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Venezuela's Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart
How did Latin America's exceptional democracy become a nearly failed state? Why would a leader firmly in control lead one of the planet's richest countries into a humanitarian crisis? Conventional wisdom blames the madness of a populist leader who squandered an oil fortune. In Venezuela's Collapse, Carlos Lizarralde offers an alternative account that places race, ethnicity, and the struggle over resources at the center of the Hugo Chavez story.
The book chronicles 500 years of demographic and economic strands that came together in 1998 with the election of a dashing new President. By following Chavismo's dismantling of the liberal state, the ransacking of public enterprises, and the appearance of a feudal world of violence, hunger, and disease, Venezuela's Collapse offers a compelling argument about what happened in the country.
Venezuela's uncertain future will be determined, for better or for worse, by the fractured and conflicted past that fueled the Bolivarian Revolution. Carlos Lizarralde's account will become a key road map in the years ahead.
The book chronicles 500 years of demographic and economic strands that came together in 1998 with the election of a dashing new President. By following Chavismo's dismantling of the liberal state, the ransacking of public enterprises, and the appearance of a feudal world of violence, hunger, and disease, Venezuela's Collapse offers a compelling argument about what happened in the country.
Venezuela's uncertain future will be determined, for better or for worse, by the fractured and conflicted past that fueled the Bolivarian Revolution. Carlos Lizarralde's account will become a key road map in the years ahead.
363 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 19, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 18, 2024
Remarkably bleak view of Venezuelan history, and tragically it is very convincing. The author basically sees the country’s history as a couplet of race wars between a creole population and that of its indigenous, african slave, and mixed populations. The first at the time of independence from Spain, and then again at the end of the oil boom. Each ended with the incomplete elimination of a large creole minority by the pardo majority.
This is one of the most reactionary books I have ever read. It is not conservative but truly of the oldest school of such things because it offers no solutions, sees a pattern in history in a mere couplet. It is a story of feckless whites and barbaric non whites, though often led by white. I would not say it is actually racist but it is very racialist in that peculiar extremely old fashioned and essentialist Latin American manner.
But aside from this it actually provides both a sound argument of the nature of what the petrostate did, how it went the way of every such state and that resulted in Venezuelan circumstances in the spectacular wreckage of Chavismo. It is also not bad as a potted, and somewhat abridged history of Venezuela in the past five centuries.
This is one of the most reactionary books I have ever read. It is not conservative but truly of the oldest school of such things because it offers no solutions, sees a pattern in history in a mere couplet. It is a story of feckless whites and barbaric non whites, though often led by white. I would not say it is actually racist but it is very racialist in that peculiar extremely old fashioned and essentialist Latin American manner.
But aside from this it actually provides both a sound argument of the nature of what the petrostate did, how it went the way of every such state and that resulted in Venezuelan circumstances in the spectacular wreckage of Chavismo. It is also not bad as a potted, and somewhat abridged history of Venezuela in the past five centuries.
July 29, 2024
The author posits that Spanish colonialism with its strict social hierarchy has been the cause for class and racial tensions throughout Venezuela’s history. Further, policy decisions made by the government caused opportunities for major corruption. The main source of income being oil exports resulted in the country not always being able to provide for its citizens due to price fluctuations in the world market. Poverty and crime is the result of the anarchy that resulted due to a weak government. What a sad history.
December 11, 2025
Lizarralde takes time to unpack his ideas, and by the time he does, he shows his thesis is rooted in an inconsistent, oversimplified view of history. The journey to get there, though, is a halting whiplash that hops through time without apparent pattern and that fails to build clarity. On top of this, the writing is such that you may wonder if you had accidentally wandered into the young adult section.
Things start out promising enough. Framing questions of Venezuelan history with the image of an oil-soaked Concorde (pulling together the cover art and the blackened page edges), the tragedy of the petro state seems to be the core of the story. But that is not where things go. Chapter 1 oscillates between the Chavez era and the era of colonization and independence to say, in essence, that ethnicity in Venezuela is more complicated than elsewhere, and that this is often underappreciated, especially in the rise of Chavismo. Fair enough. But in chapter 2, ethnicity heads to the back burner as Lizarralde surveys the cycles of oil boom and bust, decrying the lack of industrial investment during the booms. Chapter 3 is where the analysis begins to break down, as he returns to ethnicity—at least ostensibly, since what he actually discusses is race—and the independence era, repeatedly calling that a "race war" (198). The final chapter pulls the reader back up to modern history to detail the rise and misdeeds of Chavez, albeit with little coherent commentary. At this point one might hope for an epilogue that would draw things together, but instead the author tells yet another story from the nation's early history that suddenly jumps to the modern day, perhaps trying to make yet another point that fails to land.
Through this circuitous route, the author's lens is not readily apparent, at least not initially. But through the second half the the book, the (justified) disdain for Chavismo gives rise to a question: now that we've thrown out the bath water, are we missing a baby? It seems that perhaps Lizarralde's in effort to cut through the propaganda of Chávez's claimed leftism, he has rejected any tools that might come from actual leftist thought, including nearly any consideration of class in history. This might be the only way he could come to the conclusion that the war of independence was a "race war." Despite an attempt at clarity with in few definitions—he quotes Britannica, of all places, to define "ethnicity" (31)—many of the more meaningful labels simply appear without explanation, including "race war." Perhaps in support of this idea, he spends several pages on Bolívar's "War to the Death" decree. "Today such an order arguably fits the legal definition of a genocide" (172), he notes, claiming that even in the heyday of manifest destiny in the American west "there was never anything close to Bolívar's written decree written by the president or a flag officer" (173). Technicalities aside, the superlatives are unjustified, especially considering that, as Lizarralde notes, the order called for soldiers "to kill those born in Spain who were not actively helping the independence cause" (172). This is a far cry from the inklings of a white genocide that he hints at. Indeed, he seems to miss the import of some key facts that he even relates to the reader: "By the time the Wars of Independence broke out, the light-skinned population amounted to just over 20% of the entire colony. Eight out of every ten people living in the territories of Venezuela were either enslaved or living in a subordinated caste" (189).
This theme continues in the depiction of modern history. He lays the foundation of the pre-Chávez climate as one of a nation in crisis: "Healthcare was faltering, government jobs ceased to be engines of opportunity as real incomes dropped, and a crack epidemic overtook the poorly policed city as gangs fought over valuable markets, and the murder rate skyrocketed. According to the Central Bank models, extreme poverty doubled between 1990 and 1996" (34). Yet as Chávez takes power, Lizarralde paints the revolution as one of good falling to bad: "When the humanitarian crisis broke out, safety and safe passage across the country, macroeconomic and monetary stability, food import and distribution, the oil infrastructure, and the power grid, also crumbled under the weight of a comprehensive political transformation inspired by a romantic ideology of people's sovereignty" (244-5). Of course he is right to point out the destruction of state systems that could have the potential to address some of the social ills were they again infused with more resources. But the discrepancy is perhaps a clue: is Lizarralde, turning a blind eye to any conscious consideration of class, stuck with a view of the Chávez years from the perspective of the middle and upper classes? Has he missed the "why" of the revolution in the first place?
There are other issues in this book that cannot be detailed here: the prodigious use of the term "welfare state" that never sees definition or clarification, the seeming disparagement of democracy (e.g. 261), the shift from using the past as foundation for the present to equating the past and present (throughout chapter 4 and the epilogue), the failure to consider Venezuela's issues of debt and humanitarian collapse in the 1980s in the context of other Latin American nations, the see-saw of Chávez being both powerful and not very powerful (e.g. 220 vs. 261), placing the blame for the demise of useful business in favor of corruption solely at the feet of the state rather than the businesses themselves (229), and more.
The most significant gap, however, is the reason I picked up this book in the first place. Beyond the answer of "race" for the rise of both Chávez and Bolívar, Lizarralde gives very little in response to the question of "why." He details the question succinctly enough:
"Why would Chavez plunder a state oil company under his control and destroy the ability to extract the most extensive fuel oil reserves on the planet? Why dismantle the national welfare and health networks staffed and led by his subordinates? Why weaken security functions already under his control? Why force the exile of hundreds of thousands of people with college degrees and years of valuable experience? Those unaware of the country's history cannot understand why Chávez would destroy a state and a country he already ruled" (217).
Yet there is nothing close to a cohesive understanding or a response to "why." In its place is an ineffective treatise, rooted in a closed conservative ignorance, that tries to connect the past and present with crooked lines. Surely there are better answers to "why" to be found elsewhere.
Things start out promising enough. Framing questions of Venezuelan history with the image of an oil-soaked Concorde (pulling together the cover art and the blackened page edges), the tragedy of the petro state seems to be the core of the story. But that is not where things go. Chapter 1 oscillates between the Chavez era and the era of colonization and independence to say, in essence, that ethnicity in Venezuela is more complicated than elsewhere, and that this is often underappreciated, especially in the rise of Chavismo. Fair enough. But in chapter 2, ethnicity heads to the back burner as Lizarralde surveys the cycles of oil boom and bust, decrying the lack of industrial investment during the booms. Chapter 3 is where the analysis begins to break down, as he returns to ethnicity—at least ostensibly, since what he actually discusses is race—and the independence era, repeatedly calling that a "race war" (198). The final chapter pulls the reader back up to modern history to detail the rise and misdeeds of Chavez, albeit with little coherent commentary. At this point one might hope for an epilogue that would draw things together, but instead the author tells yet another story from the nation's early history that suddenly jumps to the modern day, perhaps trying to make yet another point that fails to land.
Through this circuitous route, the author's lens is not readily apparent, at least not initially. But through the second half the the book, the (justified) disdain for Chavismo gives rise to a question: now that we've thrown out the bath water, are we missing a baby? It seems that perhaps Lizarralde's in effort to cut through the propaganda of Chávez's claimed leftism, he has rejected any tools that might come from actual leftist thought, including nearly any consideration of class in history. This might be the only way he could come to the conclusion that the war of independence was a "race war." Despite an attempt at clarity with in few definitions—he quotes Britannica, of all places, to define "ethnicity" (31)—many of the more meaningful labels simply appear without explanation, including "race war." Perhaps in support of this idea, he spends several pages on Bolívar's "War to the Death" decree. "Today such an order arguably fits the legal definition of a genocide" (172), he notes, claiming that even in the heyday of manifest destiny in the American west "there was never anything close to Bolívar's written decree written by the president or a flag officer" (173). Technicalities aside, the superlatives are unjustified, especially considering that, as Lizarralde notes, the order called for soldiers "to kill those born in Spain who were not actively helping the independence cause" (172). This is a far cry from the inklings of a white genocide that he hints at. Indeed, he seems to miss the import of some key facts that he even relates to the reader: "By the time the Wars of Independence broke out, the light-skinned population amounted to just over 20% of the entire colony. Eight out of every ten people living in the territories of Venezuela were either enslaved or living in a subordinated caste" (189).
This theme continues in the depiction of modern history. He lays the foundation of the pre-Chávez climate as one of a nation in crisis: "Healthcare was faltering, government jobs ceased to be engines of opportunity as real incomes dropped, and a crack epidemic overtook the poorly policed city as gangs fought over valuable markets, and the murder rate skyrocketed. According to the Central Bank models, extreme poverty doubled between 1990 and 1996" (34). Yet as Chávez takes power, Lizarralde paints the revolution as one of good falling to bad: "When the humanitarian crisis broke out, safety and safe passage across the country, macroeconomic and monetary stability, food import and distribution, the oil infrastructure, and the power grid, also crumbled under the weight of a comprehensive political transformation inspired by a romantic ideology of people's sovereignty" (244-5). Of course he is right to point out the destruction of state systems that could have the potential to address some of the social ills were they again infused with more resources. But the discrepancy is perhaps a clue: is Lizarralde, turning a blind eye to any conscious consideration of class, stuck with a view of the Chávez years from the perspective of the middle and upper classes? Has he missed the "why" of the revolution in the first place?
There are other issues in this book that cannot be detailed here: the prodigious use of the term "welfare state" that never sees definition or clarification, the seeming disparagement of democracy (e.g. 261), the shift from using the past as foundation for the present to equating the past and present (throughout chapter 4 and the epilogue), the failure to consider Venezuela's issues of debt and humanitarian collapse in the 1980s in the context of other Latin American nations, the see-saw of Chávez being both powerful and not very powerful (e.g. 220 vs. 261), placing the blame for the demise of useful business in favor of corruption solely at the feet of the state rather than the businesses themselves (229), and more.
The most significant gap, however, is the reason I picked up this book in the first place. Beyond the answer of "race" for the rise of both Chávez and Bolívar, Lizarralde gives very little in response to the question of "why." He details the question succinctly enough:
"Why would Chavez plunder a state oil company under his control and destroy the ability to extract the most extensive fuel oil reserves on the planet? Why dismantle the national welfare and health networks staffed and led by his subordinates? Why weaken security functions already under his control? Why force the exile of hundreds of thousands of people with college degrees and years of valuable experience? Those unaware of the country's history cannot understand why Chávez would destroy a state and a country he already ruled" (217).
Yet there is nothing close to a cohesive understanding or a response to "why." In its place is an ineffective treatise, rooted in a closed conservative ignorance, that tries to connect the past and present with crooked lines. Surely there are better answers to "why" to be found elsewhere.
March 25, 2024
The book examines Venezuela's tragic implosion during Chavez's tenure, intertwining the nation's intricate history with the devastating impact of his regime. A particularly noteworthy aspect is its exploration of race and ethnicity as crucial factors in Venezuela's downfall, shedding light on long-neglected issues in the country's political and social fabric. With great detail, the author reveals how chavismo systematically dismantled Venezuela's institutions, plunging the nation into its current state of ruin—a striking parallel to its post-independence struggles in the 19th century. Through its narrative, the book serves as a chilling reminder of the profound influence history wields over a nation's path.
August 22, 2025
Excellent book . Recommended for Trinidadians .to understand why ppl often say Trinidadians is not a real place. Everything after independence follows a blueprint laid down during the colonial era .Venezuela was able to vanquish there Spanish overlords but at what cost? We as a people need to read more in order to grasp what is happening to our country.There are so many Venezuelan ppl here in Trinidadians that I wanted to understand what caused them to flee their country. I believe Trinidadians was heading in that direction but I am seeing an improvement in the crime statistics bcuz of the presence of American troops to supervise our borders
September 28, 2024
I enjoyed learning more about my wife's Native country. Though I had the advantage of my wife being able to fill in the blanks about Venezuela's historical leaders, It still was a fascinating read. If you want to learn more about the history of this country, I highly recommend reading this book.
September 23, 2024
A clear picture, from a new perspective, of what happened in Venezuela in the last century, and why the country ended up where it is now.
October 2, 2024
This book and Comandante are the two best books I've read on Venezuela. If you want to understand why Hugo Chavez came to power and why he was so popular, read this book!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews