At dawn on March 13, 2019, when Mérida was seven days into the first blackout that had stricken the entire nation, Professor Nilsa Gulfo, who is also a journalist, received a phone call from Maracaibo, Zulia, with the news that her brother Guillermo had just died. Saying goodbye to him turned into the first-hand painful obstacle course that she shares in this story.

The first cohort of candidates to a bachelor’s degree in Social Communication at the Mérida campus of the Universidad de Los Ándes began classes in July of 2016. It was made up of 25 students. Three years later, there are only eight left. Paula Rangel is one of them. In this photostory from the #SeedbedOfStorytellers of La Vida de Nos, Paula describes how the classrooms she studies in have been emptying out.

Henry spends much of his time helping his neighbors in Caucagüita —the parish in the Sucre municipality, state of Miranda, where he lives— and maintaining a soup kitchen that provides food to about fifty-seven children on a daily basis. This he does as a way of keeping his mind away from a shadow that looms over his own life.

Florelys Linares was 18 years old and was studying education at the University of Carabobo. Having heard rumors that the university would be privatized, she —just like some of her fellow students— took to the streets to voice her disagreement. She was riding a student bus when her life took a different turn.

On June 29, 2017, a group of students from the Simón Bolívar University was detained in El Rosal by police officers who were repressing a protest march that had been called for in Caracas. The images of their arrest and subsequent transfer inside the closed cargo section of a truck were circulated on social media. The students would be released a few days later without charges. One year after the events, Patricia Rodríguez, one of the students in question, gives La vida de nos her account of her experience.

Le professeur Isaac López est arrivé épuisé chez lui à Pueblo Nuevo, sur la péninsule de Paraguaná, pour constater qu’une fois de plus, il se retrouvait sans eau ni électricité. Il est descendu dans la rue et, comme en d’autres occasions, s’est joint à la protestation des voisins débordés. Il ne s’attendait pas à ce que ce jour-là il commencerait à subir une expérience traumatisante…

At age six, Dioselyn was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in her right foot. The doctors prescribed her some chemotherapy drugs which her parents, Carlos Villegas and Ediana Marchán, could not find in any of the hospitals of the states of Bolívar or Anzoátegui. The solution they came up with was to take their daughter to Brazil in the hope that she could begin treatment there.

One day in June of 2015, María Beatriz Lara, a reporter with 20 years of experience in her field, attended a press conference at the office of the scientific police in the state of Aragua. She was assaulted and handcuffed for no reason by several police members there, who were later indicted and ordered to be arrested by a court. But four years later, the trial is still pending…

Three months ago, on April 23, 2019, Yubreilis left Güiria, a town on the west coast of the state of Sucre, for Trinidad and Tobago. Her idea was to find a job there so that she could be able to provide for her three daughters. The boat in which she and 37 others were sailing capsized. She is one of the eight survivors.

On Monday, February 18, 2019, three weeks before March 7, when a power cut left the entire country in the dark, Caimancito, a village located in the northeast of the state of Sucre, had already been experiencing an extended blackout that had only been interrupted by a few and occasional periods of electricity supply. That is where Mérida, aged 50, lives, and this is her story…