CARACAS — Venezuela, a Latin American country, once boasted a stronger social safety net than any of its neighbors and was making progress on its promise to deliver free health care and higher education to all its citizens. But today it is one of Latin America’s most impoverished nations where schools lie half deserted and a devastated health system affected by decades of underinvestment, corruption and neglect.

According to Foreign Affairs writers Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro, “The short answer is Chavismo. Under the leadership of Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, the country has experienced a toxic mix of wantonly destructive policy, escalating authoritarianism, and kleptocracy.”

“Venezuela’s decline began four decades ago... By 2003, Venezuela’s GDP per worker had already declined by a disastrous 37 percent from its 1978 peak,” the Foreign Affairs report says.

When the decade-long oil price boom ended in 2014, Venezuela lost not just the oil revenue on which Chávez’s popularity and international influence had depended but also access to foreign credit markets.

This left the country with a massive debt overhang: the loans taken out during the oil boom still had to be serviced, although from a much-reduced income stream.

Venezuela is likely to remain unstable for a long time to come. The immediate challenge for its citizens and their leaders, as well as for the international community, is to contain the impact of the nation’s decline. — SG