CARACAS, Venezuela ��With Venezuelans enduring several days of electricity failures, National Assembly leader Juan Guaido said he'll call a "national emergency" Monday to rally public anger in his attempt to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
Though he's backed by the U.S. and 50 other governments, Guaido's leverage is limited because he doesn't control the government or the military. His plan is to increase pressure on Maduro, who he says stole last year's election and therefore has no legitimacy.
Guaido said he wasn't calling for international intervention, even though some supporters are pressing him to do so. Instead, he made another plea to the military to abandon Maduro, which would almost certainly bring him down.
"Will you keep hiding the dictator?" Guaido said at a news conference in Caracas, addressing the military command. To all soldiers, he said: "We do not want more accomplices. The time is now."
Once South America's richest nation, Venezuela has suffered deeply under Maduro. The nation's problems include poverty, violence, hyperinflation, food shortages and now the worst power failures in memory. In a possible clue to Maduro's tenuous hold on power, he hasn't arrested Guaido despite threats to do so.
At Caracas University Hospital in the capital, Maria Valor sat watch Sunday over the bed of her 3-year-old daughter, struck in the head by a fallen branch. Her face was swollen and purple rings circled her eyes. "She won't respond," Valor said. "She won't sit up and no one is able to tell me what is wrong without an X-ray."
But there was no electricity, and one of two of the hospital's generators had broken.
There has been no independent explanation for the power failures. Maduro's government has alleged cyber-sabotage and sought to blame the U.S. Defense Minister Vladmir Padrino Lopez said on state television Sunday that the government has "achieved some level of stabilization" in the power shortages.
"There is still a lot to do because the attack has been very precise," he said.
Only 20 percent of Caracas reportedly was able to get online Sunday. Barricades were erected on some of the capital's streets overnight and refused burned on the streets, after Guaido and Maduro rounded up supporters for rallies Saturday.
Julio Castro, the head of Doctors for Health, a network of medical providers that surveys Venezuela's hospitals, said 17 people with long-term diseases had died since the blackouts began Thursday. They couldn't get the treatment they needed, he said.
Yet the nation seems to adjust to each new crisis. Though many regular businesses were closed, the bars and restaurants of the wealthier east remained open Saturday night as if the darkness signaled a holiday.
While the wealthy were able to maintain some semblance of normal, other Venezuelans were left to their own devices to face life without electricity. Motorists have taken to driving around aimlessly to charge phones and attempt to call relatives in the countryside or abroad. Highways and avenues were lined with parked cars where cell signals were particularly strong.
On Sunday morning the city's downtown came back to life after a night marked by residents burning trash and hurling bottles at police, who quashed the demonstrations with tear gas. Roads in the La Candelaria neighborhood were singed from the skirmishes, but kiosks and bakeries were open and old men played dominoes in plazas and churches held Mass.
Maria Martelo, 27, an engineer, returned to her powerless home from a cathedral where she had charged her phone. "What else can you do?" she said. "What we're living is terrible and absurd."
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(Patricia Laya and Fabiola Zerpa contributed to this report.)
