the Devil's Excrement

Venezuela is a country located on the northern coast of Latin America, bordering Bolivia, Brazil, and Guyana to the south, and it has a 2,800-km-long coastline with the Caribbean Sea to the north. The country covers a somewhat triangle-shaped territory of 910,000 square kilometers, and has a population of 31 million. Venezuela's GDP per capita has reached 5,000 USD.

Having surpassed Saudi Arabia's proven oil reserves in 2014 (265 million barrels), Venezuela is now the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world (297 million barrels). It is estimated that if Venezuela keeps extracting oil at the same rate as it does today, their reserves will last for 250 years.

Despite being rich in natural resources, Venezuela is now seeing their shops close, while one third of their population is living in poverty. It has become common for people to queue for days to buy food and go home empty-handed. Venezuela gets its food and consumer products almost entirely from imports. It has been a year since they began frequently experiencing power cuts and seeing a shortage of medications in hospitals.

After Bolivia recently opened its borders, Venezuelans began traveling to Bolivia in large numbers to buy food and purchase goods. Some shed tears because they had not had meat, milk, or eggs for months.

All services in Venezuela today have a very long queue. CNN recently reported that people were waiting for a full day at a morgue to have a funeral. The President of Venezuela declared a state of economic emergency and has recently granted enforcement agencies the right to recruit anyone to work in the agricultural sector for up to 120 days.

In 2015, 90 out of every 100,000 people were murdered in Venezuela, which translates into one person becoming a victim of homicide every 21 minutes. With its soaring crime rates, Venezuela has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

IS THIS THE RESOURCE CURSE?

Why did the most oil-rich country in the world become the poorest and one of the most dangerous? Coffee and cocoa were Venezuela's main export products until the 1980s, when they were replaced by oil. However, oil prices declined soon after, which resulted in a drastic decrease in their exports. It caused the country to be strangled by external debt and put the economy in decline for 10 years. Venezuela's poverty rate reached 65 percent in 1995, while the inflation rate was 100 percent in 1996. This led GDP per capita to return to 1963 levels.

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