What's Venezuela's Crisis Really About?

The “Bolivarian revolution” revolves around the rise of the leftest movement which started with Hugo Chavez, and soon many other leaders rose to the occasion. The sole purpose of this movement was to help Latin America get rid of dictators and reestablish under Simon Bolivar's ideals of making Latin America not a colony but a nation for the people residing in it. Now that Chavez is dead, I believe that he was able to complete Bolivar's conquest of freeing Latin America. Now that Chavez has passed away, he has left both good and bad implications, but I believe its more good than bad. “The real opposition to Chavez is from the United States which was so angry at the way that he built up a credible alternative to the U.S. idea of free trade with

As I said before, many critics agreed that Hugo Chavez has been able to diminished Venezuelan democracy to convert it to a competitive authoritarian regime. Chavez has controlled the country and stills does, in a way in that using populism and his policy of clientism he gets the masses and specially the poor to support him and agreed with him in many of his reforms and actions. Allying himself with leftist countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and especially Cuba, Chavez has implemented what he calls a “Bolivarian Revolution”, revolution that allows him to have a complete control of the country. Furthermore, Chavez has been using the oil revenues not only as a method of getting international support for his ideas and type of regime but also, for his own personal enrichment

His strategy has always been to appeal to the electorate (which is why I say that he is not a "dictator" because almost everything he has done has had the support of the majority of the population). In this case, by appealing to the resentment sense that the population had towards the party system he called for a National Constituent Assembly. His first goal was to get most of the Assembly through the manipulation of a system of election of delegates. By this, he obtained the 93% of the seats in the assembly, giving him the freedom to make the changes. Some of the most important changes were the elimination of the Senate in its place he created the National Assembly. Chaves replaces the party system that had been established in Venezuela for nearly half a century. Taking advantage of the resentment of the population toward the parties, managed to strengthen the powers invested in the figure of the president. This gave him the power to make laws or declare a referendum without the need for support from the legal system. This in turn, will make things easier because there was no system of checks and balances. In the referendum conducted in 2009 to the executive branch led by Chavez was given the ability to dissolve the National Assembly too. Also, he gained control of the attorney general, comptroller general, and the militia and the National

“Venezuela reads like a textbook example of the socialist end-game: Social implosion driven by economic collapse, caused by shockingly self-destructive policy making” (Toro 39). “Socialism of the 21st Century” in the end just did not work and had failed. The changes made to the constitution have created a government that runs inefficiently and gives the president too much power. Chavez mismanaged the country's income and caused inflation of the Bolivar Note. Chavez had good intentions, but his programs to help the impoverished failed because of poor management. These people that he was trying to help are now more hurt than they were before because money put into these programs was not used effectively. This money could have been used to invest in the oil reserves and other parts of the economy to set the country up for success. Food is hard to come by and the crime and murder rate continues to raise. The country in debt and cannot even buy imports to sell to its citizens. Venezuela will need outside help if it is to recover from the situation caused by Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The only reason Chavez remained popular in Venezuela is because the economy was doing well in the beginning and he was able to control the media so that the public opinion of him was kept

Maduro is endeavoring to pin the blame of all the difficulties on other, external sources when he should be accusing and taking the responsibility for himself. Furthermore, Maduro, at fault, persists on shadowing the socialistic views of the ex-president, Hugo Chavez; however, he does not appear to comprehend that the socialist ideals are not operating smoothly and in a way that is progressive for the country. His following is further cumulating and becoming into a coalesced form that is worrying other nations.

Venezuela one of the largest countries of south America was founded according to many historian by Christopher Columbus who was on his third travel to reach the south America searching for gold. Caracas, one of the most populated and most dangerous city in South America is the capital. Because of the beauty and the economic potential that made this country one the most powerful economic attic of the metropolis; it has been flatted by many Spanish travelers who settled their base there to grasp the fruit of the economy. Simon Bolivar known as the liberator of South America engaged himself and his troops in a battle for the freedom of the Venezuela. Therefore, in 1810 Venezuela has been declared officially independence and became republic in 1830. Over the course of the years, this country has known many political government with different ideology from the dictatorship of Juan Vincent Gomez known as “el bagre” to Rafeal Cardera, the predecessor of Carlos Andres Perez. Venezuela has known an economic momentum with the production of cocoa, coffee, cotton and oil. When Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, his goal was to reinforce that momentum economy in order to bounce the social lower class. With that, he created a lot of social and economic opportunities for the lower class in the name of socialism. The government of Chavez seeks to expand the socialism political throughout the country in order to increase his popularity. The socialism system can be helpful for the lower

As a young man toiling in the fields in the late 1920s in order to support his struggling family, Chavez experienced the intolerable mistreatment of farm workers; his experiences were so severe that Chavez “...dedicated his life to improving the treatment, pay and working conditions for farm workers. He knew all too well the hardships farm workers faced,” (bio.com). Similar to Martin Luther King Jr, Chavez believed in peaceful protest, setting forth a major boycott on California grape growers, as well as many more boycotts, marches, and even a three-week hunger strike (Rodriguez). Chavez was confident that if enough awareness was raised within his farm workers’ union, the government had to listen, especially since the grape growers accounted for a large sum of the economy. Chavez’s biggest accomplishments include improved compensation and labor conditions for all farm workers, bringing national awareness to the dangers of pesticides to workers' health (Holmes). Although Chavez passed away in 1993, cities and states around the world named schools, colleges, and streets after the successful activist, as a way to thank him for the significant improvement he has made to farm workers’ lives for all generations to

When Venezuela elected Hugo Chavez, they wished to change their situation. But with his dependence on rich oil and Maduro’s unwillingness to give up power, the people’s lives took a turn for the worse. The economy took a downfall and the government no longer supports the people. They have lost their jobs and faith in their government. They can only hope that when they reach the line, there’s food on the other

Throughout this assignment, our job as students was to develop a plan in order to have knowledge about the country we were planning to discuss, the country I decided to talk about in this assignment is Venezuela. Venezuela was given the name of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela since 1999. Venezuela is located on the northern coast of South America, the country is compromised with numerous islands from the Caribbean Sea. It borders Brazil from the south,Colombia from the west and Guyana from the east. A little history about Venezuela, this country became a Spanish colony in the 1520’s. In 1830, Venezuela withdrew from Gran Colombia and became an independent republic. Most of Venezuela’s 19th century history was characterized by periods of political instability, dictatorial rule and then followed by a succession in the first half of the 20th century(CountryWatch). Hugo Chavez became president in 1999 and continuously became elected until 2013, the current president of Venezuela is Nicolas Maduro(CountryWatch).

Venezuela underwent a rollercoaster of economic and political reforms, “the exhaustion of the ISI model and the application of neoliberal policies opened the way for two decades of economic disorientation and social decomposition. This contributed to a political and institutional crisis that, at the end of the 20th century, appeared to be irreversible” (Lopez Maya, pg 235). The Chavez regime can be split into two parts before 2006 and after. In 1999 he attempted to strengthen democracy and search for social justice. As time passed the government suffered barriers but they were fueled by the idea a of a participatory democracy, entailing the need of a mixed economic model. After 2006 unfortunately a new chapter began, centralizing the power

Venezuela, located on the northern coast of South America. “Venezuela is slightly more than twice the size of the state of California. “Venezuela claims more than 130,000 sq. km (50,000 sq. mi) of territory west of the Essequibo River in Guyana, an area which constitutes about three-fifths of

In Venezuela, there is an ongoing political, economic, and social revolution with no end in sight. Former President Hugo Chavez left the country in a massive debt, resulting in shortages of basic necessities. Venezuela used to be a

1. After watching the Hugo Chavez documentary it is clear that the subject matter was his downfall as the republican president. Chavez was the republican president of Venezuelan from 1999 until 2013 when he pasted away from cancer. This documentary showed a lot of the not so positive posted of views on Chavez. As we discussed after class Chavez wanted to run his government as a place: for the people, by the people. This is commonly refereed to as a socialist reform for a president. Chavez could have worked if he consider all of the Venezuelan people. But it was clear that he did not consider the needs of the middle class people, which lead to his downfall as a president. Failing the middle class people was his strings downfall because these people took there feelings to the media. In doing so the media showed Chavez to the world in a negative perspective.

I was able to understand that the author was attempting to give an extensive depiction of the conditions of Venezuela to the readers. I was bewildered to read about the situations that many Venezuelans experience. I was given a brief story of the Venezuelans at the hospital such as patients that are not able to receive the necessary treatment for their state of health. As well as a doctor who is frustrated by the lack of tools at his disposal for his patients. The author continued to interview many Venezuelans during his stay in Venezuela while keeping a low profile since the government was trying to keep any leaks from occuring. I came to have some insight of the worsening status when control went from Chavez to Maduro. Chavez was able to bring the crooked state of Venezuela to prosperity by: enriching the economy with the abundant oil found in Venezuela and maintaining a good relationship with its neighboring countries.

First starting with the socialist leader Hugo Chavez (Roberts, 17) and then later with Nicolás Maduro. Both leaders had very similar political ideologies that have shaped Venezuela’s post-neoliberalism political landscape. Moving away from neoliberal reforms meant that the government wanted to move away from the foreign power’s influence and to reject the United States involvement in their country. Prior to the election of these men, Venezuela had experienced some of the worst food shortages because of the drop in oil prices in the 80’s. Venezuela was a petro state that relied heavily on oil exports and when the prices dropped the entire country went into a panic. The protests in 1989, called El Caracazo, were held by citizens to voice their opinions against the austerity measures and the widespread malnutrition that many in the country were dealing with (Kappeler,