CARACAS — There is nothing that can really prepare you for the human suffering on display here in Venezuela or the degree to which this country is in a free-fall. As a diplomatic power struggle between Nicolas Maduro and Juan Guaido played out on the world stage at the end of January, I spent hours in Caracas walking around Petare, one of the worst slums in the city. The streets are filled with families picking food from the trash, eating it right there, desperately seeking sustenance. My eye is drawn to one young man with boils all over his legs, the skin overtaken by infection. He gnaws at an almost bare chicken bone while he looks around frantically, as if he is afraid someone would steal it from his hands.

My bodyguard, Salazar, is next to me at all times, eyeing the surroundings, and a few minutes into our walk, I see his arm extend to the right of me as he grabs a young man running straight at me. I start running and end up at a square, standing next to a big statue of the national hero, Simon Bolivar. Behind it, there are colorful houses in rows up the steep mountain, structures that are hanging on by thread, and on many of them, there are paintings of Maduro and Hugo Chavez — scattered shards of a shattered dream.