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 鈥渆lectrical sabotage.鈥
Freddy Nanez, the communications minister, said officials were working to restore power. 鈥淣obody will take away our peace and tranquility of the Venezuelan people,鈥 he wrote in a message shared with journalists on Telegram.
Nanez said in a voice message on Telegram that all 24 of Venezuela鈥檚 states had been at least partially impacted. He characterized the outage as a 鈥渄esperate鈥 attempt by Maduro鈥檚 opponents to violently oust the president.
鈥淭he entire national government has been activated to overcome this new aggression,鈥 he said.
Venezuela in 2019, during a period of political unrest, suffered from regular power outages that the government almost always blamed on its opponents, but that 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 have subsided as the South American nation's economy has stabilized, high inflation has eased and a de facto dollarization has 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.
鈥淭his is a constant strategy of the opposition, the enemies of this country, to impact the population,鈥 Diosdado Cabello, the newly appointed interior minister who is believed to be the second most powerful man in the country, said after the earlier outage.
Residents of the capital were taking 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.
Alejandra Martinez, a 25-year-old salesclerk, said she noticed the power went out when a fan stopped working. 鈥淚 thought the power would come back and I went back to sleep,鈥 she said while trying to catch a bus to work as dawn broke over Caracas. 鈥淏ut when I woke up, I realized it was an outage.鈥
Venezuela鈥檚 power grid relies heavily on the Guri Dam, a giant hydroelectric power station that was inaugurated in the late 1960s. The electrical system has been burdened by poor upkeep, a lack of alternative energy supplies and a drain of engineering talent as an estimated eight million Venezuelan migrants have fled economic misery in recent years.
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