Background to the crisis in Venezuela

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I have been assigned a current events project for college, and have decided to focus on the crisis in Venezuela, as the topic for my project. I can easily find good news articles on what’s happening now in Venezuela, but I’m also looking for good articles on the history and socio-political & socio-cultural nature of that country; what led to the rise of Socialism in that country, and what are the factors that might be at play now?

Does anyone have any good and informative articles?

No links, I operate on my memory most days. Plus I’m using a tablet.

I was interested in this a few years ago. Maybe many years ago at this point.

Sometime around when President Obama came into power, so let’s say 2008 or just after, maybe 2010, Netflix had a large number of very interesting documentaries about socialist nations. I don’t know if they are still up. There were several about Hugo Chavez, which made him mostly sound pretty great, and a few about the other socialist leaders around that time. The dude from Bolivia was one. Evo? I recall another good one about cacao plants and how they should be decriminalized and available to local people. All presented like the countries were awesome.

Interesting to me, because at this same time I was required to read a great deal of Karl Marx. Marxism is NOT socialism. Socialism is closer to what we already practice in the West with controlled media, some free things like welfare for the poor, grants for businesses and students, etc. Not the same as the US at all, but ballpark. Pure Marxism is more like a hippy commune or AA meeting. Hard to picture for a large nation.

But so it looked to me from these documentaries like Venezuela was not that much different from any regular Western nation. I do not know if that was really the case. But that is how it was presented. I don’t know why. And I don’t know what changed. I didnt keep up with it. I discovered that the documentaries were misleading just a few years after I saw them, because I met a guy whose family fled Venezuela. I didn’t hear the story of why, but he was a normal guy and your entire family wouldn’t leave everything for no reason. Hm.

Just from the memory banks of a middle aged lady here on the couch this afternoon. Good luck with your project!