Venezuelans weary as latest blackout starts to ease

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s opposition Tuesday sought to harness anger over a blackout that deepened hardship nationwide, but turnout at a Caracas demonstration was modest as many Venezuelans despair of an imminent solution to their plight.

Lights came back on in parts of the capital and other areas of Venezuela overnight after a nearly nine-hour outage that the government blamed on an “electromagnetic attack” against the power grid, without providing any evidence. Government opponents say years of mismanagement and corruption were to blame.

Electricity supply remained unstable in many regions. The blackout knocked out communications and the Caracas metro on Monday, forcing commuters to walk home or hustle for a spot on packed buses. The metro remained out of operation Tuesday.

The scenes in the capital were familiar, though Caracas has been mostly spared the debilitating power cuts that persisted in other parts of the country after nationwide outages in March. The latest blackout didn’t make much difference to people with scarce power in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-largest city.

Maritza Arámbula, a Maracaibo resident, said she was tired of a government that makes “excuses” and an opposition continually seeking support from Venezuela’s exhausted citizens.

“We need solutions, not promises,” Arámbula said. “Not having light makes me sick.”

In Caracas, the opposition-led congress held a session in a main square to try to keep pressure on the government of President Nicolás Maduro, who has defied U.s.-led efforts to oust him. Opposition leader Juan Guaidó said, as he often has in the past, that the government he calls a “dictatorship” is crumbling.

“We have to win,” he said.