the loot started. Where the authorities got a report about someone with looted goodies, they kicked the door, and if the people could not show some proof of possession of, say, a brand new, large TV or tons of new clothing, still with the labels on, the loot and the people were hauled in a military truck, right to jail. I do not know honestly what happened until this day to all that loot. I know that some looters received a lesson from the military personnel. Perhaps some merchants were able to recover some of their goods, I can’t say. Our businesses did not suffer damage. 4 meters walls and a solid steel door large enough to allow for a semi truck to pass for maintenance are good deterrents. Oh, and our nice, lovely Doberman, twice my size and weight that loved to chew telephone guidebooks for fun. He could go through one-third of the phone guidebook with his fangs. I miss him a lot.
The truth be told, most of the looters were discharged after a few days. The turmoil was so massive that if everyone was prosecuted, the jails were not going to be enough, nor would the keepers be able to control them. So, after a good spanking and registering them as delinquents, they were given freedom with a warning: the next time that looting situations arise, the orders were to shoot, and no one would ask them any question later.
Here’s what I learned.
I learned a lot from those experiences, and today, as this young barely adult I am now, my life, and as much the lives of my immediate and extended family have been relatively less affected than most of the people I know in my same economical “status.” That is, if someone considers I have such status living in a rented room in a foreign country after having my own home and a job in the oil industry.
Preparedness is not about stockpiling and isolation. I know that now and I want you please take note of this.
It is about being mentally and psychologically able to respond effectively and efficiently to the changes in the surroundings that could affect you.
But one of the most impressive things I have ever witnessed was the mass behavior acting over the individual psychology, and how it overcomes the inhibition barriers that make people behave in ways that under normal circumstances would never even think about it.
Be safe, wherever you are.
More from Jose
About the author, J.G. Martinez D:
Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela.
Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.
Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget. Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at [email protected]
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Thanks, socialism! Not.
How the Collapse of Venezuela Really Happened:
1) They adopted socialism.
2) They turned in their guns.
3) They died.
Yep, that pretty much sums it up…
Sadly more shitholes appearing.
first they handed in their guns. next $hithole.
Yup, an armed society is a polite society. An unarmed society (or full of liberals) is full of retarded savages.
I shudder to imagine what a privileged brat here in the US would do in similar circumstances. I picture him/her clutching their ‘my precious, gollum gollum’ smartphone and crying hysterically into the cam striving to post their angst on Facebook.
$tootoo rimfire ammo is the new money in venezuela.
Thank the CIA fro cteating another Sh1thole Country. Cute heresay fiction story telling though.
Had 5 deer within about 15 yards from my BOL cottage door tonight. Grow your own protein food plot with just a few hand fulls of corn thrown out daily before dusk. If I needed to, I could deploy my stealthy crossbow and take one to fill my freezer. They are now setting off all my motion detectors as it is now dark and nighttime and they are moving to keep warm. It was just 12 degs here about 5 AM today. In Central N Florida. Cold snap but back in the 70’s during the day come Monday. Thats it for our winter and spring within a few weeks.
Gettin my elk rack mounted (scored 360) should be ready in a couple of weeks. This is the warmest january I can ever remember here 😛 I was looking at some ballistics charts and a .40 SW with 135gr. cor-bon ammo has a 96% 1 shot stop rating. In the chart the only other that hit 96% were 2 of the .357 mag loads. Imma git sum a that stuff!
Check this out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ-0KvIjZtE
Hey G. Sounds like some devistating damage the .40 cal can inflict. There is so much speciality ammo out there right now. The expanding jackets that create holes 3 times the size of the round on impact. Good defensive ammo. I put various types of ammo, when I load the magazines every other round. What one round may do the next round will inflict a new kind of damage. Bring it!!! I also carry 2 extra magazines with my normal carry pistol. Im a 9mm guy. I like having more rounds and bangs to punch many ventilation holes in the bad guys if needed or with multiple attackers.
We had an especially wonderful summer, regular rain in even amounts, no hot spells. I’ve never seen it so green. I’ve also never seen so many deer.
I’d drive home evenings and see deer everywhere, behind one farm I counted 22 deer in the back field. I thought the rut would be a massacre between cars and deer, and I thought if we had a bad winter the deer would starve.
One day in the fall I was driving home and noticed no deer behind that farm. In fact in the weeks that followed, I saw no deer anywhere. I don’t know who did it, but the herd was culled. Over the next month or two a few deer moved into the vacuum. Amazing I’m not seeing deer in my yard, very rare I’ll see some dropping, but nothing like in years past.
I’m close enough to the farm that I should have heard, but I never heard gun fire, so I’m assuming whoever took the deer either used a silencer or a crossbow. Some towns have used “special services for deer culling, normal people can’t hunt at night with night vision and silencer, but apparently state and federal LEO snipers can be hired for these services by towns that were being overrun by deer. For the sniper teams its practice against live targets, and it’s reported the meat gets butchered and goes to homeless shelters?
This is how quickly wild game can just vanish.
In my area the fucking BLM rounded up a shitload of deer and transported them to some place (I can’t remember right now) and they all died! God how I hate the BLM and dept. of wildlife, they are the most incompetent, stupidest, asshole licking piles of shit there ever was! Everything they touch is a disaster besides being a bunch of thug assed punks!
Oh and the goddam BLM also rounds up hundreds and hundreds of wild horses and sell them to fuckin mexican slaughterhouses! I wish I could post here how I really feel!
Here in Central FL they were advertiding on the radio selling off Wild Mustsang horses for like $125- $150 each. Adopt them since they some how are in excess. Maybe that is the BLM and their revenue raising BS tactics. So where is that sales money going? Who’s pockets?
There are a lot of people living in refugee camps and on the streets who twelve months before lived in their own homes. It can all go bad in a very short time.
“It is about being mentally and psychologically able to respond effectively and efficiently to the changes in the surroundings that could affect you”.
Arm yourself and you will find that most everyone else (with any sense) will be the ones that are mentally and psychologically responding effectively and efficiently.
Selco said loners don’t last long. That means you have to prep enough for all your dummy family and friends, which defeats the purpose of the culling? Seems maybe saving the Tares to help you survive might not be the answer?
What happened to the Venezuela vast oil holdings? Curious that nothing is said about that anymore. All this unrest comes from that I believe. Imposed mayhem by big oil who demands control of that oil.
When big oil was in Venezuela life was good. The communists nationalized oil and kicked big oil out of the country. So now instead of big oil running it a communist committee runs it.
The communist government systematically took over all business including farming. Suddenly farmers were told to grow cash crops for export instead of food that people in Venezuela needed. The government farms gave the profit to the central government while the soil and the farms were depleted. Every business that was critical, banking, farming, chemicals, drugs etc was taken over by the communist regime who ran them all into bankruptcy. Now with ill maintained equipment worn out, and supplies sources dried up the whole thing is failing.
It’s all over for Venezuela, unless they can find and put their DJ Trump in power, Venezuela is screwed. The elite will continue to suck the life out of the system.
Plan twice:
It sounds very similar to the Holodomor, the famine created by Stalin in Ukraine. And the famine in China was also caused by collective farming.
We are also screwed if they get your guns. We have the Department of Agriculture which sounds good but isn’t. It’s centralizing farming. When the small farms went belly-up, Rich investors/gentleman farmers bought them cheap and “collectivized” them into big farms that export and/or take money not to grow crops so then we must import from outside the Country.
Genius:
you are right about those wild horses. I feel it is an outrage. Horses and cattle, bison and buffalo are needed to keep the dirt pounded down or we’ll have another dust bowl from erosion of top soil. In times of poor crops, we need that horse meat. Sounds like either short sighted thinking or deliberate creation of scarcity.
_
You guys got it all wrong. When the private capitalist were running oil they were ripping off the Venezuelan people so they nationalized the oil for the people. Oil prices crashed and oil revenues crashed. Had nothing to do with communism. Same BS here in the US. Big oil and wallstreet rips off our peoples natural resources and keeps all the profits for them selves. Thats shityy capitalism for ya. All Americans need to be getting a profit check for our energy and oil sales. It our resourses not corporate wallstreet’s. You people are so fricken brainwashed. America’s resources have been looted by corporate wallstreet and most Americans are too stupid dumb to realize it. We have lost our country when we turned our economy over to corporations, bankers and private money printers over 100 years ago. We are slaves to their system. Now go watch your daily dose of propaganda TV news you stoopid sheep. And sports to keep you distracted and dumbed down to your assrape.
Man are you lost in the weeds. Just don’t let any facts interfere with your prejudice.
Yup, you guys sold out your freedoms and your country went all the masses turned in there weapons this lone act sealed your fate, now its going to take a long long long time to get back to that point before.
Looks like there is plenty of canned tuna on the bottom shelf. I see a jar of mayo.