Venezuela Before Chvez: A Prelude to Socialist Failure

Venezuela’s current economic catastrophe is well documented. Conventional narratives point to Hugo Chvez’s regime as the primary architect behind Venezuela’s economic tragedy. While Chvez and his successor Nicols Maduro deserve the brunt of the blame for Venezuela’s current economic calamity, the underlying flaws of Venezuela’s political economy point to much more systemic problems.
Observers must look beyond stage one, and understand Venezuela’s overall history over the past 50 years in order to get a more thorough understanding of how the country has currently fallen to such lows.
Socialism Before Chvez Analysts like to point to rosier pictures of Pre-Chvez Venezuela, but what these ‘experts’ conveniently ignore is that the seeds of Venezuela’s destruction were sowed during those ‘glory years.’ Years of gradual economic interventionism took what was once a country bound to join the ranks of the First World to a middle-tier developing country. This steady decline eventually created an environment where a demagogue like Chvez would completely exploit for his political gain.

This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on May 4, 2017.