This is an eloquent distillation of my entire argument in this thread.

The Venezeulan crisis is not a black and white issue. The presence of vast oil reserves is the underlying fact. What we then have is generation after generation of messy history applied on top. It's easy to blame whoever is running things at the moment, but to do so is to conduct only the most superficial analysis. Maduro certainly hasn't been great, but picking up the presidency when he did was akin to picking up a live grenade... which had been passed through many hands before it reached him.