Fourth largest GDP per capita in the world in 1950, thanks to the oil windfall and its immense natural resources, Venezuela is today going through the most serious economic, humanitarian and institutional crisis in its history. More than 90% of the population lives below the poverty line and some two million Venezuelans have left the country since 2015. With the accession to power of Hugo Chávez in 1999 and his successor Nicolás Maduro in 2013, the regime is crystallizing ideological passions worthy of the Cold War. But what do we really know about the Chavist revolution? How did this political project lead to the current disaster? Returning to Caracas, where she grew up, Laurence Debray (daughter of Régis Debray and Venezuelan historian Elizabeth Burgos) seeks the keys to understanding what happened to Venezuela, once the richest country in Latin America. Her interviews with Hugo Chávez, in 1998, and Juan Guaidó, the self-proclaimed president in January 2019, serve as a red thread for an investigative inventory of the situation, nourished by the insights of experts, politicians and ordinary citizens, who recount their daily lives, between social programs, currency devaluations, food shortages, power cuts, repression but also glimmers of hope.
