How Venezuela's oil-tainted lake became a symbol of its decline
A putrid smell hangs over the black-stained shores of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, where an oil slick is emblematic of the steep decline in the country's once-enviable petroleum industry. N°364M2TN
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00:30It's very rough. The fishing boat is going to die because of this. The Maracaibo Sea is lost, it's lost.
01:30That sustenance, or that black gold, which at the time we called it in Venezuela, is a very strong problem here in the state of Zulia.
02:00The Venezuelan economy was structured in the 20th century on an oil and energy structure, and everything else, directly or indirectly, depended on the oil industry.
02:31The Maracaibo and Zulia Seas are lost.
02:42Because you have to see Maracaibo and Zulia in a country context. I wish the damage would have been only in Zulia.
02:51But really, the structure falls. It's like a building, you take away the foundations.
03:00The Maracaibo and Zulia Seas are lost.
03:19Here I am working, apart from being a fisherman, today I am working on the sanitation of the lake.
03:25The same lake where we get food products, today we are getting oil.
03:30The Maracaibo and Zulia Seas are lost.