M MARACAIBO, Venezuela, April 15, (AP): Erick Ojeda has no money. He returned to land almost empty-handed from an overnight trip fishing for shrimp. His sister and her newborn are waiting for him to pick them up from a hospital. He has had no luck finding a ride there, so he is still helping fishermen get boats out of the water and weigh what little they caught.

The fishermen are all struggling, like most everyone in Venezuela, whose protracted crisis continues to evolve, entering a critical phase in recent weeks by further gutting people’s purchasing power and laying the groundwork for a recession. This latest chapter in the 12-year crisis even prompted President Nicolás Maduro to declare an "economic emergency" last week.

Tired, hungry and worried, the fishermen don't complain and keep to their tasks, or nap, under a hut with a view of an oil tanker on Lake Maracaibo. They know they are lucky to have a source of income, unreliable as it is, in 2025. "I have to keep toiling away even if work is bad,” Ojeda, 24, said. The country’s economy is unraveling yet again as key oil revenue dries up due to renewed economic sanctions punishing Maduro for electoral fraud and as his government finds itself with little wiggle room to respond despite some post-pandemic stability.

Venezuelans emerged from the pandemic to fully stocked grocery stores and the US dollar as the dominant currency for everyday transactions. They left behind years of bartering, lining up for hours outside supermarkets or even fighting on the streets for flour, rice, bread or other food items. They also stopped carrying bricks of worthless bolivar bills to pay for necessities.

Those changes were the result of government decisions that eased price controls on basic goods and allowed consumers and businesses to use greenbacks without restrictions. They also occurred because the government used the Venezuelan Central Bank to inject millions of dollars into the foreign currency exchange market every week and prop up the bolivar. Those government measures helped end a yearslong cycle of hyperinflation, which had reached 130,000% in 2018.