Source: The Atlantic
by Gisela Salim-Peyer
“Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the Venezuela of my childhood, during the period when experts and historians warned, on television channels that would later be shut down, that Hugo Chávez was making himself a dictator. They said that his economic mismanagement — the extravagant expenditures, the graft, the attacks on central-bank independence — would cause a severe crisis when oil prices went down. My family listened to those pundits and believed them, but we didn’t know what to do with that information. My father used to say that living in Venezuela was like driving a car that you know is not being maintained. For now, the car works fine, but one day it will break down. And when it does, the moment to repair the car will have passed.” (09/09/25)