I'll do my best to relate what my wife tells me and you guys can dissect from there.

The situation for the populism send simple. I've listened and asked many questions and from what I've heard from her parents as well is this:

1. Chavez gained power as a populist movement for to the fact that whole the poor may get medical services and basic education they didn't appear to have any chance to participate in further education. This kept them poor. Born poor and then you stay poor.
2. Second big thing is that labour made very little money. If you were lucky enough to get a job in the oil industry maybe you could get enough to lead your family out of poverty, but even then it's only marginally possible.

Noteworthy definition of poor here is like shanty town type poor. Not like Canada type poor where your kids have 100% the same access to university as the rich kids.

This set the stage for the populism. Apparently her father used to drive his employees during voting day and encourage them to vote. So he'd hear what they were thinking and so on along the way. Chavez was definitely their guy, but in the beginning even middle class people were divided about whether he would be bad due their concerns about corruption. I guess the hope was that he'd remove it decrease corruption and that would be a win for everyone.

Where we are today is actually very much different than what any geopolitical conspiracy theorist boosting for the US client state story would have wanted. Currently China is taking control over the country, they are treating it more and more like a client state. It's basically criminal what's happening with oil for money deals being agreed that undervalue the oil immensely. China then imports their workers to work on the extraction of the oil further decreasing the value to the country. It's a horrific downward cycle that is putting them into China's hands not the US, so if the US were to have been involved then it's really backfired on them.

Where are we today on the ground?
1. Imagine waiting all day to walk into a grocery store and find you can't get tooth paste it the only thing you can buy for breakfast is fruit loops? On Instagram there are hundreds of photos of nearly empty grocery stores. These are not exaggerations. We get those pictures from her family directly.

2. ALL (and it's just about meant literally) educated people under the age of 40 have left. I'd say better that 50% of those in their 40-50s are also gone now or trying desperately to leave. This has compounded problems further because universities don't have the staff to train the next generation. They don't have engineers to run or manage the industry. They don't have entrepreneurs or businessmen to run basic stuff from cafes to car dealerships.

3. Medicine is so scarce she has lost already one family member due to a medical condition that was treatable. I don't recall (honestly) what it was but I'm not going to ask her to tell me for HN. Right now she has one Uncle struggling with a minor heart condition, but he can't get the medicine that would allow him to live happily and heathy in a country life Canada. Another Aunt is going to lose a chunk of her foot; the debate currently is how much they will amputate. I shit you not. This is also due to the fact that her diabetes is unmanageable without medicine.

What's happening today in Venezuela Is probably one of the worst ongoing humanitarian crisis's in the world today. It was self-inflicted initially, but now people are dying daily for no good reason, dogs and babies are being left in the street to die and diseases that shouldn't be tolerated are coming back. I won't mention the one she said she heard, because I don't want to be a fear monger without facts, but the shit is crazy.

It's too the point where we (Western societies) should do what we do when things get too crazy and with the support of Latin America we need to bring in relief with a plan together with region partners in how to reconstitute the nation. Anything less is basically uncivilized at this point IMO.