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Whats it like to watch a country implode? To see a democracy destroyed and an economy crater?

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Since 2014, American journalist Hannah Dreier has documented just that in Venezuela, once one of the worlds wealthiest nations and still home to what are believed to be the planets largest oil reserves. She wrote for the Associated Press about what it was like to live in a place with the worlds highest murder rateand the worlds highest rate of inflation. About the breakdown of hospitals and schools, and how the obesity epidemic that plagued a rich country was quickly replaced with people so hungry they were rooting through the garbage on her doorstep.

Most of the time, few paid attention, at least in part because Dreier was the last U.S. journalist even to get a work visa to live in Venezuela; when she moved there to cover the story, she says, I felt like I had walked across a bridge as it was burning behind me.

But over the past week, as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has declared victory in a fraud-plagued referendum and moved to seize control of the opposition-controlled legislature, the rest of the world hasfinally, belatedlycome to see what is happening in Caracas for what it is: the birth of a dictatorship.

In Washington, President Donald Trumps administration imposed direct personal sanctions on Maduroan insult reserved for only a handful of the worlds toughest tyrants, such as Syrias Bashir Assad, North Koreas Kim Jong Un and Zimbabwes Robert Mugabeand his regime insiders. Maduro, Trump said in a statement, is not just a bad leader; he is now a dictator.

The United States, however, continues to be Venezuelas largest customer for the oil that provides more than 95 percent of the countrys income, and has refrained from targeting the industry for sanctions despite Maduros move to finally establish a socialist police state, a development set in motion more than a decade ago by his charismatic predecessor Hugo Chavez.

Dreier, who has just returned to the United States after completing her assignment in Venezuela, may well end up being the last American journalist to get that permanent visa for Caracas, at least for a while (though her colleagues at the AP emailed after this was posted to assure me they are still covering the story and intend to replace her). She is this weeks guest on The Global Politico, our weekly podcast on world affairs, and we talked about why she thinks the new U.S. sanctions on Maduro might help him as much as hurt him, how the crisis has many in Venezuela pining not for their lost freedoms but for the rise of a mano duraa strong handto restore lost order, and just what crazy things you can get used to living in a place thats falling apart.

I found her account incredibly compellingfilled with the absurdities of life as a society unravels. At first, it seems almost comic, as when Dreier spends the day reporting at a plastic surgeons office and watches eager would-be beauty queens coming in with cut-rate Chinese bootleg breast implants once others became impossible to find. And Dreier tells me she spent her first year in Venezuela convinced the media narrative about the country falling apart was all wrong.

Then, Dreier recounts, her life changed. First, her friendsmiddle-class young professionals like herselfstarted losing weight. She lost power and water. Crime became so rampant her colleagues congratulated her on a good robbery when she was held up in broad daylight and all she lost were her belongings. By the time she was grabbed off the street after an interview one day earlier this year, she was overwhelmed with relief when she found out shed been snatched by the secret police and not far more vicious kidnappers.

Money became almost worthless, and she started carrying paper grocery bags full of 100-bolivar notes to pay for even small things. Her choices for food were empty supermarket shelves or $25 black-market Cheerios. She watched as ordinary people stood on line for bread, milk and toilet paper. One day the bakery around the corner started organizing a queuenot to sell the bread they had already run out of, but for the privilege of allowing people to rummage through their trash. The screams she heard one morning were of neighbors savagely beating an accused thief; a lynching, it was called.

You never had to go and try to figure out where the crisis was, she says. "It was on your doorstep.

The full transcript of our conversation is below, and I hope youll take the time to read this sad, funny, infuriating and amazing story of what it was like to report in a country while democracy died there. Dreiers takeaway as she leaves Venezuela is a sobering one: things can always get worse and worse and worse, and theres no rule that says that a miserable situation has to end, just because its too miserable.

***

Susan Glasser: This is Susan Glasser. We have, I think, a really important and fascinating story to talk about this week and a great guest.

Im here in New York with Hannah Dreier, who has just returned from being one of the very few American correspondents still left in Venezuela. As the country has imploded, shes had a unique window on what its like to live in a democracy as it collapses, as it turns and morphs before your eyes into something else.

Hannah, what a unique journalistic experience youve had. As you take up your new role here at ProPublica, I want you to reflect a little bit. How did you get into Venezuela?

Hannah Dreier: I had no idea that it was going to become the mess that it is today. I went down there in 2014 and I was kind of choosing between going to Venezuela or going to Mexico, and it looked like Venezuela might be kind of teetering on the brink of something, and I thought that maybe if I went there I would see something interesting. And if I had known how dramatic, and how bleak and dangerous it was going to get, I dont know if I really would have gone.

Glasser: Sometimes foreknowledge is not a good thing if youre a journalist.

Dreier: Yes. Yes. It looks bad, but I wasnt a war correspondent. Id never lived abroad, really, Id never reported abroad, and if it was as dangerous as it is today, I dont think I could have handled it at the beginning.

Glasser: You saw basically the transformation of one of the richest countries in the world into a completenot only a basket case, economically, I think its one of the biggest and fastest collapses of a civilization, arguably, in recent modern times.

Dreier: Yes. I mean, Venezuela always has all the superlatives. Its the worlds highest inflation by a lot. Its the worlds highest murder rate. A lot of economists will tell you its the most mismanaged economy in the world. And now, a lot of people are saying the worlds most recently born dictatorship.

But when I went down there, it was a great place to live, which sounds crazy now, but its beautiful. You walk around on the street and there are these wild parrots flying above you and these huge Andean mountains off in the distance. And I had a lot of friends who were my same age. They were young professionals and they traveled all over the world, and they were buying apartments, and wed go to the beach every weekend. Wed go to these crazy clubs that were still left over from all the oil wells. And it just felt in some ways like a paradise.

Glasser: Well, in a way, I think thats important context for you, that you saw what it was like before, because the collapse was so rapid and dramatic. By the end, people were eating garbage outside your window.

Dreier: Yes. I think a lot of peoplepeople think of Venezuela as a struggling Third World country, and I think it gets dismissed sometimes as a country thats always been poor and always had problems. But the truth is, it was one of the richest countries in the world in the 70s, and it was wealthy for a long time.

Under Chavez, the standard of living was rising. People there have very fancy tastes. They are very educated. And, so part of, to me, the tragedy of whats happened is that there is just no reason for this level of misery to ever come to Venezuela. It was a country that was making it.

And now, like you say, those friends that I used to hang out withtheyve all moved away. Those apartments are empty. When I came down, there were great restaurants. There was an obesity epidemic, and now as soon as you put a trash bag on the street there are people on that bag, going through to see what they can find.

Susan B. Glassers new weekly podcast takes you backstage in a world disrupted.

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Glasser: So, I want to talk about this evolution. But lets start first a little bit more in the headlines. Just this week you had the Trump administration in Washingtonnot known for its democracy promotion; in fact, the same week that it was reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was taking democracy out of the State Departments mission statementyou had Donald Trump, of all people, not only imposing personal sanctions on Venezuelas leader, Nicolas Maduro, but heres what Donald Trump had to say about Maduro.

He said, quote: Maduro is not just a bad leader, he is now a dictator, and as a result of that, we, the United States, imposed personal sanctions on Venezuelas leader, something we reserve for only several other, really, of the worlds worst tough guys, Syrias Bashar Assad, North Koreas Kim Jong Un, Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe. However, dot-dot-dot, you pointed out, in a very smart piece, all of those leaders are still in power, and, in fact, these might be the kind of sanctions that have the least impact on Venezuelas crisis. What did you mean by that?

Dreier: Well, so, now that Im not working for the Associated Press, its kind of fun to be able to point out these things that everybody covering Venezuela knows, but you cant usually just say outright.

But, basically, the U.S., with those sanctions, which are very important symbolicallybut, they said that they were going to freeze all of Maduros assets, and all the headlines were: Maduros Assets Frozen. Theres no reason to think Maduro has any U.S. assets. This is a man who railed every day against the U.S. empire. Why would he put his money in Miami property, or anything here?

So, the sanctions will prevent him from buying things in the U.S. and from doing business with Americans, which he wasnt trying to do anyway, and Trump gets to say that this is a big, strong step. And Maduro, in Caracas, is also making hay with these sanctions and spending lots of time talking about them, and saying that they prove that the U.S. is a bully and that the U.S. is trying to ruin the Venezuelan economyso, kind of a gift.

Glasser: And that was the response, as well, when Barack Obama imposed an earlier round of sanctions on certain regime leaders in 2015, right?

Dreier: Right. So, the time that I was in Venezuela, I just saw Maduros approval ratings go lower and lower and lower, it was a steady downward decline, except for this one month in 2015, right after Obama imposed sanctions, and Maduro loved those. He talked about them every single day for a month, and put posters up all around the capital talking about how bad those sanctions were. And people really responded. People said, Thats right. The U.S. is trying to interfere in our politics, just like they always do. And he got this total approval ratings bump. After that, I think the Obama administration backed off, because a lot of people seemed to realize that those sanctions were giving him a tool, not really hurting his administration.

Glasser: So, there is one thing that the United States could do, but its never wanted to do. And what is that?

Dreier: Thats oil sanctions. Ninety-five percent of Venezuelas revenue comes from oil. Its basically the only way the government is getting money right now. And the U.S. happens to be the biggest customer for that oil, and one of the very few governments still paying cash for oil. So, if the U.S. put an oil embargo in place, that would have a huge, dramatic effect, immediately, on Venezuela, and the government would probably default. There would be a reshuffling of alliances. But, it always seems to be that there are only bad options with Venezuela, because those oil sanctions would also probably lead to maybe famine-level hunger, to extreme suffering, and nobody really wants that either.

Glasser: So, were locked in a terrible position of having declared Venezuela a dictatorship, and yet being the main customers propping up the government that weve now declared a dictatorship.

Dreier: Its always struck me as a very strange thing. Weve declared Venezuela a dictatorship, and Venezuela has declared us as basically an evil empire, and yet this oil trade is so central to both countries. So, were kind of locked in this rhetorical battle with each other, but also locked in this very important commercial relationship that neither side seems to want to disrupt.

Glasser: Now, as a reporter there from 2014 on, as you said, for the Associated Pressnot always known for having vivid voice-filled, scenic descriptions, and yet that really was the trademark of your coverage there. And I think what made it stand out so much is that you were one of the few Americans to be lucky enough to get a visa to cover this important story. It hasnt gotten much attention here, but you also covered it in a very un-wire service-like way.

You werent really writing the standard fare of politics, And Maduro said this today, were you? You were really chronicling the collapse of a society. Tell me, how quickly did you understand that was the story, and how did you feel you were able to do that in a way that was different from what a correspondent might have done 20 years ago, covering the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Dreier: Well, so, like you say, I was one of the very few reporters to have a visa there. I was actually the last U.S. reporter to get a permanent work visa, and it felt like I had walked across a bridge as it was burning behind me, and it made me feel a lot of responsibility to tell that story as vividly as I could because there were just so few reporters on the ground.

And, I wish I could say that I went in and immediately started doing these character-driven stories, but the truth is, I went in and did kind of dry reporting about the shortages and about the general collapse. And I noticed that they werent getting the pick-up that I felt they should.

So, for example, I saw that there were these shortages starting to creep into hospitals, and people werent getting the care that they had been able to get even a few years before. And so I wrote a story saying that there were shortages in hospitals, and I dont think anybody read that story.

Glasser: Nobody cared.

Dreier: And that was so upsetting to me, because I saw these people suffering, and it just felt like nobody cared about that. And so, the next time I wrote about hospitals, I followed one girl, who scraped her knee while she was playing, and I told the story of her parents quest to try to get her the antibiotics that she needed to save this girls life. And that story, which I think people could relate to, because every little kid scrapes their knee from time to time, got a huge response. And people donated money to help this family. The girl ended up in very bad shape, but as a result of reader donations, was able to get surgery.

It was just a completely different experience for me, and that showed me that without a human narrative kind of anchoring things, its hard for people in another country to be able to imagine whats really happening.

Glasser: Well, you had a real eye for the telling detail, too. One of your stories just blew me away, classic. You were talking about how wealthy Venezuela had been until so recently, and the sort of va-va-voom public culture, right? There was a lot of plastic surgery. Tell us about that story. The trade in boob enhancements.

Dreier: Right. Well, this is whats always so bizarre to me about Venezuela. Theres so much suffering and poverty and misery; and at the same time, everybody is finding a way to still dye their hair and paint their nails. And so, one way I wanted to try to talk about that was by looking at plastic surgery, which is really central to Venezuelan culture. They have more beauty queens than any other country.

And so, these women were coming in to get breast implants, but there were shortages of implants, and so they had set up this kind of Craigslist for implants, and they were trading these Chinese-made implants that are banned in the U.S., Im sure, are not allowed in most developed countries, but theyd found them.

And so, I sat in a plastic surgeons office one day and just watched these women come in carrying their own implants that they had bought and had in little plastic bags, and they were just putting them in one after the other for $500.

Glasser: Well, it strikes me that that is a common theme through a lot of the reporting that you did, which is the incredible resourcefulness and human ingenuity under stress as your world collapses around you. People had a never-ending ability to adapt. Their resilience, obviously, was extraordinary.

You know, how quickly did it become clear to you when, after youd moved there, that this was a society that was collapsing?

Dreier: I spent my first year there really trying to argue that it wasnt collapsing, because there was already this narrative that it was a dictatorship where people were starving. And thats not what I initially saw. Maduro had just won an election. It was a very polarized place, but half of the country supported him. And, people were on diets. There was a super-abundance of food.

So, I really thought that was a false narrative created by the media. I was almost like what Maduro says today; I was totally on board with that idea, that the media was whipping up a frenzy.

And, I think it wasnt until the people in my life started to lose weight that I really realized that things had changed. And then, people that I knew started to be robbed regularly. Somebody was kidnapped. Somebodys mom was kidnapped. I was robbed. My friends were beaten up. Like, it just, it became obvious that something had really changed and we werent in the same place anymore.

Glasser: When was that? It was in 2015?

Dreier: This was 2015. I think thats really when the crisis started. Because when I came there, they werethe government was using these high oil prices to mask a lot of the economic mismanagement that had been going on for years. And economists knew that; economists were saying, this is totally untenable, this is an economy built on price and currency distortions, but it just didnt matter, because they had more oil than anyone in the world, and oil was at $100 a barrel.

And, when that price collapsed in 2014, it kind of sent the whole economy spinning. And since then, its just been spinning downwards and downwards.

Glasser: Whats so interesting, though, is that it seems like such an outlier. You know, there are plenty of authoritarian societies in the world. There are plenty of oil-dependent authoritarian societies. Look at Russia. We were talking about Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez and their friendship going back all the way to the very beginning of Putins tenure, when I actually saw, crazily enough, the two of them walking around together in Red Squarenot something, I must say, thats an everyday occurrence, that you run into Vladimir Putin, but this really did happen.

You know, look at how differently those two societies have ended upboth authoritarian and much more authoritarian now than they were in 2001; both highly oil- and natural resource-dependent economies. Putin, if anything, has been as or more isolated politically than Venezuela, and yet, hes avoided the collapse that has occurred in Venezuela.

Is Maduro just uniquely incompetent?

Dreier: Yes. I mean, it makes total sense that you saw Chavez and Putin together. Chavez in some ways has modeled himself after the same principles that hold Putin. And people in the slums in Caracasthese are the people who supported Chavez, that supported Madurothey also see those parallels, and they look at places like Russia and like Cuba, and they see governments that are more in control.

One thing that people would sometimes say to me about Cuba is that they are at least, they have kind of a functioning authoritarian government. That, yes, people dont get to vote on their president, but theres no crime.

Glasser: So, this is more like anarchy. Is it just that the police state is not effective at being a police state?

Dreier: Right. One thing that people will say a lot in Venezuela is that they want mano dura, they want somebody to come

Glasser: A strong hand.

Dreier: and crack down, and, yes, have a strong hand with both the criminals and with the corrupt officials.

Glasser: I think this is something Ive heard a lot in Washington, as people have realized, belatedly, the scale of the crisis in Venezuelaif its a police state that doesnt work, then why is the elimination of democracy proceeding? Why arentif these are not effective authoritarians, then why are the opposition not able to be stronger?

Dreier: Yes, because the only thing they can really crack down on well is the opposition, because theyve done a brilliant job of that. A lot of people right now in the opposition are saying all the sacrifices of the last two years were for nothing, and regret fighting so hard. They wish theyd just left the country.

Glasser: And we should say, theyve rounded up and arrested since this referendum the leading opposition figures and theres not really a sense that anyone is going to be able to stop Maduro from taking this next decisive step away from democratic rule.

Dreier: Right. Right. Theyve been rounding people up. The day that Trump imposed sanctions, they took a prominent politicianthe person whod been the mayor of Caracasfrom house arrest and put him back into a military prison, as if to say, Trump, we dont care about your sanctions. And then today, for some reason, they took that same former mayor of Caracas and put him back in house arrest, just moving him around like a total political pawn to kind of flex their power.

And that message is getting through to the opposition. These are people whove been on the streets, really risking their lives for four months now, and theyre exhausted. They get tear-gassed every day, and as far as anybody can tell, its come to absolutely nothing. The country is more in the hands of Maduro today than it ever was.

Glasser: This is an amazing story that you have to tell. So, OK, we were in 2015, and your friends were starting to lose weight, and youre realizing this is a different level of crisis now kicking in. Tell us about how you lived through it. Where did you live? How did you buy food in the store? People are carrying around literally backpacks full of cash. What was it like for you?

Dreier: The Venezuela story, I was living it. You never had to go and try to figure out where the crisis was. It was on your doorstep, literally. One day in 2015, I woke up to the sound of screaming outside, and I looked out and a group of men were kicking somebody who they accused of being a thief. They were doing what they call in Venezuela a lynching, right outside my window. And this happened again and again.

One day this year I woke up and, again, there was screaming, and somebody had set up a barricade right outside my door, and the police were coming with tear gas.

Glasser: But you were living in an apartment building in what was a middle-class neighborhood of Caracas?

Dreier: Yes. I was living in the most protected place I could find. I mean, I chose where I lived because I thought it was going to be really safe and comfortable and great. And it was for a year. And then, in 2015, I started coming home and there would be no electricity. Thats when the water cuts started. And the water never came back, until the day I left I had three hours of water a day. And all of my mornings started with checking to see if there was water, and then kind of cursing under my breath when there was none.

Glasser: So, thats not even like, black market available, but at a price? Food was available to you at a higher price, but water you couldnt get?

Dreier: Yes. I mean, there was just no way to insulate yourself from the crisis when you were there. And the thing you really cant insulate yourself from is violence. So, I was robbed in broad daylight a couple of blocks from where I lived by two men on a motorcycle, and I kind of saw them coming and thought they might rob me, because that was happening to a lot of people at the time, and then they did. And when I told my friends about it, they were, like, Oh, that was a good robbery. Nobody got hurt. That was good and simple. And so your standards just start to change.

Glasser: But you adapt.

Dreier: Yes. And you dont tell the people at home whats happening because you dont want to worry your friends and family. So really, the people youre telling are other people going through the same thing, and it just becomes normalized.

The same thing happened when the secret police grabbed me one day. I was in detention for a few hours and they made all these threatslike, they said they were going to slit my throat; they said they were going to keep me for weeks and weeks; they said I had to stay there until I married one of themand when I got out, I told my friends, and they thought it was super funny. So, I also started joking about it, and we got drinks, and it was just like another thing that happened.

Glasser: You were relieved that they werent kidnappers when they grabbed you off the streets?

Dreier: Yes. Well, they calculated it to be as scary as possible. They rolled up and took me right after I did an interview, and snatched my phone away, and wouldnt say where we were going or what was happening. So, I assumed it was a kidnapping, which would not have been funny. So when we passed through the gates of the secret police headquarters, I was just so relieved. It was just all uphill from there.

Glasser: Yes, you know youve lost a little perspective when its a good thing to be detained by the secret police, right? Thank God!

Dreier: But, I mean, the one thing, like you say, that was very different is that I was never hungry. I mean, for me that was one of the most troubling parts of living there, because my life was so insulated from that kind of real suffering. And its right outside the door, so I could always, if I wanted to, go and spend $25 and buy a box of Cheerios on the black market.

Glasser: How did that work, the black market? Where did you go? Was there a sign?

Dreier: So, when I first got down to Venezuela, I was horrified because I couldnt find flour or sugar or eggs. Id wanted to make cupcakes my first day there to bring into the office, like an American treat, and I went to a bunch of supermarkets and couldnt find anything, and I started to really worry. But then, after Id been there about a month, I found the black market, and never had that problem again.

The black market operates in kind of a gray area. Its almost like a farmers market in the U.S. There are these outdoor markets where they sell produce, and then there will be kind a secret area where theyre also selling a bunch of goods at illegal prices. Or, itll be in the second floor of a market, and you have to know to go upstairs.

And, occasionally the government will crack down and there will be a big raid and theyll confiscate all of the black-market goods and probably give them to the military to keep everyone happy. But usually its not that hard to find things, and you can get food there, diapers, coffee, shampooall of the things that are impossible to find in supermarkets youll find kind of hidden beneath produce or in a little back area of the market.

Glasser: Was that a dollar economy, or was everything still in

Dreier: It was definitely dollarized. Everybody in Venezuela has this application that tells you the black-market rate, but its been banned so you cant get it.

Glasser: Its an app?

Dreier: Well, we had to use an app because the government blocks the website, and Venezuelans, yeah, Venezuelans have phones, and occasionally, when the black market hits some new low, the app will send out an alert and you can see it. Its got

Glasser: Text messaging enabled.

Dreier: Yes, yes. So, everybody will suddenly look down at their phones, and youll know that the black-market rate just hit a thousand. And people will check it day-to-day because the inflation is moving that fast, that prices might change from the morning to night, based on that app.

Glasser: Thats one of the amazing things, actually, about this collapse of this modern economy inboth, so quickly, but also in this technology-enhanced and enabled moment. I mean, when the Soviet Union fell apart and there were bread lines in 1991, there was no app to tell you where to go to get toilet paper or where to get bread.

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What's It Like to See a Democracy Destroyed? - POLITICO Magazine