Human beings invented States to protect themselves from catastrophe. You understand this in Lewis Mumford’s books on the first cities or in Jared Diamond’s on civilizational collapse: we went from nomadic tribal groups to organized societies of thousands of people because we learned to organize governments that, besides making some richer and more powerful than others, reduced the chances of dying from hunger, cold, disease, or enemy attack.
Until the mid-20th century, Venezuela did not have a State that significantly reduced the primitive precarity of its population, that defended it from catastrophe. As in so many other places on Earth, it was then that Venezuelans began to benefit from technology and institutions that saved them from dying of starvation or influenza. There had been previous efforts, from Páez’s first economic reconstruction programs and Guzmán Blanco’s compulsory education to Gómez’s road construction.
But it was with the López Contreras administration in 1936 that we began to see institutions functioning on a truly national scale, vaccination and literacy campaigns, a systematic effort to transform a dispersed, sparsely populated society with a very low life expectancy, where the vast majority of people were sick and malnourished, into a functional and productive one. During those decades, the governments of López Contreras, Medina Angarita, the 1945-1948 junta, Gallegos, and Pérez Jiménez took advantage of oil revenues to implement measures that benefited the people. With democracy, in 1958, came more public works and institutional innovations, such as the expansion of political rights.
With Chávez, the decadent welfare state we had not only ceased to protect society from catastrophe, but became the cause of the catastrophe. It was like teaching a loyal guard dog to kill the children in the house.
Until that promise of development for all was broken, inequality began to grow, vulnerability began to regain ground, and a frustrated and confused society chose Hugo Chávez as its answer, precisely in the year, 1998, that marked five centuries since the first contact with Spain. It had taken us half a millennium to have a State that provided health, education, justice, and order. That year, that history of progress halted, and the long road traveled began to unravel.
Reversal and investment
As Paula Vásquez Lezama described it, since the Vargas tragedy in 1999, when chavismo appropriated the bodies of the survivors, everything the State gave demanded in return helping that State grow and maintain itself. As Mirtha Rivero recounts in La oscuridad no llegó sola, chavismo used every crisis to seize control of the entire State. Once it had it in its hands, it turned it upside down. The State that should have served society now only had to serve power, against society.
With Chávez, the decadent welfare state we had not only ceased to protect society from catastrophe, but became the cause of the catastrophe. It was like teaching a loyal guard dog to kill the children in the house.
Chavismo deepened all the vices of those previous governments to reverse the complicated history of our development and invert the role of the State. The long-standing culture of police and military violence expanded to turn the entire country into a checkpoint, where the armed forces behave like an army of occupation that treats all natives as enemies, on a scale that covers the entire territory, not just the slums riddled with bullets during the Caracazo. The perennial culture of corruption among civil servants was perfected to privatize the public administration, which does nothing unless its staff is paid personally, and to transform the bureaucracy into an industry for extracting wealth from citizens and the land, far more voracious than under any dictatorial or democratic government prior to 1999.
As long as this perpetrator State exists, we will not have any transition to democracy in Venezuela.
The elephantine State erected by Chávez had lost much of its muscle mass by 2020, but it remained, and remains, capable of subjugating a nation diminished by the miniaturization of its economy and mass migration. Maduro redesigned repression to maximize the yield of his limited resources. And so he reached the point where he discovered, especially after the 2024 electoral fraud, the efficiency of kidnapping a minor, because that means imprisoning an entire family and the community network to which the family turns to.
The method of subjugating society by harming entire families is evident in the Víctor Quero case. It wasn’t administrative chaos that prevented his family from knowing whether he was alive or dead, nor was it that the clerks couldn’t find the file with his name on it. It was terror, a set of practices that a regime, illegitimate and rejected by the majority of the population, implemented to minimize the chances of losing power. That State, which for decades attempted to be a welfare state, providing public goods to millions of citizens, now focuses on managing harm to those millions in order to provide private goods to the few thousand who control it.
Beyond the anger we feel over the story of Carmen Navas asking about her son from the cruel giant who killed him, the Víctor Quero case is causing such a stir because of how it exposes the way the Venezuelan State has become the very opposite of what it should be. Instead of saving people from misfortune, it inflicts misfortune to govern through fear. Instead of being accountable, it lies and sows confusion for months as a form of torture. Instead of being the state of law and justice promised by the Constitution that frames it, it is a criminal State where justice does not exist.
The great work of chavismo
This is the State that killed Víctor Quero and that forced an elderly woman, for more than nine months, to undertake the economic and logistical challenge of visiting courts and prisons, even outside Caracas, driven by the hope of seeing her son again before he died.
And this State is the main achievement of chavismo.
Previous governments, whose main task was to govern for better or for worse, left behind a legacy of buildings and institutions, from banks and State-owned enterprises to schools, museums, and universities, which were a mix of successes and failures. Chavismo will leave some buildings and infrastructure projects, far too few considering the revenue it received during almost three decades in power. But the main creation of chavismo is this gigantic state that serves only to subjugate society.
And as long as this perpetrator State exists, we will not have any transition to democracy in Venezuela. We will not be able to return to the path of democracy and development from which chavismo diverted us.
For Vince Gervasi, chief executive of Triscenic Production Services, it was yet another body blow.
His company, a leading supplier of set and scenery storage and transportation for the film industry, was poised for a turnaround after nearly three years of losing money.
Then, last week, he said a line producer on “Shark Tank,” one of his long-standing clients, called him to say the hit ABC reality show was relocating production from the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City to Atlanta.
“They said it was too expensive here to do anything,” Gervasi recalled being told. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ This show has money.’”
For the last six years, Triscenic had dedicated a 70,000-square-foot warehouse at its Santa Clarita facility to store the show’s items, transporting them in 30 custom made semitrucks between seasons.
Battered by the pandemic, the dual labor strikes, economic downturns and consolidations, Gervasi told The Times in 2024 that he had laid off 78 of his 85 employees and winnowed down his once-buzzing operations that housed sets and scenery across 2 million square feet in 41 buildings to half that, with the expectation that things would bounce back.
Like many other local film industry veterans, he is still waiting.
Vince Gervasi, at Triscenic Production Services, in Santa Clarita.
(Bob Doyle)
“I’ve been doing this for 41 years. I’ve seen the good and the bad — this is a complete decimation. It’s unprecedented.”
From florists to prop rentals to catering and beyond, production services and craft businesses are the hub and spoke of L.A.’s film and TV industry. But many of these businesses — some of which have been family-operated for generations — are struggling to weather a post-pandemic slump in film activity deepened by runaway production, media consolidation and the end of the streaming boom.
Film shoot days in the Los Angeles region have fallen nearly 50% since 2019, according to FilmLA data reviewed by The Times. Employment in Los Angeles County’s motion picture and sound recording industry has similarly plummeted, with a loss of some 57,000 jobs in the last four years, federal labor data show.
The slowdown has become a major issue in the L.A. mayoral race as evidence mounts of the economic toll on the city.
Just last month major industry vendor Quixote — whose Star Waggons trailers were once ubiquitous on the streets of L.A. — announced that it was winding down most of its sound stage business in Los Angeles, closing its operations in Atlanta and laying off 70 employees.
In a note to its clients and partners, Hudson Pacific Properties Inc., Quixote’s parent company, said that “we have persisted through the prolonged and ongoing slowdown in commercial, television and film production. But ultimately, industry conditions have forced difficult decisions.”
Between 2022 and 2025, more than 80 such businesses across Los Angeles have closed down, according to a list compiled by the ACME Directory, a production resource that connects TV and film professionals with specialized products and services.
“It’s, in many ways, a much bigger reflection of the contraction we’re seeing in the industry right now,” said Kevin Klowden, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, focused on entertainment and technology. “The surge in demand for streaming and the consequential demand to catch up on content hid the fact that the industry was shrinking.”
Last October, the family-run Costume Rentals Corp. began liquidating its inventory after dressing film and television characters for 50 years. The North Hollywood firm provided costumes for “Forrest Gump,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Fast and Furious” and, more recently, the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown.”
A year earlier, Valentino’s Costume Group closed its doors after two decades in business and sold off its 400,000 items. At the time, Shon LeBlanc, the North Hollywood shop’s last owner standing, said he had endured a “perfect storm” of calamities and was drowning in debt following the cancellation of 15 shows in a single week.
Even the legendary Western Costume, which has been in business since 1912, has been hurt by the slowdown. During the 2023 strikes by writers and actors, Western Costume furloughed 43 employees, or about two-thirds of its staff. Recently, the North Hollywood costume mecca, which has supplied such classic films as “Gone with the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Sound of Music” and the TV series “Mad Men,” furloughed an unspecified number of its workers, said two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
A representative of Western Costume did not respond to a request for comment.
Marc Meyer, the owner of Faux Library Studio Props, had strained to stay in business through the pandemic shutdown and the 2023 labor strikes — laying off 11 of his 13 employees.
By the start of 2024, Meyer, a set decorator who was credited with inventing the fake movie book, was drastically behind on rent, owing $500,000, he said.
Marc Meyer, closed the doors on Faux Library Studio Props in North Hollywood after almost 25 years in business.
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
Meyer’s landlord had given him a week to come up with more than $100,000 in unpaid rent or vacate the 89,000-square-foot warehouse in North Hollywood filled with props, books, antique furniture and other items that have decorated such film and TV sets as “Angels & Demons” and “The X-Files” for almost a quarter-century.
Meyer came up with $45,000 to mollify his landlord, garnering a month’s reprieve. A GoFundMe was set up during the strikes and a host of industry colleagues such as “Top Gun: Maverick” set decorator Jan Pascale stepped up, buying props to help fill his coffers.
“The change in our city is palpable,” said writer and director Sarah Adina Smith, a co-founder of Stay in LA’s, a grassroots campaign aimed at increasing film and television production in Los Angeles. “It’s not just that so many crafts and artists are out of work, but you see small businesses, too. In L.A., we’re an ecosystem fed in large part by creative jobs, and that is quickly vanishing.”
Marlon Gilbert still waxes nostalgic about the days his Commerce-based company, Gilbert Production Service, stored and transported scenery and props for TV shows including “Dancing with the Stars” and feature films like “Batman.” At one time, he said, he was handling seven active TV shows in a single season.
“When it was still on Fox, the ‘American Idol’ finale, we had like 20 semitrucks going in and out. Money was flowing like crazy,” he said. “But eventually times got hard for them, and they cut back on their production stuff.”
By last year, Gilbert was down to just three clients. “It wasn’t sustainable,” he said.
In December, after three decades, the family-owned business filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shut down too.
“I couldn’t pay rent on our warehouse lease, I blew through my savings and my 401(k),” he said. After his wife was hospitalized following multiple strokes in 2023, he said, “I didn’t have the energy to beat the bush for new business.”
“I would’ve liked to have gone out with more panache and made a big splash and money selling the business. But there was nothing left to sell.”
Scott Niner, president and owner of Dangling Carrot Creative, checks on a robotic machine as it fabricates at his shop in North Hollywood.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Scott Niner, president and owner of Dangling Carrot Creative, offers a case study in how production service businesses have navigated the tidal wave of upheavals.
After 18 years in business creating graphic signage, custom flooring and wallpaper to make sets look exactly as art directors dreamed up, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last April.
Before the pandemic, Niner’s Valencia-based business was thriving.
In 2014, he opened a Georgia satellite office to service the film and TV productions that had migrated to take advantage of the state’s generous tax credits. He steadily expanded his workforce to 32 employees in L.A. and Georgia.
Production was so plentiful that he even branched into the bakery business in 2018, delivering graphics and cupcakes in the same order. At its peak, Dangling Carrot generated $800,000 a month.
When the pandemic shutdown hit, Niner’s monthly revenue dropped to $50,000, he said. He kept his workers employed by making face shields that he donated to hospitals.
“I hung in there, and it was painful,” said Niner, who received some government assistance.
During the strikes in 2023, he drained his 401(k) and his union pension to keep his shop open and his workers employed.
Niner said he deployed a strategy of “pivoting and praying.” He shifted his business to focus more on fabrication, making giant 3-D-printed items for movie premieres, 25-foot-long, 8-foot-tall and 8-foot-deep ammo chests for a “Call of Duty” promotion and even graphics at airports.
Last last month, Niner sold off his Georgia business as filming in that state shifted to the U.K. He downsized his home and moved his business from Valencia to a much smaller building in North Hollywood. He is now down to 11 employees.
“I have a very bright outlook on the future, especially because we’re getting phone calls from people who never would have called us because all the other guys are out of business,” he said. “There’s something to be said about the last man standing. But I’m the last man standing on $2 million in debt. I’m more like lying down.”
The industry got a reprieve last week when CBS announced that it was relocating its hit drama “Tracker” to Los Angeles from Vancouver, Canada, after receiving a $48-million tax credit. Many view such moves, however, as small wins over comprehensive ones.
“There’s been a fundamental change happening here over the past five years,” said Cale Thomas, a makeup artist who has worked on “Guardians of the Galaxy 3” and the recent biopic “Michael.”
Thomas, who is a member of Stay in LA, acknowledges that California’s step last year to double its tax incentives has helped to spur an uptick in local production, but that has not stopped the outflow of productions or resolved a host of restrictions and costs that have hampered the industry.
He worked on “The Mandalorian” and other Lucasfilm series that stream on Disney+ for five years. “We shot in Manhattan Beach Studios,” he said, but noted that Lucasfilm has since moved one show to the U.K. and produced two others there.
“This has been devastating for our industry,” he said. “Hundreds of generational family businesses aren’t being used anymore.”
The pain points are not confined to Hollywood.
Last year, Marvel Studios — which had made Georgia, known as Hollywood of the South, its primary filming center for such major franchises as “Avengers: Infinity War” — relocated much of its production to the U.K.
The impact has meant even fewer domestic productions causing an even bigger ripple effect.
Among the high-profile casualties was Hackman Capital Partners, which aggressively snapped up studios, acquiring $10 billion in assets under management before production activity plummeted nationwide.
In January, the company defaulted on its $1.1-billion mortgage on Radford Studio Center, the historic lot where “Seinfeld” and “Gunsmoke” were filmed and which gave Studio City its name.
Earlier this year, Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on its $1.1-billion mortgage on Radford Studio Center, the historic lot where “Seinfeld” and “Gunsmoke” were filmed.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
Three months later, lender Deutsche Bank filed a foreclosure complaint on the also-historic Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, N.Y., home to “Sesame Street” and “Succession.”
Gregg Bilson sold ISS Props, the Sunland-based company his father founded in 1977, to Manhattan Beach Studios, part of Hackman Capital Partners, five years ago, staying on as CEO to help run and expand the company.
After 40 years in the business, he retired last August with a little more than a year and a half left on his contract.
Bilson now sees himself as a Hollywood relic.
“Many of my contemporaries and I have had conversations where we say we saw the best of the film and TV industry when it was an art form,” Bilson said. “It will never be the same.”
The fort was built in the 1890s as part of a series of facilities set up to keep a potential invasion from London. One historian revealed the incredible story behind the site
The Tool Store at Reigate Fort(Image: UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The UK is full of stunning places to visit, but one particular spot combines breathtaking scenery with a captivating glimpse into the past. A military historian recently explored the location and revealed the remarkable story behind its construction.
Military history specialist Dr Jen Howe shared the tale of Reigate Fort on Instagram. Now under the ownership of the National Trust, the fort was constructed on top of Reigate Hill in Surrey in 1898. And the purpose behind its creation is extraordinary.
According to the National Trust, which manages the site today, the fort was erected to fend off a possible French invasion as part of the London Defence scheme. This comprised a 72-mile network of defences consisting of 13 military installations intended to safeguard the capital. Beyond storing equipment and ammunition, there were also proposals to excavate enormous trenches to keep invading armies at bay from London.
Beginning her Instagram slideshow, Dr Howe remarked: “POV: You stumble into a world of forgotten military history just 30 mins from London.” Detailing the history of Reigate Fort, she continued: “Built in the late 1890s to defend London from a French invasion that never actually came. These buildings held shovels and guns, ready to build one huge trench around London…”
The National Trust notes that, by 1906, it was decided the British Navy possessed sufficient strength to repel any prospective invasion, and Reigate Fort was decommissioned. It was sold the following year. In 1972, it and the other mobilisation centres were designated as Scheduled Ancient Monuments by English Heritage in recognition of their significance to British military history. The site welcomes visitors every day, reports Surrey Live.
Those who visit can view two sets of gates – the first are steel and spiked, while the second are heavier and bulletproof. The tool store and the magazine – where munitions and explosives were once kept – are also on display, along with the underground casemates, which would have served both as storage facilities and as shelter from enemy bombardment.
Dr Howe also drew attention to a nearby memorial dedicated to nine US airmen, who died when the B-17 Flying Fortress they were aboard came down on Reigate Hill in March 1945. “A few metres on and you’ll find a tragic site,” she said.
“On March 19, 1945, nine US airmen were coming home from Germany when their plane went down in a thick cloud. None of them made it.
“They had an average age of 21. The oak wing tips laid out are the exact distance of the aircraft’s tips, and a haunting reminder of what fell here.”
According to the National Trust, the memorial sculpture was crafted by Surrey artist Roger Day, and was unveiled on the 70th anniversary of the crash. Both elements of the memorial are carved from ancient Surrey oak, positioned the same distance apart as the aircraft’s wingtips, with metal salvaged from the crash site incorporated within the sculpture.
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Dr Howe also drew attention to another nearby structure. “Just beyond and you’ll find a mysterious WW2 structure,” she said. “Even historians aren’t too sure what it was used for.”
In the caption accompanying her post, she wrote: “40 minutes from London there’s a stretch of the North Downs where, in the space of a single walk, you pass a Victorian fort built to protect London from a French invasion that never came, a mysterious WW2 structure, a clearing where a US bomber crew were killed on their 13th mission together, and a WW2 training ground.
“Reigate is a genuinely beautiful walk, with wide open chalk downland, extraordinary views, ancient woodland. But the hidden military history adds so much to this place. You may not even notice these things if you didn’t know where to look!”
Rosenior’s dismissal may solve one problem, but those in Chelsea‘s boardroom must take the major share of the blame for a club that looks increasingly out of control.
Chelsea‘s recent losses eclipsed Manchester City‘s £197.5m deficit in 2011, despite bringing in £490.9m in revenue, which the club says is the second highest total in its history.
Since the current ownership took control in 2022, Chelsea have spent around £1.5bn on players, focusing on securing a raft of younger players on long-term contracts.
In this time, they have sacked Champions League winner Tuchel at the end of their first 100 days at the helm, then his successor Graham Potter seven months later.
Frank Lampard had a short second spell in charge as interim boss before former Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino took charge, leaving by mutual consent after one season.
Enzo Maresca took over, but was sacked in January, less than six months after winning the Club World Cup to add to the Uefa Conference League.
If the final straw for Rosenior was criticism of his players, Maresca’s departure came amid friction with Chelsea‘s hierarchy, stunning key figures at the club after a 2-0 win against Everton in December by stating “many people” had made it his “worst 48 hours” since joining the club.
Cryptic, perhaps, but the beginning of the end for the Italian, as those in charge at Chelsea took a dim view of his public expression of discontent.
Those with knowledge of Maresca’s views, though, said he had grown unhappy at a multitude of factors, including encouragement over which players should start and which substitutions should be made during matches.
It led to the Rosenior experiment, which backfired on BlueCo, who may reflect on the number of managers hired and fired during their tenure and finally think: “It’s not them. It’s us.”
Former Chelsea winger Pat Nevin told BBC Radio 5 Live: “You would have to be a bit simple to be surprised at the situation with all the evidence in front of you.
“This is four seasons the new ownership has been in. This is manager number six. When you change it that amount of times, you have to ask the question – is the problem really the manager?”
