From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Today, Venezuela is in the midst of a bloody month-old protest movement,

with demonstrators outraged by the country's dramatic economic collapse

and the government's increasingly authoritarian rule.

A Times reporter's close-up account of what's gone wrong.

It's Monday, May 1st.

This is the scene on the streets of Venezuela's capital city, Caracas.

In protest of President Nicolas Maduro's government.

This is becoming a country where only one man, one party is in charge,

and it's a place where they've delayed elections. They haven't allowed peaceful protests.

They've been getting rid of journalists like myself, but far worse,

they're journalists who have been jailed, they're journalists who have been attacked.

The country has taken a huge turn.

My colleague, Nick Casey, has been living in Caracas,

reporting on a country on the brink of collapse until recently,

when he was kicked out of Venezuela for that reporting.

Toward the end of that time, he went on a trip, a drive across Venezuela

that captures the story of this moment.

We went about 1,200 miles, going to almost every section of the country,

this long road trip, but a road trip that was just having a look at this disaster,

which was starting to unfold.

We'd pull over and we found a hospital where we just followed the doctors

...