Not as much as the 7 million emigrants who left Venezuela for other countries.
I keep coming back to the power outages of recent years in Venezuela because they’re indicative of everything that’s going wrong. Venezuela doesn’t have enough technicians who even know how to fix the energy grid, because the vast majority of them left for other countries. Yes, some of them are migrants who are entering USA, but also countries like Panama or Mexico.
When your country suffers from huge emigrant waves, especially emigrants who were statistically the smartest and most well-educated of the country… bad shit begins to happen.
Among many other things, electricity stopped working in any reliable fashion, leading to major issues internally.
Electricity stopped working because of decades of corruption of the Chavez / Maduro Regime, which forcibly took over the electrical grid and installed corrupt officials. No matter how much money Chavez pumped into the energy grid, it was all wasted in corruption.
The people who knew how to run the grid were then replaced by Maduro (albeit yeah, they were corrupt but… they at least knew how to run the system), and then shit really started to crazy because no one knew how to run the grid anymore and rolling blackouts became regular.
Lather rinse repeat for every other element of society. Remember that Venezuela is an oil state with plenty of energy reserves. They have plenty of chemical energy, its literally just the lack of brain that’s collapsing their society right now.
Ironically, electricity was more reliable when the USA’s AES Corporation owned the Electricidad de Caracas. So ummmm… maybe we should have pushed for more US intervention on this particular issue.
From a USA perspective: the migrants include the energy specialists who used to run Venezuela’s energy. But are now frustrated at this situation to the point that they’re leaving the country. Its to our benefit to capture those talented individuals and integrate them into our society. So Venezuela’s loss can serve as our gain if we play our cards right.
Do you think the sanctions had some impact?
Not as much as the 7 million emigrants who left Venezuela for other countries.
I keep coming back to the power outages of recent years in Venezuela because they’re indicative of everything that’s going wrong. Venezuela doesn’t have enough technicians who even know how to fix the energy grid, because the vast majority of them left for other countries. Yes, some of them are migrants who are entering USA, but also countries like Panama or Mexico.
When your country suffers from huge emigrant waves, especially emigrants who were statistically the smartest and most well-educated of the country… bad shit begins to happen.
Why do you think they left?
Among many other things, electricity stopped working in any reliable fashion, leading to major issues internally.
Electricity stopped working because of decades of corruption of the Chavez / Maduro Regime, which forcibly took over the electrical grid and installed corrupt officials. No matter how much money Chavez pumped into the energy grid, it was all wasted in corruption.
The people who knew how to run the grid were then replaced by Maduro (albeit yeah, they were corrupt but… they at least knew how to run the system), and then shit really started to crazy because no one knew how to run the grid anymore and rolling blackouts became regular.
Lather rinse repeat for every other element of society. Remember that Venezuela is an oil state with plenty of energy reserves. They have plenty of chemical energy, its literally just the lack of brain that’s collapsing their society right now.
Ironically, electricity was more reliable when the USA’s AES Corporation owned the Electricidad de Caracas. So ummmm… maybe we should have pushed for more US intervention on this particular issue.
From a USA perspective: the migrants include the energy specialists who used to run Venezuela’s energy. But are now frustrated at this situation to the point that they’re leaving the country. Its to our benefit to capture those talented individuals and integrate them into our society. So Venezuela’s loss can serve as our gain if we play our cards right.