Samuel is a 27-year-old man from Venezuela. He has a wife named Ana and an 11-year-old daughter named Olivia. After the Venezuelan economy collapsed in 2016, Venezuela became embroiled in gang violence, hyperinflation, and civil war. In a country where a carton of milk cost a whole month’s pay, Samuel found it impossible to protect his family from the tight grasp of starvation. Along with his wife and child, he fled to neighboring Colombia, and his family became one of millions of Venezuelans seeking refuge in other countries. The 300-mile ordeal was uncertain and treacherous. At one point in the journey, they even lost their daughter to human trafficking, but in a stroke of luck, they were reunited with her within the next few days. They finished their journey in Bogota, but for millions of other refugees, this was only their first stop. By 2023, 940,000 refugees would cross south into the Amazon on their way to Peru. Another half-million refugees would make the perilous journey up north, through the deadly Darien Gap, on their way to the United States. The reason for these additional treks? Stability. Thousands of migrants couldn’t afford to stop in Colombia because they didn’t have relatives to rely on in an unknown land. This led to millions of people venturing farther into the unknown, not knowing if they would even make it onto the land on which they wanted to give their kids a better life. The situation has not eased. In 2023, roughly half a million people fled the worsening conditions under reigning president Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela is swaying violently as the world feverishly watches, and if action isn’t taken, the country may fully topple, bringing brutal ramifications for all of Latin America.

How did we get here? The modern-day Venezuelan economy continues to depend on oil, leaving the entire Venezuelan economy at the whim of unstable global oil prices. In fact, over a quarter of Venezuelan exports are petroleum-related. Up to 2018, when the Venezuelan economy crashed, two-thirds of the government budget was reliant on oil exports, setting a dangerous precedent for future welfare spending and economic activity. The scales tipped away from Venezuela's favor in 2016 when oil prices dropped 60% from 2014. Without oil revenue, government spending was slashed in half throughout 2018, after the economy had time to show the effects of dropping oil prices. Without a safety net, a record 96% of Venezuelan households fell into the abyss of poverty by 2019. That rate has evened out, with over 90% of Venezuelan households residing below the poverty line from 2019 to 2024. Venezuela continues to have the worst wages in Latin America. It wasn’t always like this. During the rule of Venezuela’s previous president, Hugo Chavez, the country saw prosperity and progress, which made it the strongest economy in South America. Rising oil prices, combined with Chavez’s progressive social welfare policies led to thousands of low-income Venezuelans rising above the poverty line and making their way into the middle class. Over the first two years of the Chavez presidency, the percentage of Venezuelans living in extreme poverty dropped by two-thirds, and this rate was maintained for over a decade. When oil prices were unstable in 2002, Venezuela’s state oil company donated large amounts of heating oil to impoverished American families in the Bronx. Even with this economic prosperity, some policymakers saw the crack in the cave before it collapsed. Chavez’s regime entailed democratic backsliding as soon as he was elected, appointing political allies to top posts in state oil companies and even threatening to fire thousands of state oil workers simply because they disagreed with him. Although Chavez aimed to portray himself as a ruler of the people, he was anything but. This anti-democratic tendency meant that Chavez’s economic decisions were not done with the consultation of technocrats, and thus operated in a near-blind sense of the economy. This inefficiency led to dependence on oil revenue for all government social spending programs, which set up a perfect storm for the crash of Venezuela’s economy.

As Venezuela exits its period of tumult following the elections this year, it sees more chaos than order. In fact, Venezuela has a history of this disorder within the ranks of the government. In 2019, even some members of the Venezuelan National Guard, the soldiers that are supposed to be most loyal to the regime, revolted against Maduro and were subsequently arrested. While expressing discontent, over 300 people were detained as nationwide protests gripped Venezuela in 2019. Mirroring the people’s judgment, various candidates have announced their presidential candidacy. Although Maduro is barring opponents from contesting in the upcoming presidential election, a significant resistance movement has arisen to his potential third term. Until she got banned from running for office, Maria Corina Machado was the primary opposition leader to Maduro, and she was polling 60 points ahead of him. After her ban, she put her full support behind Edmundo González Urrutia, who served as ambassador from Venezuela to Argentina in the past. Urrutia is a self-proclaimed centrist capitalist believer who believes in the need to unite Venezuela after a decade of troubling times. Urrutia has seen leads of up to 40 points over Maduro. With this optimism comes the stark reality that the vote in Venezuela does not necessarily have to be free or fair. Maduro has made claims in the past that the elections will be just that, but there is no guarantee that this will happen, especially given his silencing of journalists and opposition leaders in the past. Even now, Maduro has already prohibited 5 million emigrated Venezuelans from voting, as they tend to support the opposition party.

So what does an opposition government entail for oil dependence? According to an interview with Machado by Forbes, her government would immediately find out the numbers on debts and oil cancellation, and figure out what to do from there. Another benefit of an opposition presidency is that the United States would remove sanctions on Venezuela, leaving it as a possible key oil trading partner with the United States because of geographic proximity. Urrutia believes many of the same things that Machado does, adding that the focus of these elections should not be to determine which person’s worldview is a better perspective for Venezuela’s future. Rather, Urrutia argues that a better approach is just to fight for fair elections, as that is more of a threat to Venezuelan democracy than any policy perspective. The stakes for this election could not be higher. If Maduro is re-elected to the presidency, Venezuela will see another mass exodus, impacting not only Latin America but all countries in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan domino toppling may lead to economic catastrophe for dozens of other regional powers. Removing oil over-reliance should be the top priority for a potential opposition government. This opportunity will only arrive if Maduro grants the Venezuelan people the basic democratic right to a free and fair election.

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