This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Professor Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College,

but the backstory to Venezuela, how did a prosperous society of oil wealth in the 1950s fall into the

extreme dysfunction under the boot of a dictator and his gang.

Where did that start?

What explains it?

Here, the professor gives us a quick lesson in resource, curse, and Venezuela.

More of this tonight, much more.

Here's professor.

They absolutely do, John.

And it's a complex tragedy.

But as you pointed out, Venezuela during the, you know, from the 1950s, really to the 1990s, was enormously wealthy.

All the difficulties in neighboring Colombia, oftentimes Colombians would come to Venezuela looking for

work or refuge, and oftentimes just for shopping because some of the finest Western things

that were available in Caracas that weren't available elsewhere. The elites in Caracas would come

to Miami for their shopping trips. and some of the real estate boom from

those early days were people wealthy Venezuelans trying to have the place to go on those

shopping trips to Miami elsewhere. But part of that, the darker side was there was always

high levels of corruption, high levels of inequality. It's, you know,

what scholars have called the resource curse in the sense that there was this alternation in power

between the two major parties of Pre-Chavez, the CD, the Christian Democrats in Copay, but

nothing ever really changed and things were essentially rigged for the elites.

It was that frustration with corruption and that the oil wealth was not extending to everyone.

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