Venezuela is a magic land, a land of immense beauty. The land exists in a fairy tale.
Tall Mountains whose heads perpetually covered in encircling mist and rain clouds with cascading waterfalls throwing large bodies of water in the sudden depths from flat-topped mountains. Meandering mighty rivers flowing through dense and lush impenetrable evergreen forests harboring thousands of rare species of birds and animals and many places where man has to set his foot on yet.

It enjoys a special Geopolitical place, flanked by the Caribbean on one side and the great Atlantic on the other. Rain forests, cloud forests, Mountains like jutted fingers in the skies with flat table tops on their heads, extensive plains, and Caribbean coasts all indeed give rise to uniqueness and rarity.
Orinoco ,  mighty river, one of the largest in the world , runs through Venezuela.
The delta of Orinoco is remarkable untouched by modern times yet and people still live as they were hundreds of years back. The original inhabitants are the Carib, Arawak, and the Chibcha who enjoyed this land for thousands of years.

The Spanish wanderer Columbus set his foot on this fairyland in 1498 and immediately felled in love with this land. He considered Venezuela’s beauty so spectacular that he thought that he was in the garden of Eden.
Alonso de Ojeda, one of the many explorers came after Christopher Columbus, was so enamored by the natural beauty of the land and stilted houses raised by the native Indians on the lake Maracaibo that he called the place Venezuela the little Venice.

It is very interesting to know that the world’s largest reserves of hydrocarbon fuel are in Venezuela. Not hydrocarbons only, but Venezuela is very rich in what is beneath its beautiful heavenly land…….And not all is well in Venezuela…

…After Christopher Columbus claimed Venezuela as Spanish territory in the 14th century, a failed effort was made in the 18th century to unify the areas on the Venezuelan boundaries. Even the gallant national hero Simon Bolivar also attempted to unify Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador together, but the effort failed due to infighting.

In 1830, under Jose Paez, Venezuela became a sovereign state. The world was changing fast, and the oil as an energy and fuel source came to the fore, and Venezuela started to export the oil. The measure failed to develop the overall economy as the privileged few only started to become spectacularly rich.
A series of despotic military rulers then ran through until Venezuela adopted Democracy in 1958.
The history of Venezuela shows that the independent aborigine clans never have been used to democracy or a central authoritative rule.
These clans were independent and were keeping to themselves.No ruling system seems to be working. Successive governments struggled to remove the social unrest without any substantial improvement in the life of the common man. The country never seems to be stabilized.

In the 1990’s, a number of army units staged a sudden and unexpected coup to seize the power but the other army units loyal to the Government and led by the to be the cult persona of the country, the Charismatic Colonel Hugo Chavez who crushed the mutiny.
The common people have found their hero.

Colonel Chavez, with his finger on the pulse of the people, decided to fight the general elections and won the 1998 elections.
He rightly caught the emotions simmering in the heart of the masses and bought on Land reforms and Nationalization and tried to bring more benefits to his supporters, mainly consisting of working-class and poor.

Venezuela rose in the United Nations human development index score between the years 2000 and 2012.
This has tremendously increased the popularity of his government, but the ruling classes turned against him.
The Socialist government, though popular in the country, started to lose out at the international business level as it was becoming extremely difficult to run businesses with the country.

Another factor which influenced Venezuela is the United States and its stakes in the Venezuelan oil.
The US has granted special concessions in the oil imports. The pro-people and socialist government of Venezuela under Chavez most obviously took another step to increase its mass support and went after the concessions offered to the mighty US.

He ( Colonel Chavez ) rejected the US idea of the neoliberal agenda of the 1980s and 1990s.
And, when the US has to make heavy changes in its foreign policy after the terrible attacks on 9/11, it changed the equations globally.
The aggressiveness and the suspicion with which the US started to treat other nations was not easily digested by the Colonel Chavez government. This has resulted in increasingly disturbed relations with the US.

The US foreign policy slowly turned against the Chavez government.
It added to the unrest in the society as the opposition, catching the mood in the US foreign policy, started to destabilize the government. Colonel Hugo Chavez died in 2013 succeeded by Nicolas Maduro ~ The present president of Venezuela.

Nicolas Maduro vowed to continue the proven policies of the previous government and tried to stem the rot that is setting in. The rot was slowly setting in, no doubt about it. Because the government becomes unilateral in its policymaking.
Oil was striking rich and was bringing a huge amount of money.

The oil exported, fetch money in dollars.The domestic industries providing life essentials were almost nonexistent due to slender margins of profits.
The essential commodities were offered to the masses at fixed affordable rates.
As the profit margin was lost, the local manufacturers and sellers slowly started to back out, and the production diminished.

The shortages started to feel acute, but it was not a very big problem.
The dollars are handy in such a situation, aren’t it? The Venezuelan government started to import these life-essential commodities from other countries, As, the payments in dollars, nobody was complaining.

Oil was striking gold, and all was well on every front.

Oil price crash in 2014 started to reach deep in the economy when the oil prices crashed in 2014.
And, the desperation started to build up. The rates of oil prices in the international market dropped further, compelling the government to pay more in dollars to purchase the essential products.

The domestic industry comes to a standstill. the foreign currency reserves with the government started to disappear rapidly, compelling to produce oil on a huge scale and at the cheaper rates.
The markets started to feel the shortages of essential commodities.
The shortages flared up the inflation and the Venezuelan economy was trapped in it’s lovingly and carefully made trap, with no apparent way out.

The solutions existed internationally and with the finance management pundits, of which the government seems to be oblivious of.
The government started to act and mend its fences and printed more currency.

This has crashed the currency values further. The popularity of the government started to suffer a huge setback as the awareness started to sink in.

The government, in its futile exercise to maintain fading popularity, increased minimum wages, increasing the strain on reserves.
The government tried to change the currency.
It has launched Petro, a new currency linked to the petrol reserves.

The
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro launched Petro – A cryptocurrency linked with petrol reserves to improve the economy.
The government tried to change the currency. It has launched Petro, a new currency linked to the petrol reserves. But this new experiment didn’t brighten the blackened horizon.

Local trade and commerce, which existed on a very small scale indeed, ruined. Common people were used to government subsidies, and low rate essential commodities have to make a purchase by carrying currency notes in sacs. Because, due to inflation and additionally printed currency notes, the value of the currency was lost.

The rate of increase in inflation is beyond anybody’s imagination.
It is 82766 %. As the rates of essential commodities went out of reach of commons, people started to leave their homes, towns, cities, states and the country itself.

According to the United Nations, more than 2500000 people have already left Venezuela. This is an extraordinary catastrophe.

It is unimaginable that the country with such huge natural reserves, including hydrocarbons, is suffering to such an extent. Every 4 out of the 5 persons are below the poverty line.

The rates of life essentials and other necessities are doubling every 25 to 30 days. There are long queues outside the shops selling grains and food. A simple cup of coffee is available at 2.5 million bolivars. As it’s not possible to carry such a huge amount of cash, the transactions are increasingly done online now. Even at the hotels, the tip is paid online. Waiters are providing bank account numbers to hapless customers.

This has resulted in great social imbalance.The neighboring countries are shocked and worrying about the influx of refugees. It has caused extraordinary border problems, and these countries have to depute armies to control the flow of refugees from Venezuela. The common citizens are suffering a great deal.

The citizen could not leave the country as they do not possess a passport. It’s not possible anymore to print passports as there is no paper and ink is left in the country and there is no money to buy it from outside. The dollars earned are long gone, and the country started to borrow heavily from other countries. This has given rise to a very grave situation in which the whole existence of the country is threatened.