Boom to Bust: The Fall of Venezuela

In December 2015, Yeyo, a 15-year-old Venezuelan boy, who had murdered someone at the age of just 10, said in an interview, “You just pull the trigger and that’s it. I like the bad life. The power and the money.” More and more youths like Yeyo were choosing this kind of a life in Venezuela, where the economic crisis had hit citizens hard. In August, 2016, Nicolas Maduro, President of the country, which at one time had been one of the wealthiest nations in South America, started seizing and destroying handguns, rifles, and shotguns in a bid to disarm the nation and solve the problem of its increasing crime rate. The country had been in an economic, political, and societal free fall with more than 70 percent of the population living in poverty. Venezuelans had no access to basic medicines and hygiene products and even to essential food items. The collapse had become a sheer example of political instability and fiscal mismanagement by the government, which had destroyed a wealthy, democratic nation. The plummeting oil prices had only worsened the condition of the country’s economy since 2014...