Yesterday, half of the participants of our youth exchange weekend didn’t show up, because they were looting.

They were the half who live in the city of Barquisimeto. The other half were kids from my little town of Palo Verde. It was meant to be Part Two of a rural-urban youth exchange that began last month.

I have known the looters since they were 8 years old, when I lived and worked in their barrio as a Maryknoll Lay Missioner. They are now in their last year of high school, just weeks from graduation.

I taught them as kids to play the cuatro and my partner taught them to play the drums. We formed a musical group called Los Zagalines de San Juan.

One summer when my artist-daughter Maia was home visiting from college, she helped the kids paint a colorful mural. It sprawled across the outside wall of the cultural center – the kids’ second home. The title of the mural was: Este es el barrio que sonamos. This is the barrio we dream of. Kites, trees, mangoes, kids, and pink and turquoise houses lit up the wall.

As I look back, I wonder how we didn’t realize then that the barrio we dreamed of was already a reality. Every single kid I knew was in school, universities were free and abundant and nearby, and any profession seemed within reach of anyone. Food was so subsidized, it was practically free. A former Maryknoll colleague joked in her visit that it seemed that for every year of Chavez’s presidency, people had gained a kilo. Medical care was free and around the corner. Community councils distributed everything from light bulbs to internet satellite dishes, for nothing. Even houses were free for those who needed one.

Venezuela was about seven years into the revolution at that point in time. We never ever dreamed of the backwards slide that awaited.

My young future looting friends remained on the straight-and-narrow throughout the decade that followed. They steered away from drugs and gangs , became wicked good drummers. They rose through the ranks of the cultural center’s vacation program, first as participants, then as facilitators, then full fledged counselors. Younger kids dreamed of being just like them. Parents thanked them for their dedication.

Thursday evening the bedlam began. Ledys and I had come to the barrio to visit his dad. We got out just as the National Guard post was going up in smoke. We skirted past road blocks of burning tires, trash and glass, and dodged a shooting spree between the Guard and protesters.

No one can explain just how the situation dissolved into looting. We started receiving calls from friends in the barrio around 8 pm, then at 10, at midnight and into the wee hours. Dozens of food stores in the commercial strip of the barrio had their windows and walls smashed. Word spread and what seemed like the whole barrio descended upon the goods, clearing the shelves with amazing proficiency.

When the smoke cleared – literally - some 24 hours later, we received a call from the coordinator of the cultural center. Four people from the community were dead and one of the kids from center was caught red-handed and jailed. After hearing our shock, he informed us that at about a dozen of the youth leaders were involved in looting.

For every year that has past since Chavez’ death, those extra gained kilos have been shed. And maybe two or three or four times more times as many more. These kids - my Zagalines, my muralists, my drummers, my camp counselors, my dreamers. They have become walking skeletons. Their crime this past weekend was that of hunger.

When it was clear that road blocks made it impossible for the looting contingent to join the gathering, we decided to go continue, with half the participants. We played games in the grass, we went on a walk to the nearby farm to collect dried bean pods, we held a scavenger hunt as the shadows of the mountains closed in on us. We ate arepas made of green bananas and sang around an improvised campfire. Everyone stayed up well past the midnight curfew.

But the core of the gathering – the exchange part -the part where the rural kids were to share with their urban cohorts about their food gardens, well , that part was put on standby. Just as the soul of this nation remains on standby.

And as we went to bed with half of our participants missing, so Venezuela goes to bed with half of its participants missing, missing the food their bodies need.

When and how will this end. That is the question on my lips as I arise with the sun each day , to plant yet another banana plant. It is the question on my heart as I fold my arms around these young and skinny bodies who come to help, startled by their strength and resilience. It is the question in my soul as I lay my own weary body down each night, after calling out to the stars and to the heavens for guidance.