Once a regional powerhouse, Venezuela's telenovela industry limps on

A worker on the set strikes the clapperboard to the shout of "Action!" and three women launch into a heated argument about an abandoned child who was rescued from the streets but cannot be tamed of her violent impulses. The scene from the Spanish-language soap opera "Piel Salvaje," or "Wild Skin," would be unremarkable if not for the uphill battle the Venezuelan producers waged to get here in a country that nearly lost its telenovela industry after churning out some of Latin America's most-memorable melodramas for more than a half century. More…