Venezuela’s History: Oil Wealth, Authoritarianism, and Crisis (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Two things can be true at once. Venezuelans can celebrate the fall of an authoritarian government while also staying wary of US direct involvement in their country. The Trump administration say they will work to bring back democracy to Venezuela. But what can we learn from the country's political history? It was colonized by Spain a few years after Christopher Columbus's expedition in 1498. Over 300 years later, following the War of Independence, the country became part of Gran Colombia in 1821, although it separated from them in 1830. The 19th century was marked by political instability, civil wars, and military rule. But the discovery of oil in the early 20th century transformed Venezuela. What followed were multiple periods of dictatorship. After the fall of the dictator Marco Perez Jimenez in 1958, Venezuela established a stable democracy and became one of Latin America's wealthiest nations, thanks to its oil revenues, that left themselves open to corruption. After a failed coup d'etat in the early 90s, Hugo Chavez became president in 1999, launching what is known as the Bolivarian Revolution with socialist policies and increased state control. At the beginning, Chavez enjoyed a lot of money from high oil prices. But towards 2008, the oil price and production plummeted. Everything soon got worse. After Chavez's death in 2013, his close second, Nicolas Maduro, became president. Under Maduro, Venezuela has faced economic crisis, hyperinflation, political turmoil, mass emigration, and tension with the US as well as the EU. Poverty and insecurity for the general population has been rife and led to years of instability under Maduro's dictatorship. Venezuela will face all of these issues as it tries to build a stable political future.