It was once a thriving metropolis in the heart of oil country in Venezuela.

That city, Maracaibo, no longer exists.

Today, the city is rife with abandoned houses, some of which look like bombs were dropped on them, because homeowners tore windows and roofs off to sell for scrap before they took off on journeys to Colombia, Chile and the United States. Middle-class neighborhoods are filled with for sale signs and overgrown yards.

Fewer cars drive down the streets, and fewer criminals are around to steal them. Christmas dinners, once packed with noisy relatives, are lonely affairs aided by webcams.

Nearly eight million people — more than a quarter of the population — have fled Venezuela in recent years, driven out by economic misery and political repression.

Nowhere is that exodus more staggeringly acute than in Maracaibo, which has been hollowed out by the loss of about half a million of its 2.2 million inhabitants — many of them adults in their late teens to middle age. (The population figure is based on surveys, since the government has not conducted an official census in more than a decade.)