This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 4th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Venezuela is preparing for life after Hugo Chavez,

that that leader will cast a long shadow over the future of Venezuela

and all of Latin America.

So says Juan Carlos Adulgo, a policy analyst on Latin America at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato

Institute.

I think that without a doubt, Hugo Chavez has been the defining figure of Latin American politics in the last decade and for bad reasons

unfortunately nobody can deny his charisma but the way that he influenced politics in his country, for example, by basically destroying

Venezuelan democracy.

One country that used to be one of the most exemplary democracies in Latin America now ranks at the bottom of all the major

indices on institutional quality and transparency and political and civil

freedoms but also the way that he tried to export this model, this populist

nationalistic model to other countries. And successfully so, I mean if we look

at Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, we see the leaders that these countries have right now and they're

which and they're probably going to continue power for the long run. We see that

Ogil Chavez's influence won't go away.

You mentioned institutional quality.

It's hard to reconcile looking at the data over the decline of Venezuela in terms of material well-being of the average

person in Venezuela with the popularity of this guy and for all the complaints

that we have about Americans having short memories when it comes to

elections, it seems that that problem is as bad or worse in Latin America.

...