CARACAS, Venezuela — “YO no creo en nadie” (I believe in no one). The phrase has become part of the Venezuelan lexicon. It was made famous, in part, by a gun-waving teenage gang boss who grandstanded before a YouTube audience and died before his 19th birthday. The expression was usually uttered in an offhand way by Venezuelans as a joke, a motto of our characteristically joyous disregard for authority. We believe in no one.

A more recent video, also shot in Venezuela, opens with a man on a street, writhing in pain. His face and part of his body are on fire. Dogs bark and traffic passes. A pedestrian walks by, seemingly oblivious to the figure before him. “That’ll teach you to keep stealing from people!” says the man behind the camera. The burning man is a thief. His punishment, dispensed by his peers, is but one of more than 37 cases of mob lynchings reported so far this year in Venezuela. People are taking the law into their own hands. They, too, believe in no one.

Venezuelans of my generation, born in the 1980s and 1990s, were raised to believe some important things: that we are a rich nation, that we had the most stable democracy in South America. Hugo Chávez, the president from 1999 until his death in 2013, made his followers believe that his brand of Bolivarian socialism was the road to dignity. He channeled billions of dollars in oil revenues to the poor, creating — for a while, at least — an illusion of growth and inclusion. Five years ago, none of us would have believed that hunger would become a part of daily life for most Venezuelans. Today, all it takes to confirm this hunger is looking out my window.

There is a milk vendor who delivers to restaurants in my neighborhood. When he has leftover milk, he sells it from his parked truck to a gloomy congregation of elderly neighbors, who begin to line up while it’s still dark out. These days, the truck shows up less often. The sad scene ends with frail customers walking away empty-handed after hours of waiting. I’m able to identify them by their solemn retreat and their tears of anger.