Dedicated to all the socialists who have defended Chavism (some on this very site):
Venezuela had been a rising nation, buoyed by the world’s largest oil reserves, but by the time I arrived, even high global oil prices couldn’t keep shortages and rapid inflation at bay. . .
Over the course of three years, I said good-bye to most of those friends, as well as regular long-distance phone service and six international airline carriers. I got used to carrying bricks of rapidly devaluing cash in tote bags to pay for meals. We still drove to the beach, but began hurrying back early to get off the highway before bandits came out. Stoplights became purely ornamental because of the risk of carjackings.
There was no war or natural disaster. Just ruinous mismanagement that turned the collapse of prices for the country’s oil in 2015 into a national catastrophe.
POSTSCRIPT: I do have to point out that she contradicts herself between the first and last line. The fall in oil prices hastened Venezuela’s collapse, but it wasn’t the cause, as she recognizes in the first line. Today, the price of oil hardly matters, as Venezuela is mostly incapable of producing oil any more.
Internet Scofflaw 