Guyana...Sabre Rattling from Next Door

Getting there is half the Story.

The sun had just begun to peek through the clouds as the humid air enveloped the city of Caracas. It was a weekend morning, and the city was still noticeably asleep. The phone ringing in my room caught me off guard as I finished packing my bags. It’s not something I usually expected, since we had cell phones like everybody else in the world.

On the other end was a warning from the US government. On the line, the US Embassy, suggesting we might want to leave the country because they had received information that Hugo Chávez and his administration wanted to arrest my crew and me for being in the country illegally and not reporting stories that they agreed with. Of course, that was a completely false allegation. We had entered Venezuela through the airport normally; we had made it clear that we were a news crew, and we had asked whether any special permission was needed. We were told none was necessary. We obtained the standard visa and entered the country legally.

It was my second trip to Venezuela by then. I was very familiar with Caracas and the areas around the capital, having spent about a month there a year or two earlier, covering the unrest that followed Hugo Chávez’s forced shutdown of RCTV as he continued to silence any opposition or media that did not carry his message as he wanted.