Venezuela has one of the world`s worst economies. It`s in a deep recession. Inflation is out of control. The government can`t afford to import basic items like diapers and flour.
Despite being one of the world`s top 10 oil producing nations, more than 25 percent of Venezuelans live below the poverty line, and more than 90 percent of exports come from that oil revenue.
So, with the very sharp drop in oil prices, the economy has been affected. We`re talking about a severe economic recession, shortages in medicine and food and other basic goods.
Nicolas Maduro became interim president in March of 2013, after Hugo Chavez died after a decade in power. He was 58. Maduro was then elected president a month later in a very tight race, with 50.8 percent of the vote.
Nicolas Maduro has kept his predecessors, left-wing ideology alive and continued investing in the social programs. But with the sharp drop in oil prices, he`s seen some of that funding dried up and people are really beginning to feel that squeeze.
The first wave of oppositions began back in February back of 2014, when a student was reportedly sexually assaulted at a university in the Western city of San Cristobal. And students took to the street to demand better security. But that quickly spread across the country, in anti-government protests. Since then, dozens of people have been killed in those clashes, and thousands have been arrested including the opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.
A second wave of protests gained momentum in the beginning of 2015 and turned violent, when a 14-year-old boy was shot dead by a policeman.
President Maduro has blamed the United States for a lot of the country`s economic woes and so-called imperial aggression. He`s also accused the United States of conspiring to overthrow his government. And in February, he had another opposition leader, the mayor of Caracas, arrested, accusing him of conspiring with the United States again to overthrow his government.
While the United States is still the biggest consumer and buyer of Venezuelan oil, bilateral relations have deteriorated and Venezuela has expelled a number of diplomats, and Washington has imposed sanctions on Caracas, and that now, Venezuela is requiring all Americans to have visas if they want to enter the country. It`s also ordered the U.S. embassy in Caracas to seriously scale back operations, in an apparent retaliation for those sanctions.
