In part two of this series, we saw how Hugo Chavez rose during a moment of deep frustration. He used oil money to create social programs, survived a coup, and an oil strike that made him less and less open to compromise. He consolidated power politically and made economic decisions that further entrenched Venezuela as a petro state. By the time he died in twenty thirteen, Venezuela had changed dramatically, and he left a system that had revolved around one man, him.
And then suddenly he was gone. And what followed wasn't a leadership transition, it was a stress test. And we're about to find out how Venezuela scored. Welcome to Wiser World, a podcast for busy people who need a refresher on all things world. Here we explore different regions of the globe, giving you the facts and context you need to think historically. current events. I truly believe that the more we learn about the world, the more we embrace our shared humanity. I'm your host, Ali Roper.
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award winning app. It's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Welcome back to Wiser World. Thanks for joining me for the final part of our three-part series on Venezuela. In parts one and two, we explored how Venezuela's geography, oil wealth, and political history shaped its rise, and then how Hugo Chavez brought sweeping changes economically and politically. I hope you've listened to those already, because if not, It's kind of like starting the book in the last third and things will not make nearly as much sense without all that context.
Today we're talking about what came next. Nicolas Maduro, the collapse of the Venezuelan economy, the migration of millions of its citizens, and the latest political tensions between Venezuela and the United States, among other things, there's a lot to cover. Just a friendly reminder that this is designed to be an entry-level intro to Venezuela's history. It's not fully comprehensive. It's the basics. It's a 101 series for a reason.
Please do not let this be your only source for learning about Venezuela. And you may also consider checking out my Patreon, where I share more resources that can help you deepen your understanding. I give images, maps, links, articles, videos, books. Tools to help you better conceptualize what we learn here. It adds a lot of value to your learning. It's an affordable price. And it also helps keep the podcast going. All right, enough chat. Let's jump right in.
In 2013, Chavez died of cancer at the age of fifty eight. Before then, he had spent over a decade completely restructuring everything in Venezuela. He had set up social programs called Misiones, which had helped some struggling Venezuelans. There was now a higher literacy rate and a lower infant mortality rate.
due to some of these misiones. He also had kept the Petro State situation that Venezuela had had for decades, not diversifying, not saving, and in his case, spending so much money on social programs and nationalizations of different industries, that he went into debt.
He also had set up capital controls, which had caused food scarcity and a new social ranking system of those who had dollars or access to dollars and those who did not. And there were lots of ways that Venezuelans learned to work this system, which We covered pretty well in part two. Well, when Chavez died, some still viewed him relatively positively for his charisma and the way he championed the everyday Venezuelan. He also had fierce opposition.
But I think it is critical to note that Chavez had luck on his side because of the global oil market. Oil was either doing very well or decently, so his high spend, low diversity economy could hobble along in a sense. during most of his time as president. But we all know that oil doesn't stay high forever. And before his death, Chavez had encouraged Venezuelans to support his chosen successor, Nicolás Maduro, to continue the revolution as he put it.
So let's learn a little more about Maduro for a second. So Maduro was born in 1962 in Caracas into a working class family with roots in the labor movement. His father was a trade union activist. That means that from a young age he was exposed to more left-wing politics and became involved in student and union activities, which obviously shaped his political identity early on. Instead of pursuing higher education, Maduro became a bus driver for Caracas's
Metrobus system. He quickly became involved in organized labor, eventually founding and leading a transit workers' union. And this role gave him experience mobilizing workers and it deepened his connections. In the mid-1980s, he spent a year in Cuba. for political training with the Union of Young Communists.
He was a staunch supporter of Chavez in the early days too. He campaigned to free Chavez when he was jailed after the failed coup in nineteen ninety-two. And when Chavez became president, Maduro steadily rose through the ranks Until in two thousand and six he was appointed foreign minister, which means that he represented Venezuela
He deepened ties with Cuba, Russia, Iran, and others. He also had a short stint as vice president. Chavez favored unthreatening loyalists, and Maduro was definitely that. When Chavez died in 2013, Maduro became interim president, and then there was a special election to complete Chavez's term. Maduro won by a narrow victory with 50.6% of the vote.
His opponent had 49.1% of the vote, at least according to the numbers I could find. His opponent contested the legitimacy of his victory and claimed it had been rigged, but eventually Maduro was made president and most people accepted it. Maduro promised to carry on Chavez's vision, but he was not nearly as charismatic as Chavez.
Pretty quickly he began to purge. Now when people talk about a leader purging a party or a state, they mean removing people who disagree, who might challenge the leader, or who could attract independent power. In Maduro's case, he faced two big political problems. First, a rising opposition that was stronger than he expected, and second, some people inside his own political movement, that of Chavismo, who were not fully loyal to him.
His team sidelined longtime Chavista figures who had been influential under Chavez, including ministers, senior officials, and the sort of sort of sort former allies. Leaders who hinted at running independently were pushed out, and open primaries were eliminated to prevent internal competition. In other words, he'd rather push these people out of power than let any internal critic grow into real challenges.
This wasn't simply personal revenge or infighting, could have been that as well, but it also fits into a broader pattern of authoritarian consolidation. Leaders who lack Strong democratic legitimacy often respond to political threats by narrowing debate rather than widening it. That's one way you can tell if a leader is good or not. Do they widen debate, encourage it, or do they narrow it? Weak leaders will not tolerate disagreement even within their own ranks.
and they remove it. This weakens the party as an independent institution and transforms it into a tool for executive power. Political scientist Javier Corrales describes this as a key step in Venezuela's shift away from competitive politics. The ruling party expanded its control over the state while eliminating alternative centers of influence. Maduro's purges matter because they show how he responded to vulnerability.
not by compromise or reform, but by tightening control. It also deprived Venezuelans of a political faction that might have offered reform or alternatives from within the ruling movement, and it signaled that political survival was becoming more important than political debate. This is often called authoritarian drift. When leaders start treating political competition not as a normal part of democratic life, but as an existential threat to be eliminated.
Economically, Maduro had essentially inherited a highly centralized economy with massive government spending commitments and growing debt. As long as oil prices stayed high, the system held together, but that system had no margin for error. And then in 2014, the year after Chavez died, global oil prices collapsed. And Venezuela's main source of income was suddenly cut in half and there was no backup plan.
What happened next is hard to describe without sounding extreme, but it really was extreme. Venezuela experienced one of the most severe economic collapses. In modern history. In fact, according to Corrales, Venezuela became one of the few countries in the world to experience negative growth growth rates consecutively from 2014 to 2008. When oil prices collapsed, government revenue collapsed with them. Remember, Venezuela imported most of its food, medicine, and industrial goods, right?
So when the oil money dried up, the country suddenly had massive spending commitments, but no reliable way to pay for them. Imports slowed almost immediately. Store shelves began to empty. People couldn't find basic goods they had taken for granted just months earlier. Instead of cutting spending or raising taxes, the government turned to the central bank and began printing money, literally creating new bolivars to pay bills and cover budget gaps.
Economists call this monetizing the deficit. It has been tried in many countries. The most prominent one that comes to mind is the Weimar Republic after World War One in Germany. At first it can feel like a solution, but printing money doesn't create food, medicine, or jobs. It just creates more currency. And when more money chases the same supply of goods, prices surge. That's inflation.
This can sound pretty abstract, so let's explain what just happened in the simplest way possible. Maybe the way I would explain in my ninth grade class. So imagine a country like a household. Every month that household earns money from one job, oil. And for a long time that job paid really well. So the household didn't worry much about saving or having a backup plan. It bought groceries, medicine, clothes, almost everything. From outside. Now imagine that job suddenly cuts the paycheck in half.
But your bills don't stop. Rent is still due. Groceries still cost money. Medicine still has to be bought. At that point, you have three options: spend less. Earn more or pretend you have more money than you actually do. And Venezuela chose the third option. The government started printing money to cover the gap, basically saying, if we don't have enough cash, we'll just make more.
But here's the catch, printing money doesn't make food appear, right? It just creates more pieces of paper. So now you have way more money, but you have fewer things to buy. When everyone has more cash, but there isn't more stuff. Sellers raise prices. And once prices start rising, they rise fast because everyone rushes to spend their money before it becomes worthless.
Now, once inflation took off in Venezuela, the government fell into a trap. As prices rose, it needed even more bolivars just to keep paying salaries and covering costs. So it printed more money, which pushed prices even higher, which required even more money printing. It was a vicious feedback loop. In time, that vicious loop spun out of control with prices changing daily or hourly. This is what we call hyperinflation.
In twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen, the inflation rates were high. Numbers vary depending on where you get them, but here are some estimates to give you the gist. In 2014, inflation was 69%. In 2015, 181%, which is insane. But then in 2016, it reached 800%. 2017, 4,000%. And in 2018, it was about 1,700,000%. Money stops working the way it's supposed to, right? Everyday life starts to fall apart.
To make this a little more concrete, let's say you work at McDonald's and you make$15 an hour. You get paid on Friday. That paycheck hits your account and it's supposed to cover groceries, gas, rent, your life. Now imagine that on Friday afternoon, a Big Mac costs five dollars. By Saturday morning, it costs eight dollars. By Sunday, it's twelve dollars. Your paycheck didn't change, but what it can buy just collapsed.
So what do you do? You stop saving. There's no point. Money loses value just sitting there. So the smart move is to spend your paycheck the same day you get it. You buy anything that might hold value longer than cash, groceries, clothes, appliances. even extras of anything like shampoo.
Now stretch that out over months. Rent technically stays the same number of dollars, but everything else explodes in price. Your savings account becomes useless. Your wages fall behind faster than your employer can raise them, and every day becomes a race against the clock. What do I buy right now before prices jump again? That's what Venezuelans were living with, except not for burgers, but for basic food, medicine, electricity, and other important needs.
Author Paula Ramon wrote about the illogical math that every Venezuelan had to do when she said, quote, in twenty ten, one dollar had cost eight bolivares. Seven years later, in june twenty seventeen, it cost seven thousand seven hundred eighty bolives. In December of the same year, a dollar cost more than a hundred thousand bolivares.
The escalation was so dizzying that the next year in twenty eighteen, the government knocked five zeros off the currency. Even so, it wasn't long before the exchange rate added another five. Under these conditions, those with relatives outside of the country had an advantage over those who didn't. They could eat. End of quote.
In other words, if you had family outside of Venezuela who could send dollars or could send literal packages of food and supplies, you could make it. And if you didn't, you were at a severe disadvantage. Food shortages spread, medicines disappeared, power outages became routine, families stood in long lines hoping a store might receive a delivery, often leaving empty handed, hospitals struggled to function, doctors were forced to ration supplies.
diseases that had once been under control returned, largely because the missions lost funding, which means many Cuban doctors began to leave, as well as Venezuelan doctors, which we'll talk about more in a minute. Malnutrition rose, especially among children and the elderly. The middle class was hit especially hard, as Raul Gallegos put it, quote, unlike the rich, they do not earn far more than they can spend, and unlike the poor, they benefit less from government social programs, end of quote.
People who had lived stable professional lives like teachers, engineers, nurses, watched their savings evaporate. In the book Crude Nation, Gallegos writes about one teacher named Mauricio, who worked six days a week teaching from Monday through Saturday. After inflation, his pay came out to about sixty bolivars at the time.
31 US cents per hour. Just a reminder, this was within the last decade, not that long ago at all. Meanwhile, cab drivers could earn more than him because they could raise prices instantly and they had lower overhead. These distortions explain why tens of thousands of doctors, engineers, and other skilled workers left Venezuela. By some estimates, more than a million of the country's best trained professionals immigrated in a single decade, which again, we'll talk about later in this episode.
And like we talked about in part two, this all played out inside a deeply unequal currency system. Gallego says, quote, in Venezuela, the price people pay for a dollar depends on who they are and what they do, end of quote. so a small, well-connected elite could buy dollars cheaply from the government.
If you could get dollars or had a job that gave you dollars, like in the private sector, you could live very, very well. But if you didn't, which was the majority, you were always trying to get dollars. The Bolivar wasn't a store of value, a reliable unit of account. or even a trustworthy means of exchange. It was just something you tried to get rid of as fast as possible. So to make up for their meager paychecks, Venezuelans had to turn to debt.
With inflation having reached triple digit territory in 2015 and banks unable to charge customers more than 29% annual interest rates by law, Venezuelans would be crazy not to take on more debt. Carlos Lizaralde feels pretty passionately about this. He said, quote, the post Chavez leadership likely convinced themselves the humanitarian crisis had to do with the collapse of crude prices.
It was an excuse no one should believe. Even without considering the prior 10-year rampage dismantling the state and its oil company, their answer to human suffering throughout the country was to ignore it. As society came to a standstill in late 2013, the lessons of Weimar Germany and John Maynard Keynes' prescriptions to avert economic collapse were dismissed. A Treasury Secretary proclaimed that the concept of inflation was a bourgeois myth.
Instead of finding a way to prop up oil production with modern management and technology, the leadership doubled down on the ethno-nationalist political and cultural agenda. While the country drowned, the vice president said in mid-2018, quote, there is no humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, end of quote.
Wow. But there was a humanitarian crisis going on in Venezuela. It was a crisis. And it wasn't just economic, because it never just stays economic. It became social and psychological very quickly. So let's talk about life inside the breakdown. For the poor, life became a daily calculation. What can we give up next? Many sold anything they could possibly sell, furniture, heirlooms, anything with actual value. Ordinary routines like grocery shopping, filling a prescription, turning on the lights,
became sources of stress and uncertainty. People adapted. Life reorganized itself around survival instead of progress. The old rules no longer applied, so Venezuelans wrote new ones on the fly. Nearly all moderately well off Venezuelans kept accounts abroad, if they could. Not because they were wealthy, though some were, but because saving money inside Venezuela was pointless.
One woman described paying rent as an anomaly. She paid her landlords in bolivars, but because the currency lost value so fast, her rent got cheaper every month in real terms. Inflation had flipped logic upside down. People learn to live in the moment when your future has collapsed. Long-term planning disappears. So if money arrived, you spent it immediately. Holding cash was risky. Goods were safer than savings. Even beauty became a kind of investment.
Plastic surgery didn't stop during hyperinflation. And in some ways, it makes sense because physical appearance was seen as an asset that inflation couldn't erase. In fact, improving your physical appearance was seen as an investment to get a better job that could possibly pay you in dollars. So daily life became more improvisational, more sly. One writer called it anarchic individualism.
Everyone had a contact, a fixer, someone who could exchange money, find medicine, tip them off about food deliveries. Very little actually worked officially. Everything worked. Informally, the black market, sometimes called the parallel market, wasn't an underground economy anymore. It it was the economy. Out of this chaos emerged the baquero.
Which we talked about briefly in part two. Now the word comes from Bachaco, which is a large ant in the Venezuelan Amazon known for carrying many times its own weight. And the name fits, Bachero spent hours, sometimes days hauling bags of food, diapers, flour, and gasoline, not to consume themselves, but to resell.
How did they do this? Well, the government fixed prices on basic goods so low that they were essentially worthless compared to their real value. That created a massive incentive to buy goods at state-run stores. and flip them for markups that could exceed a thousand percent. Let's use an example to understand the logic of becoming a bachequero. So let's say you need to buy shampoo, just the regular shampoo you've always bought.
After asking around, someone tells you a state run store might have some. So when you get there, the shelves are mostly empty, but then you spot it, it's priced so low, it feels like a mistake. A bottle that would have cost six or seven dollars in the US or somewhere else.
is selling for the equivalent of just a few cents. So you buy a couple and then you do the math. If you buy 10, you could resell them locally for many times what you paid. If you buy the entire shelf, you could cover a month's expenses If you take them across the border, you could make even more. You're not trying to become a black market trader, but suddenly you're understanding why people do.
A week later you go back. The shampoo is gone. No one knows when more will arrive. Maybe someone bought it all to resell. Maybe family stocked up. Either way, the price difference turned a basic household item into an opportunity and then into a disappearance. That's how shortages worked in Venezuela. When prices were set unrealistically low, goods didn't stay on shelves. they became like a currency, and everyday life quietly reorganized itself around that reality.
For many people, this wasn't greed, it was survival. And to be fair, for some it actually probably was greed, but for most people, it was survival. Teachers, pensioners, even police officers abandoned formal jobs because standing in line and reselling food Paid better than a salary.
A huge mix of people from a variety of socioeconomic statuses did this, and many were women. They were responsible for feeding their families and would do what it took to make that happen. They could sell these goods quietly on blankets in neighborhoods, through WhatsApp groups, or across borders. And Bachaqueros targeted state owned supermarkets because those were better stocks.
Lines stretched for blocks. People waited hours with no guarantee of anything. And this was especially hard on older people, people with disabilities, or people with young children at home. They had to endure standing in line for hours and hours. Often without the stamina to do so, they didn't have the energy that younger workers had to hop from store to store to find what they needed.
Children missed school standing in line. Adults missed work. People would get in line at dawn. Some would even leave their phone numbers to get tip-off. texted to them like rice just arrived or flour just came in, one kilo per customer. And the government claimed that the domestic private sector was waging economic war.
They even blamed bachaqueros, deflecting the blame for their policy failures onto individuals who are adapting to it. Some economists argue that they were more like scalpers for daily life, these baqueros, exploiting distortions, yes. but also filling gaps in a system that no longer worked. If you had money, but no time to stand in a ten hour line, the bachequeros were your only option. So the government pivoted and tied their rationing system to ID numbers.
You could go shop at specific stores depending on the last digit of your government issued ID number. So families rotated shopping days. You were lucky if you lived in a family where you had different last digits because you could hit the same grocery store different times during the week. You could only buy certain items.
Often bundled into packages you didn't choose. What you didn't need, you bartered or resold. Bachaqueros adapted to this as well, organizing within their own families, rotating IDs, coordinating shopping days to maximize how much they could legally buy. Trust eroded. Nothing was guaranteed. Everything depended on timing, favors, or love.
And then there was gasoline. Even as everything else collapsed, gas stayed almost free. For decades, the government subsidized fuel heavily, so heavily, that at one point it cost tens of thousands of times more to produce a gallon than what consumers paid in Venezuela. Cheap gas had become a birthright over decades of getting it together. Any leader who tried to raise prices on gas risked riots.
Hyperinflation made it even cheaper. By 2017, filling a tank cost less than a piece of candy. Some stations didn't even bother charging. But the consequences were massive. Gasoline was smuggled into Colombia, Brazil, Guyana, where it could sell for up to a hundred times more. Now think about this: criminal networks thrive. When they provide what the state cannot, there was a vacuum here and they filled it, usually with selling gas.
As these criminal networks grew Corruption spread throughout the military and border authorities. PDVSA lost billions, money that could have gone to maintenance, repair, or production. Eventually the system broke, refineries failed, lines stretched four days to get gas. And by twenty twenty, the government was forced to introduce dollar priced premium gas and rationing.
Water, electricity, phone service, and the internet failed off and on, paper was so scarce that issuing marriage or birth or death certificates became difficult. The currency itself became meaningless. Paula Ramon said that it was better suited for origami than money. No wage increase could keep up with the inflation. This is life under hyperinflation. Living becomes a daily endurance test.
Of all the books we read on Venezuela, which is close to a dozen now, there is one topic that comes up every time, and that is the surge. for toilet paper. The toilet paper shortage was a huge problem. And if someone saw a neighbor walking by with toilet paper, they would literally chase them down to find out where they got it. Businesses and restaurants had to lock their toilet paper up. And were fined if they were caught keeping extra.
Looking to create the bath you've always dreamed of without all the hassle? The Home Depot makes it easier. Shop fully styled rooms and curated collections to bring your vision to life. Hey, it's Brooklyn Adams and I'm partnering with Abercrombie to tell you about the newest drop from their active brand, your personal best. YPB leggings are made with buttery soft fabrics that hug you in all the right places and come in Abercrombie's viral curve love. Designed to eliminate waste gap.
Paired with sports bras and super soft sweatshirts, it's activewear that supports every part of my busy lifestyle and gives me my best butt ever. Head into the new year feeling your personal best. Shop active by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in stores. From a business perspective, things were complicated as well. For ordinary private businesses, like bakeries, repair shops, Clothing makers,
Small factories, the system became impossible to navigate. Price controls forced them to sell goods at government-mandated prices. They were often lower than the cost of producing them. Currency controls made it extremely difficult to obtain US dollars. which were necessary to import raw materials, spare parts, packaging, or machinery. On top of that, regulations changed constantly. Permits were delayed, inspections were arbitrary and constant, and bribes became
an unspoken requirement just to keep operating. By around 2015, many honest businesses faced a stark choice, operate at a loss, break the law, or shut down, and thousands chose. At the very same time, a different kind of business, which I say in air quotes. Began to grow because the government sold dollars at an artificially low official exchange rate.
Access to foreign currency became far more valuable than producing anything. This created a powerful incentive to form paper companies, whose sole purpose was to request cheap government dollars under the pretense of importing goods. Many of these companies imported little or nothing at all. Instead, they resold those dollars on the black market for enormous profits and then disappeared. Many fly-by-night companies emerged and vanished.
producing nothing and existing only to exploit the gap between the official exchange rate and the real one, according to Gallego. This dynamic hollowed out the economy even faster. The system Chavez had built rewarded connections over competence, paperwork over productivity, and arbitrage over real work, so legitimate manufacturers couldn't compete.
Skilled workers lost jobs, and domestic production collapsed further. At the same time, the government's limited supply of foreign currency was drained by scams instead of being used to sustain essential imports. The effects showed up in everyday life. Buying something as basic as a car became an ordeal. Cars and spare parts
depended on imports and without reliable access to dollars, new vehicles were hard to find and repairs were expensive or impossible. Used cars sometimes increased in value over time, and a single replacement part could cost more than the car itself. Purchasing a car was no longer about earning enough money. It was about navigating bureaucracy, finding connections, or returning to the black market.
There also was a major uptick in crime throughout Venezuela and people began to feel less and less safe. Paula Ramon wrote about how they had to put up bars over all their windows and doors because robberies became much more common. They sometimes would hear footsteps on their roof from people stealing water from their water tank. People avoided carrying their f cell phones publicly, openly. Going out after dark became a serious threat.
Fear became the norm and people expected it. They expected theft. Collectivos, which we talked about in part two, began to be a way of intimidating the neighborhood to get what they wanted. Venezuela has become fertile ground for criminal economies. The country is not a major cocaine producer. That's more common in Colombia, Peru. Bolivia, but Venezuela's role became a transit corridor.
Which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. If you have weak institutions, corruption, and underpaid security forces, it's an easy target for moving illegal goods through. For example, early on in Maduro's presidency, France conducted a cocaine bust that found 1.3 tons of cocaine brought to France from Caracas.
As institutions weakened and border officials went unpaid, trafficking networks moved in. The term you'll often hear is the cartel of the sons. It's not a single cartel with a boss, it's a label used to describe networks. of military officers and officials accused of facilitating drug trafficking in exchange for bribes. The name comes from the sun insignia that's worn by generals.
In other words, the failed economic state put people in high places, even in the government, in a position to gain from corruption. Javier Corrales points out something really interesting and honestly a little unsettling. In many Latin American countries, when governments decide to take a hard stance against organized crime, especially drug trafficking networks,
It often backfires. These criminal groups are so powerful that they can strike back hard, leading to violent clashes that sometimes destabilize the whole state. But Venezuela under Maduro has taken a very different approach. Instead of cracking down on organized crime, the government has essentially partnered with it. Top officials have become deeply involved in criminal activities, blurring the lines between the state and the underworld.
Corrales explains that this kind of corruption, where criminal groups co-opt government officials to protect their operations, usually happens at lower levels, like the police or local courts. But in Venezuela, it's also happening at the highest levels of power, making the government itself part of the criminal network. Obviously, the government strongly denies these allegations.
The Trump administration has made them a central point in their stance toward Venezuela. However, you want to view the details, the damage to trust, internally and internationally, has been enormous. As conditions worsened in Venezuela, people began to protest. The protests were frequent and massive. In 2014 and 2017, there were huge protests.
In fact, in 2017, there was what's often called the mother of all marches when over six million protesters participated, including 2.5 million in Caracas alone. They shouted, Maduro, we don't want you. In 2017, especially people from all economic statuses, even low-income neighborhoods that had benefited the most from Chavismo were done with Maduro.
There was another massive protest in 2019 and there have been protests ever since. The government has responded with force. Security services have used tear gas, rubber bullets, live ammunition, mass arrests. Opposition leaders have been detained, disqualified from office, forced into exile, or jailed on charges critics describe as politically motivated.
Human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented torture and abuse in custody. Prosecutions have been highly politicized. and have used the courts to sideline their opponents. Becoming a political prisoner became more common under Maduro. Young people have played a huge role in the protests. Student groups have been very active in pushing for democratic rights and reform.
But there are people from all walks of life and all ages at these protests. Under Maduro, the space to oppose the government safely has shrunk dramatically. Protesting can get you shot, jailed, or disappear. Millions of Venezuelans made the heartbreaking decision to leave. Not because they wanted to leave their homeland, but because staying no longer felt possible. At first, many did it quietly, such as middle-class families selling everything they had to buy, plane tickets.
But in not too long into hyperinflation, the world began seeing shocking images of thousands of Venezuelans crossing borders on foot. Carrying everything they owned in their hands. By 2015, nearly 700,000 Venezuelans lived abroad. By 2019, more than four million had left. That's about 14% of the population. It is now 2026 and the estimates are now showing that 20 to 25% of the population have left. That is a staggering number.
Another way to put this is that life had become so unbearable that from 2016 to 2025, it is estimated that between eight to nine million Venezuelans have fled the country, maybe more. This is one of the largest displacement crises in the world. Most have gone to neighboring countries like Colombia, Brazil, and Peru, but others have traveled as far as the US and Europe.
Colombia has received a lot of migrants because it has a long and very porous border with Venezuela. Many Venezuelans abroad currently live. in challenging conditions without legal status, jobs, or access to health care.
But for many, it's still better than staying in Venezuela, as they get some level of predictability, their wages have some significance, and services and institutions work better than in Venezuela. However, many of the countries that they are fleeing to Are still recovering from COVID nineteen setbacks? And so there are lower salaries and lack of jobs in those areas as well. In 2023 alone, over two hundred and forty thousand Venezuelan migrants crossed
The Darien Gap, which is a remote stretch of rainforest located between Colombia and Panama, in an effort to make their way to the US Mexico border. I talk about the extreme dangers of the Darien Gap on page. Paolo Ramon says quote, it was too much to bear, even for the most fervent Chavistas like my brother. As time whittled, his police officer salary down to three dollars and forty cents a month by the end of 2017. Disillusionment took deeper and deeper root inside of him, end of quote.
So you can see how during this time those who remained loyal chavistas typically did not feel the economic strain as much as others. This can be because the government gives them free housing and extra food. Or they work for the government and rely on the regime for their entire lifestyle. If you like Chavismo, it seems as though that's because you have considerable perks directly from the government.
Now I want to be clear here. What makes Venezuela so unique is that this migration crisis was not because of a war. Most massive displacement like this is usually happening because there's a war going on. This this is because of economic mismanagement and political and economic policies that do not work. All of these people have paid the price because of dozens of years of leaders who did not manage the country and its resources well.
Now, around 2020 to 2021, the government stopped enforcing currency controls and allowed people to use dollars informally. This wasn't announced as a reform, it just kind of happened because the state has clearly lost control of its own money. This is called dollarization. It essentially allowed transactions in dollars again, which created small pockets of relative pus prosperity, usually in urban areas like Caracas.
So this means that goods reappeared in stores, inflation slowed from catastrophic to very high, life became less chaotic but more unequal, and this hasn't solved the underlying problem. The best way to put it is that Venezuela didn't bounce back. It just kind of adapted downward. And while daily life is currently more stable than it was in 2018, it is far worse than it was before 2013.
Venezuela's inflation crisis didn't end, it exhausted itself. The country functions, but at a much lower level, with fewer guarantees, weaker institutions, and massive inequality. The chaos has faded. not because the economy healed, but because people adapted to a new Smaller version of normal. According to the UN, about ninety percent of Venezuelans live in poverty, infrastructure is crumbling, and access to basic services remains limited and depends on who you are.
I think this is a good moment to take a look at the politics that were going on during this chaotic hyperinflation season. So let's start with Maduro. We know that he inherited Chavez's system without any of the charisma or the oil cushion. A Spanish Marxist economist wrote that, quote, President Maduro has followed the economic thoughts of Hugo Chavez to the letter, end of quote.
Javier Corrales added that Baduro has taken Chavez's way and intensified it, cornering the independent business sector even more and becoming less and less accountable. So economically he followed more or less the Chavez Handbook. Maduro's governing style was very different. Where Chavez performed, improvised, and dominated the room, Maduro governed defensively. He relied less on persuasion and more on loyalty, surveillance, and force.
He surrounded himself with the military, intelligence services. party insiders, and over time, politics stopped being about winning any arguments and became about holding ground. We know that as the economy collapsed in the early days, they didn't change course, they doubled down, stubbornly unwilling to admit
What they were doing was not working. Price controls stayed. Currency controls stayed. Money printing accelerated. More sectors were nationalized. Private businesses were blamed for shortages, accused of hoarding or sabotage. Sometimes shut down or arrested. Rather than loosening controls to restore production, the state leaned into enforcement, inspections, raids, arrests, and military oversight of supply chains. In 2015, something genuinely historic did happen, however.
For the first time in years, Venezuela's opposition won a decisive landslide victory at the ballot box. Voters handed them control of the National Assembly, the country's legislature. Under normal democratic rules, this should have shifted power, giving the opposition a real ability to write laws, oversee the government, and check the president.
But that's not what happened. Instead of sharing power, Maduro moved to neutralize the assembly. The Supreme Court, which at this point was backed with government loyalists, began issuing rulings that stripped the legislature of its authority. One by one, its powers were suspended or transferred elsewhere. Laws passed by elected representatives were blocked.
Oversight was ignored. Assembly still existed on paper, but it could no longer actually govern. The opposition had gained all this ground, but then it stagnated. Then in 2017, Maduro took an even bigger step. He created a new constituent assembly, a parallel body elected under rules designed to guarantee a pro-government majority.
This new assembly didn't just write laws, it effectively replaced the National Assembly altogether. From that point on, the opposition-controlled legislature was sidelined. This is the moment when Venezuelan politics truly froze. Elections didn't stop, people still voted, but votes stopped leading to real power. Winning an election no longer meant you could govern. Maduro was deeply, deeply unpopular inside Venezuela for these moves.
And in 2018, Maduro ran for re-election. The election took place earlier than scheduled, and major opposition parties were banned or sidelined, key leaders were jailed, exiled, or barred from running, and voter turnout was historically low. The result? Maduro saying, I won. This was rejected by the United States, the European Union, and much of Latin America, who argued that the process lacked basic democratic guarantees. Most Venezuelans were outraged by the news.
So they began to argue that because the election wasn't free or fair, the presidency had effectively become vacant. when his new term began in January 2019. Under Venezuela's constitution, if the presidency is considered illegitimate, the president of the National Assembly is supposed to step in temporarily and call new elections. At that moment, the National Assembly was controlled by the opposition, right? And its leader was Juan Guaido, a relatively young and little known lawmaker.
When Guaido declared himself interim president in January 2019, he was not claiming victory in an election. He was arguing that Maduro's re-election was unconstitutional and that he was following the legal succession process. This is why fifty-seven countries, some of which were previously on Maduro's side, recognized Guaidó. At the same time, countries like Russia, China, Cuba, and others continue to recognize Maduro.
Remember how in part two we talked about how these countries benefited from Venezuelan oil and also had geopolitical ideologies that aligned? So internationally, Venezuela was a split topic. Who's running this country? And within the country, there were differing opinions as well. Keep in mind that this is all happening during hyperinflation and people are hoarding toilet paper. Okay, I just wanted to put that into context. While Guaido had international recognition,
and control of the National Assembly at the beginning, Maduro retained control of the military, the police, the courts, government ministries, and most state resources. So Guaido couldn't enforce decisions or remove Maduro. Multiple attempts to force a transition, protests, negotiations, international pressure failed. Over time protests faded, international support weakened, the opposition fractured more,
And by twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, most countries quietly dropped recognition of Guaido. Many Venezuelans became incredibly discouraged because there seemed no way to remove Maduro. Oh, it's such a clutch off-season pickup, Dave. I was worried we'd bring back the same team. I met those blackout motorized shades.
Blinds.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install? No, it's easy. I installed these and then got some from my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install. Hall of Fame Sun. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Blinds.com is the GOAT. Shop up to 40% off site wide, plus an extra 10% off every order and a free professional measure happening right now at Blinds.com.
One opposition figure who became especially significant during this period is Maria Corina Matado. A Venezuelan politician and longtime critic of both Chavez and Maduro, Machado has spent over two decades pushing for democratic reform in Venezuela, advocating for free elections, judicial independence, human rights, and representative government often at great personal risk.
She co-founded Sumate, a organization focused on election monitoring and transparency, and served in the National Assembly before being removed from office by a government that saw her as too independent. In two thousand twenty three, twenty four, Machado emerged as the leading opposition voice against Maduro winning her party's primary with overwhelming support. This is a level of unity that is Pretty rare in Venezuela's fractured political landscape.
However, the government barred her from appearing on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election, which forced the opposition to nominate a different candidate instead. To many Venezuelans, it confirmed that even when the opposition organized successfully, the system would still block them. Machado backed a replacement candidate, but he was never meant to be the leader. Instead he became more of a symbolic stand-in for a broader opposition movement that had already chosen Machado.
Much of the campaign was effectively run around him, with Machado acting as the main voice until she was increasingly restricted, harassed, and sidelined. Despite these barriers, she remained widely seen as the de facto opposition leader. Symbolizing resistance to the authoritarianism and inspiring protests and international attention. In the July 2024 election, Maduro was declared the winner yet again, but the results have been strongly contested. In fact,
Internationally and domestically, it is widely accepted that Maduro stole the election. In fact, many Venezuelans refused to call Maduro the president because they believed that the election was so rage. However, this time there was not an interim president situation like there was in twenty eighteen. In October 2025, Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the world's highest honors, for her quote,
tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela, and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy. End of quote. The committee described her as one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage. in Latin America, uniting a deeply divided opposition around a shared call for free and fair elections.
She has had to live in hiding under threat of arrest and persecution, and many of her closest allies were detained, forced into exile. Or targeted by the government security apparatus. But the Nobel Peace Prize has strengthened her position and visibility internationally. So hopefully you're seeing now that Maduro has had major legitimacy issues. And also hopefully you see why people have had such strong reactions to him. Now let's talk a little more about Venezuela as a geopolitical state.
By 2015, when Venezuela's crisis was ramping up, it took on a geopolitical dimension. We've talked about how for decades, The United States had been one of Venezuela's biggest oil customers because even during Chavez's fiercest anti-US rhetoric, Venezuelan crude flowed north. Most Americans at the time had no idea that every time they filled their tanks with gas, a few cents went to Venezuela, and that most major US highways have been originally paved with asphalt from Venezuelan crude.
Venezuelan crude flowed into U.S. refineries and the Venezuelan State Oil Company's U.S. subsidiary, Citco. became well known in the US energy landscape. Over time, however, political ruptures and economic mismanagement weakened that relationship, and US imports from Venezuela were in decline. Then in twenty nineteen, the Trump administration significantly expanded US sanctions against Venezuela, focusing on the country's oil sector and its main state firm, PDBSA.
The US government argued that these steps were intended to put maximum pressure on Maduro during the time when Guaido had filled the legitimacy gap. and was backed by the US and other countries. By cutting off access to much of Venezuela's oil revenue and financial system, they hoped to weaken Maduro's ability to govern and push toward political change, including negotiations or credible elections.
Sanctions did have a significant economic impact. Export revenues collapsed, which compounded economic stress and isolated the government financially. These measures also made life much, much harder for ordinary Venezuelans. Despite the sanctions, the government officials and their systems did remain largely intact, so opinions differ on how effective sanctions are in achieving political change.
Plus, Venezuela's oil trade shifted significantly toward China and other partners, and China became the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude. In 2023, about sixty-nine percent of Venezuela's crude exports went to China, and in twenty twenty five it seems closer to eighty percent. To work around sanctions, Venezuela also relied on intermediaries and ship-to-ship transfers to move oil to China and other buyers, which is a common tactic for countries facing sanctions on energy exports.
Russia and Iran maintained diplomatic ties, technical cooperation, and alternative trade routes with Venezuela during this period, too. It also should be noted that in March of 2020, under the first Trump administration, Maduro was federally indicted as a narco-dr. The Biden administration did not reverse that indictment and even increased the reward from Maduro's arrest to$25 million in January of 2025. The Biden administration also did not reverse the 2019 sanction.
By the time Donald Trump returned to office for his second term, Venezuela had taken on a symbolic role in U.S. politics. Migration, crime and drugs, oil, and Maduro's dictatorship all converged as unfinished business. Trump has accused Maduro of exporting chaos. And at times made claims that Venezuela was deliberately sending criminals north.
The Trump administration designated groups like Tren de Aragua, which is a powerful Venezuelan gang, and other networks associated with the Cartel of the Suns as terrorist or criminal organizations. For example, in January of 2025, Trump signed an executive order to name criminal organizations and drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
The US accused Maduro and other top officials in his inner circle of working hand in hand with major transnational criminal groups. We're talking the Cina Loa Cartel from Mexico, armed guerrilla groups in Colombia, and Venezuela's own game. These don't appear to be occasional backroom deals. According to the U.S. federal indictments, this is a full-blown system where the state helped protect. Drug trafficker.
used its resources to enable smuggling, and in some cases directly profited from the trade. From what I can gather, it does appear as though the US indictments are backed by cooperating witnesses, financial records, intercepted communications, and even flight and ship tracking data. These documents allege that Venezuela didn't just tolerate drug trafficking.
It actively facilitated it in exchange for money, loyalty, and territorial control. But obviously these are outstanding and we'll have to see. The main idea here is that this appears to be a very corrupt governing strategy. It's what scholars like Corrales describe as criminal state symbiosis. It's like old school patronage meets organized crime.
As for Celia Flores, Maduro's wife, She has a long history as well that I will cover more on Patreon, but for now, for this episode, she was once the head of the National Assembly under Chavez, and plenty of reports suggest she played a role in brokering protection deals for traffickers. While her nephews were famously convicted in a US court for trying to smuggle hundreds of kilos of cocaine, the Venezuelan government has denied these accusations.
But either way, there does seem to be some serious drug connections, and I imagine much will be revealed in the months and years to come. In the fall of twenty twenty five, the Caribbean Sea became the center of a dramatic escalation between the United States and Venezuela. The U.S. significantly increased its naval and coast guard presence in the region, launching a formal campaign called Operation Southern Spear.
aimed at cracking down on both drug trafficking and violations of U.S. sanctions. This wasn't just a symbolic show of force. The US carried out a series of strikes on boats it claimed were carrying narcotics, with over 20 people killed across several operations.
At the same time, US forces began seizing Venezuelan oil tankers, accusing them of violating sanctions by using shadow fleet tactics like turning off transponders or using shell companies to secretly move oil to buyers, especially in China. There is a consistent pattern here. The Southern Caribbean corridor has long been a hotspot for transnational smuggling. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Coast Guard operations seized over 76,000 pounds of drugs.
From boats operating in this region in 2025 alone, supporting long-standing claims that the Caribbean remains a major trafficking route. Drug smugglers prefer maritime routes because they allow for the transport of large volumes while avoiding land borders and checkpoints. While the US has not published definitive proof linking Maduro himself to a specific shipment,
Officials argue that the volume, consistency, and proximity of these trafficking operations point to either tacit approval or direct protection from the regime. Again, these are outstanding and we will have to see. But hopefully you're seeing that in the fall of twenty twenty five, Things between the US and Venezuela were clearly escalating.
But what happened next shocked nearly everyone. In the early morning hours of january third, twenty twenty six, Maduro and his wife Celia Flores were captured by highly trained U Special Operations Forces. Maduro and Flores were then flown to New York, where they appeared in federal court on charges including drug trafficking and narco-terrorism, and they both pleaded not guilty. The Trump administration described the operation as a law enforcement mission.
Officials argued that because Maduro had been indicted in US courts on drug trafficking and conspiracy charges, the mission was simply about bringing a fugitive to justice. They said the Department of Justice was leading the effort, and the military was just supporting the enforcement of existing criminal warrants, much like what happened during the US operation to arrest. Panama's Manuel Noriega in nineteen eighty nine, which is another fascinating moment in history if you want to look that up.
So framing the operation as a domestic legal matter has been the Trump administration's approach. Many found this explanation lacking, as the operation was military in nature. US Special Operations Forces carried out the raid in Caracas, backed by military aircraft, drones, and intelligence assets. approximately eighty three to a hundred people were killed, including dozens of Venezuelan soldiers, Cuban security personnel, and civilians. International law experts quickly pointed out
that calling it a law enforcement operation didn't make it legal under global norms, especially since Venezuela hadn't agreed to it. Many call it an invasion of a sovereign nation that should have been approved by Congress. So while the US used legal language to justify the mission at home, some, including the UN, saw it as a military intervention with serious implications for sovereignty and international law. No matter how you spin it or what you believe,
The raid marked a dramatic shift in U.S. engagement with Venezuela, and there have been a wide range of reactions, both in Venezuela and abroad. Many Venezuelans at home and living abroad celebrated. And for obvious reasons, hopefully after listening to a three part history of Venezuela, it's very clear to you why the majority of Venezuelans would be thrilled by the news that Maduro is no longer there.
However, opinions seem to vary widely on what this will actually look like for Venezuela in the long term. It's a time of deep uncertainty for Venezuelans. And so opinions are going to run the gamut. I've looked into a few polls that have been done for Venezuelans outside and inside of the country, and some would love to see the US come in and support Trump's approach.
Others are happy Maduro is gone, but uncomfortable with the method that was used to remove him. Some are still Chavistas, and there are a million other opinions, anywhere in between those, right? It has become a more complicated issue as Trump has been very vocal about US companies going in and drilling for oil in Venezuela. Maria Morina Machado, the key opposition figure we talked about earlier, has even met with Trump and gave him her Nobel Peace Prize, which also received a lot of attention.
In a week or two, I will be airing an interview with the Venezuelan so we can learn from him and round out all of this history. I'm very excited for the additional perspectives because. I think that to be well educated means to be willing to see things from multiple angles. Ultimately, it is a highly charged subject and I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out why. Personally, I think a mix of emotions about the future is a very reasonable way to feel.
as this is a high stakes moment for Venezuela. Back in Venezuela, the Supreme Court declared a temporary absence of Maduro. From the presidency and placed his vice president as acting president under Venezuelan law. Her name is Delcy Rodriguez. and information as to her cooperation with the US is still unfolding.
There have been daily updates on the situation in Venezuela and Maduro and Florida's is trial. And I feel like if we went longer into that, we would be going into current events, which is not my area of expertise. My goal is to help us see the history behind the events so we can better understand who is who, the complex situation, and the context.
As I record this in January 2026, there is much that remains to be seen about the future of Venezuela, but it's a very fragile place. I personally would very much like to see Venezuela become a stable country where people can live in peace. and be able to recover from the economic tragedy that they have endured.
I am not sure how that will come about. And there are a lot of power politics at play here that make it pretty complicated. But I genuinely and sincerely want good things for Venezuelans abroad and at home. All right, we did it. Part three of Venezuela One One. Let's do a little review of what we studied in this episode. So after Chavez died in 2013, Maduro narrowly won the presidency. He did not have Chavez's charisma and struggled to win broad support.
The economy collapsed due to falling oil prices and mismanagement. His government responded by printing money and imposing controls that fueled hyperinflation shortages and widespread hardship. For Venezuelans. As basic goods disappeared and political repression grew, protests surged and Maduro's hold on power tightened despite losing legitimacy in the eyes of many Venezuelans and much of the international community by 2019.
Over time, corruption and illicit networks became deeply embedded in the state, contributing to long-running U.S. sanctions, counter-drug operations, and seizures of vessels accused of trafficking or evading sanctions. This escalating pressure culminated in early 2026 when U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife, leaving Venezuela at a crossroads watched closely around the world.
If you've listened to this entire series, parts one, two, and three, thank you. I hope that you've learned some things you didn't know before and have a deeper understanding of the history and the people of Venezuela and what they have lived through. Remember that this is just a foundational level. There is so much more that we can continue to learn about Venezuela. And between now and our interview, I will have two short episodes.
For the first one, we're gonna do something a little different. I've had many people reach out to me and say, I've listened to an entire 101 series on a country, it's great, but I would love a short recap episode that kind of reviews the major points.
that I need to remember so that when that country comes up again in a week or a month or a year and I need a refresher, I can just listen to a short ten to fifteen minute episode to jog my memory and I don't have to listen to the whole series again. And I think that's a great idea. So I will be making a Venezuela 101 recap episode. It's just a refresher that guides you through the most important things to know as you engage with Venezuelan current events.
And it will be coming out next week and is available to the top two tiers of Patreon subscribers. So this will be Patreon subscribers only will get that. We'll even have a quiz on Patreon so that you can test your knowledge because studies show that those who test themselves learn better and retain better than those who just review. So you're welcome to check that out at patreon.com slash wiserworld podcast next week for the top two tiers of Patreon.
I also plan to do a free short episode where I talk about patterns and lessons we can learn from Venezuela, how they can be applied broadly to help us be more wise and intelligent as we move forward, because we study history so we can apply it. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey into Venezuela's past and present. If you've enjoyed this series, I'd love if you subscribed on your favorite podcast app.
Left a review or shared Wiser World with someone you think would love to learn more about global history. I'll be back soon and thank you again for learning about Venezuela.