The road to Caracas - The Boston Globe

The road to Caracas - The Boston Globe
"When I first visited Venezuela in 2010, Hugo Chávez was still the country’s president.
Venezuela in those days wasn’t all bad. 
I enjoyed sipping Scotch (the national drink of choice) in Carabobo and boating on the Orinoco River.
But I could tell that things were not going to end well.
“The reality of Chávez’s regime,” I wrote at the time, “is that it is a sham democracy. . . . Private property rights . . . are routinely violated.
Chávez nationalizes businesses more or less at will. . . . And, like so many tinpot dictators in Latin American history, he makes a mockery of the rule of law by changing the constitution to suit himself.”
Chávez died in 2013, but things have only gotten worse under his successor, Nicolás Maduro.
The Venezuelan economy has descended into the abyss of hyperinflation.
Despite having vast reserves of oil, the country’s power grid barely functions.
There are chronic shortages of food and medicine.
An estimated 3.4 million people have fled the country..."
Read on.