Jennifer Briney is the host of the Congressional Dish podcast.

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A lot of people are kidding themselves.

We have two rival presidents in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro,

the elected president, the successor to Hugo Chavez. I won’t go so far as to

say democratically elected, but … elected.

And Juan Guaido, the speaker of the national assembly who

has declared himself interim president; he’s been supported strongly by the

current US administration, despite the fact that he has no constitutional

legitimacy at all, and to a lesser extent by the EU and other western

countries.

People on the left have been calling this just another

US-backed coup in Latin America, and there is some reason to say that, but they

are kidding themselves if they think that is the only thing going on here. People

like UK Labour Party leader tweeted in 2013 “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be

shared. He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world”.

Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared. He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 5, 2013

Maybe not quite. Whatever about the aims of Chavez and his

successor, their economics have been a catastrophe for the country. 90 per cent

of people live in poverty, and the

average Venezuelan lost 11kg, that’s 24 pounds, in 2017. Get that, the

economy is in such a mess, people on average lost enough weight to make

themselves a weightwatchers star, just because they can’t afford food.

That’s a disgrace in any country but for the

nation with the world’s biggest oil reserves, that’s an outrage. It’s said

that no society is more than two missed dinners from anarchy, so with years of