Once Latin America’s richest country and longest-running democracy – plus, the owner of the world’s largest proven oil reserves – Venezuela is now in deep, deep trouble. Thanks to hyperinflation, corruption, cronyism, severely inadequate government investment, and significant economic mismanagement by the president Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is now a failed state. Falling oil production, decrepit infrastructure (think sporadic water, electricity, and cellphone coverage), failing banking systems, and U.S. sanctions have intensified the crisis, causing 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee their country.

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The Maduro regime has violated human rights on a colossal scale, leaving hundreds of anti-Maduro peaceful protestors dead. Living standards and the health care system have collapsed, medicine is scarce, infant mortality is high, malnutrition is rampant, and diseases like measles, diphtheria, malaria and tuberculosis are resurgent. Over 7.6 million people still in Venezuela are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

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Although Cuba, China, Russia and Turkey remain hard-core Maduro defenders, the United States and over fifty other governments tried hard in 2019 to remove Maduro from office by recognizing a young opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela – an effort that included a surprise appearance by Guaidó at President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address. But the Venezuelan police, military, and courts all continued to recognize Maduro as the country’s rightful leader, which undermined the opposition effort.

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The first Trump administration tried other tactics to remove Maduro.  For example, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Maduro and 14 other senior officials on charges of narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other criminal charges, saying that “Maduro and other high ranking Venezuelan officials allegedly partnered with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) to use cocaine as a weapon to ‘flood’ the United States.”

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For now, however, Maduro seems to be here to stay because rigged elections in Venezuela continue. In July 2024, Maduro – who happens to control the election board – declared he had won a third six-year term, which seemed unlikely since the exit polls showed just the opposite and he had polled behind his opponent Edmundo González by more than 25 percentage points for weeks. < González was running mainly because María Corina Machado, a longtime Maduro adversary who leads the opposition against him, had been banned from running in the presidential election, for God knows why. >

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It’s critical that the global community come together and help these people. Obviously, we can’t give money directly to the highly corrupt Venezuelan government, but we can continue our financial support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and, of course, continue to demand we get USAID back.