The Mayas, who in the classical era of their civilization mysteriously depopulated large stone cities in Mesoamerica, now, a millennium later, abandon their adobe and thatched roof villages in the Yucatán peninsula at a rate that could be comparable. Every year, over a thousand cross the border into the United States. This time their motives are not a mystery: local poverty and the promise of a better life, especially in California, push them to exodus. The traffic is bidirectional, in any case. While the people march north, back to the south come remittances of money, hopes and new cultural patterns. However, life for those who stay at home is not easy, especially for married women, who submit not only to an endless wait, but also to asphyxiating social norms.

The Sole Authority of the southern states of Monagas and Anzoátegui acknowledges that it received several transfers from the Brazilian construction company, but for issuing a book. Anyway, his is just a footnote in the list of payments without invoice made by the Brazilians. Where are the big shots? In the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, silence is also a message.

The last months of 2016 and the beginning of this year report an increase in the diagnosis of malaria in the western margin of the Venezuelan jungle province. The economic crisis has caused Venezuelan, Colombian, and Brazilian inhabitants of the border - to regard the illegal exploitation of gold as a possibility of instant wealth. In addition to a security problem due to the control, the indiscriminate felling in the region has intensified the work of sanitary authorities. This is a trip to in the depths of Venezuela, the one that is not in the headlines of the media or the agenda of the political leadership.

José Gregorio Vicari Méndez, an assimilated physician of the Bolivarian Army, was the successful owner of Proveeduría Médica VDS, a medical supplies company that signed hundreds of contracts with the health office during the oil boom. This finding is part of a database developed by Armando.info with the public information contained in the National Register of Contractors. Although the Organic Law of the Office of the Comptroller states that an active official could have administrative responsibility if entering into contracts with the State, Vicari Méndez, who is no longer a member of the company, presents an argument in his defend that goes beyond the tragedy of Venezuela's shortages. "If I have a patient with a requirement, if there is no material, but I know where there is, I look for it. What should I do? Should I not operate?

When Vice President Delcy Rodríguez turned to a group of Mexican friends and partners to lessen the new electricity emergency in Venezuela, she laid the foundation stone of a shortcut through which Chavismo and its commercial allies have dodged the sanctions imposed by Washington on PDVSA’s exports of crude oil. Since then, with Alex Saab, Joaquín Leal and Alessandro Bazzoni as key figures, the circuit has spread to some thirty countries to trade other Venezuelan commodities. This is part of the revelations of this joint investigative series between the newspaper El País and Armando.info, developed from a leak of thousands of documents.

Leaked documents on Libre Abordo and the rest of the shady network that Joaquín Leal managed from Mexico, with tentacles reaching 30 countries, ―aimed to trade PDVSA crude oil and other raw materials that the Caracas regime needed to place in international markets in spite of the sanctions― show that the businessman claimed to have the approval of the Mexican government and supplies from Segalmex, an official entity. Beyond this smoking gun, there is evidence that Leal had privileged access to the vice foreign minister for Latin America and the Caribbean, Maximiliano Reyes.

The business structure that Alex Saab had registered in Turkey—revealed in 2018 in an article by Armando.info—was merely a false start for his plans to export Venezuelan coal. Almost simultaneously, the Colombian merchant made contact with his Mexican counterpart, Joaquín Leal, to plot a network that would not only market crude oil from Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, as part of a maneuver to bypass the sanctions imposed by Washington, but would also take charge of a scheme to export coal from the mines of Zulia, in western Venezuela. The dirty play allowed that thousands of tons, valued in millions of dollars, ended up in ports in Mexico and Central America.

As part of their business network based in Mexico, with one foot in Dubai, the two traders devised a way to replace the operation of the large international credit card franchises if they were to abandon the Venezuelan market because of Washington’s sanctions. The developed electronic payment system, “Paquete Alcance,” aimed to get hundreds of millions of dollars in remittances sent by expatriates and use them to finance purchases at CLAP stores.