Grab your bags. Run. Get in the car. Go home. Stay home.

This was what I first experienced coming back home to Venezuela. Although safety had always been a pressing issue, the number of kidnappings, robberies, and assaults seems to have escalated quite a lot since I left for college in August. All the places that I used to frequent are now “red zones” that my parents will not let me near.

You might be asking: why?

Well, it is because our awesome government has caused the country’s worst inflation. Our currency has devaluated beyond the imaginable; power-outs are a daily occurrence, and the food scarcity is so bad that people can only have two meals a day. Imagine going to the grocery store and trying to buy chicken, eggs and milk, and being met by empty stands, and a mile long line to check out. That is the reality Venezuelans are living, which has led many to turn to crime in order to raise money to feed their families.

People all around the country have started to protest as a cry of desperation, but they are met by teargas and violence from the military—men and women who swore they would protect us, but are only oppressing us. These riots are nowhere to be seen on national television, as the government has taken over all national channels. Every single try to have our voices heard are shut down, because the government knows that eighty-seven percent of Venezuelans no longer want them in power.

Venezuelans no longer hope for the government to do anything about the economic, social and political crisis. We just know the government will go on television and say that the country is “perfectly fine,” and that all the miss happenings are just the “opposition (people against the government) trying to end Venezuelans’ peace.”

How much longer can Venezuelans put up with this crisis? With this oppression?