Shovel in hand, a group of people on the shore of Lake Maracaibo in northern Venezuela remove polluted mud that, like the water, is now covered in oil. "Fishing will end because of this," says a fisherman from his boat with the few crabs he's managed to catch, pointing to the contaminated water. "Because there's no one to clean it up." South America's largest lake has become a symbol of the decline of the country's oil industry. In a turbulent socio-political landscape where Chavismo has been in power for two decades, environmental issues are absent from the political debate in the run-up to the July 28 elections. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES ARRANGED IN SEQUENCES