Suicides Surge in a Hopeless Venezuela
The desperate act is becoming ordinary in a population plagued by hyperinflation, hunger and mass emigration.
Maria Leida Sanchez stands under the tree where her son died. The farmhand tended fields of cabbage and carrots. He broke his leg in a fall and grew despondent that he could no longer provide.
Photographer: Manaure Quintero/BloombergThe patients arrive by night or in broad daylight, alive and sometimes dead.
A record surge of suicides in troubled Venezuela is wearing down doctors who work at the university hospital in the Andean state of Merida. People who have tried to kill themselves arrive at an uncertain rhythm that breeds dread in the professionals who receive them.