Words cannot describe the misery and chaos in Cuba’s Venezuela

Mere words cannot describe the misery and chaos Cuba’s Castro dictatorship has inflicted upon Venezuela and its people. You have to see it not only to understand it, but in many cases, believe it. Infected with the cancer of socialism, this once prosperous and free nation has been plundered and shackled with chains of tyranny.

Juan Gonzalez Vargas in Caracas Chronicles:

Words Fail

A boy’s funeral procession in Puerto La Cruz, a man sucking on a bone he found in a garbage bag, a woman wiping tear gas from her face, a nursery inside a women’s prison, hundreds standing in line, waiting for hours for something to eat. These are some of the images that are portrayed, alongside the testimony of the men and women that made putting a face to the crisis possible.

Yesterday, TIME turned the focus around and spotlighted the work of those who risk their lives and equipment to capture moments that sometimes words fail to fully do justice to.

Here’s more on the piece:

They are in the streets with the protesters and the officers, breathing in the same tear gas. They are in the lines for food and other basic goods, watching the same citizens who arrive empty-handed before sun-up leave empty-handed as night falls. They attend the funerals, and hear the wails of the parents of the dead.

TIME asked eight of them to select an image from their archives. Their tales, which have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity, offer a window into Venezuela’s reality.

The stories are heartfelt and give a broad glance at the trade. For example, according Alejandro Cegarra, who had to cover Gabriel’s funeral, a five-year-old boy who died from a grenade explosion in 23 de Enero, photographers are beyond mere witnesses:

I felt the need to try to help his soul to find some peace. The camera wasn’t a shield. I didn’t want it to be a shield and I was crying just like everyone else. To this day I still think about Gabriel and his mother, and this encourages me to talk to the people I photograph and try somehow to understand and make other people know the pain and the grief of losing a loved one.

For Oscar B. Castillo, it’s a snapshot to a bleak, repetitive reality that through weariness has become accepted. A moment in the middle of chaos when the camera allows one to stop, look around and let the viewer wonder how we ended up in this abyss:

“They think about how long a minimum wage salary lasts when there is rent and school tuitions to pay. And what about the transportation, the uniforms, the supplies? They haven’t yet purchased medicines, nor paid for the electricity, the water, the phone, the clothes, the food.

(…)

I see the scene and wonder how it is possible to be so indolent. How can the leaders play with the food of a whole population? We will see if they will be able to stop the anger that follows the hunger—a brutal thing, like these endless lines.“

Being a journalist is dangerous profession, but being a photojournalist takes it a step further. Journalists can rely on themselves to report, but photographers will always depend on their equipment, something security forces are well aware of.

Continue reading HERE.