I'm John Batchewitt, Professor Evan Ellis.

We're looking at Venezuela, the backstory.

The front story is U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, Donald Trump, threats by China, possible actions by Venezuela,

in some fashion we can only guess at, a confrontation between the dictator

and the opposition receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. All that is front story. Backstory is,

how did we get here? Professor, four photographs. I have them. I've used them routinely. One, 1902.

It shows Caracas as a very low-level city, maybe

at most two stories, mostly one story, laid out in no particular grid fashion, in a natural

bowl between ridges around it. The second photograph is from the 1940s, and it's at the edge of Caracas,

showing construction and heavy earth-moving machines all around and a line of cars

snaking out of the city. We can suppose there was major construction going on. This is 1948.

Another photograph from the early 1950s shows one of those great big, beautiful

Cadillacs with rounded hoods parked on the street as if everybody has one.

And then one more photograph that's significant.

1958 showing a limousine being attacked by one or two individuals and rocks thrown, and inside that

limousine we find Richard Nixon, the vice president of the United States, who made headlines

in his tour of the Americas, but was attacked, that's the word they used in 1958, by unhappy

Venezuelans. Those four photographs tell the story

of a state that's been transformed. This is no peasant culture wandering around with burrows,

you know, the Hollywood version of Latin America. This is one of the best GDPs in 1950 in the

Americas. The people who received the Nobel GDPs in the 1950 in the Americas.

The people who received the Nobel Peace Prize, the opposition

...