From being Latin America’s envy in the 80s to being the destroyed country that it is, there is a lot to learn about who or what is to blame for the Venezuelan socio-economic crisis. I escaped Venezuela five years ago because it was crumbling apart to the point it was unlivable, but here I am taking a journey to understand who/what has caused my beloved country to be in such a disastrous situation. With “Los Chavistas” (followers of the government) arguing that the United States has caused the crisis, the opposition blaming Chavez’s legacy, and even some people attributing the crisis to oil, it is accurate to say that assigning responsibility for the crisis in Venezuela is a complicated task.

Venezuela, ever since the 60s, was one of the richest countries in Latin America and most developed countries of the region; it was the Venezuela I wish I could have had…

This was due to the high price of oil in the international market, since Venezuela is the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world. This made it one of the fastest-rising economies of Latin America for most of the late 20^th century. We were a model democracy for most of the continent, too! We had a fair and competitive democratic system in place so strong it survived a wave of authoritarian ruling and economic crisis in Latin America from the 60s all the way to early 80s. But, in 1998, Venezuela was destined to suffer what it did not suffer from the mid-1900s populism that characterized Latin America. The infamous Hugo Chávez—a recently freed military officer who had failed a coup d’état against the democratic president two years before—obtained presidential power by promising the world to the working class and the minorities in Venezuela.

Chávez’s incompetent way of handling the economy, coupled with his constant attempt to change the whole state to his liking, have been determining factors of the current situation in Venezuela. The Mexican newspaper El Universal in “Venezuela’s crisis: who to blame?” expresses that the socialist reforms of Chávez’s mandate destroyed the country’s private sector. His reforms were based on expropriating hundreds of businesses to nationalize them and do nothing with them: one of the worst things that could happen to a country. Chávez, selling his actions as “giving the people what belongs to the people,” found a way to acquire many more important positions for his friends and family. Because, apparently, only the people closest to him were “the people.” Until his 2013 death from cancer, Chávez’s authoritarian and communist reforms kept ruining the country at an exponential rate. But his death did not represent change at all, because he bequeathed Nicolás Maduro the presidency. A politician with even less competency to govern anything, Maduro has been following Chavez’s ideals and has maintained the same fiasco.

During the last few years Venezuela has been nothing but a socioeconomic crisis. The absurd hyperinflation of the Venezuelan currency has made the economy fall into a crisis, and the government has failed to make it any better. This has ultimately caused the social aspect of the country to be in decline.  Looking for something to put on the table has become the biggest problem to be solved by the Venezuelans; there is no time for leisure or development. The insecurity also has spiraled because delinquents have decided that robbing someone a little bit less poor than them is the solution for their situation.

These factors have made more than 7 million people escape from what is left of the country. As a matter of fact, John Otis, Bogotá-based correspondent for NPR, in his article on the issue, has made sure to acknowledge the government (or the lack of it) for such humanitarian crisis. Across his article, his choice of words leaves clear that most of the Venezuelans blame the socialist government for the great Venezuelan migration; “[The situation] […] is widely blamed on corruption and mismanagement by President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist regime,” as he claims. But, if you still have doubts on the “Chavista” effect on the country, the Covid-19 pandemic showed the world how bad the situation is. The lack of basic things like basic medical supplies and treatment, coupled with a world-wide uncertainty, made Venezuela one of the countries that suffered the most from the pandemic.

But even when the political situation is a great candidate to blame for Venezuela’s decline, people from different groups seem to still disagree on who is to blame for the Venezuelan crisis. From blaming the government, the fall of the oil prices, the social backwardness in Venezuela, or even blaming the U.S. government, different groups of people attribute the development of the crisis to different aspects that added up to current Venezuela. The sympathizers of the Chávez-Maduro regime blame the Americans for their crisis. According to an article published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S government has implemented several economic sanctions on the Venezuelan government due to corruption issues with Maduro. As the article says, “There is significant evidence of the impact of sanctions on Maduro’s power. Not only have targeted economic sanctions limited his ability to finance his regime’s antidemocratic activities and human rights abuses by reducing oil and illegal mining earnings, but they have also strained his inner circle.” The supporters of Maduro’s presidency see these sanctions as an excuse to blame the crisis that has developed. Whereas, the people who do not sympathize with the Venezuelan socialist government, claim that Chávez’s socialist reforms led to a weak private sector and a corrupt public sector. However, being the complicated issue that it is, it must not have come from a single source; instead, the Venezuelan crisis was caused by the combination of the factors mentioned above.

At this point, you might be asking… “How the hell did this Chávez guy get elected?” Well… I ask that same question every day. But apparently it is because he was able to disguise his evilness with a mask of charisma and (I must admit) a remarkable ability to talk. Pre-presidency Chávez was supported by most people (educated and uneducated) because he seemed to be a respectable person who wanted the best for Venezuela. To illustrate this, the renowned Mexican journalist Jorge Ramos from Univision, made a comparison between two occasions when he interviewed Chávez: before and after he entered the presidency. Ramos explains that in the first interview, Chávez seems pretty promising (like any political figure thriving for a position). In it, Chávez even says that he would give out the power if “the people would not like him,” Whereas two years later (as president), he did not want to even hear Ramos, when he was asked a promising question; his reaction was to go against Ramos. He said that the work that Ramos was bringing was trash; he wanted to shift the attention from the question he was asked to the interviewer’s work to avoid answering it. Additionally, Regalado et. al, in the research study aiming to identify the Venezuelan’s perception of the Chávez-Maduro government, illustrate that the popularity of Chávez and Maduro’s socialist government has sharply declined across the years.

Figure 1: Popularity of the Chavez-Maduro government across the years (Regalado et al.)

In short, the Venezuela I acquired was nothing like the paradise my parents had the luck of living in. Many factors, including Chavez’s 21^st Century socialism, have caused my country to be in constant decline and social withering. Millions of Venezuelans have lost the hope for change and have abandoned the country, including myself. But I am sure, with time, we will be able to get our country back from the Chavez-Maduro tyranny to be able to build it again. There is so much Venezuelan talent working for other countries, but we will eventually go back to work for the motherland. And yes, some may call me crazy for believing this, but I will never lose hope. “No hay mal que dure mil años, ni pueblo que lo resista” (There is no evil that lasts a thousand years, nor people that resist it), as my parents say.