Venezuela. Socialist Hugo Chávez is elected president. He will remain so until his death in 2013, when his vice president, Nicolas Maduro, succeeds him. The Chávez-Maduro era, especially from the second decade onward, will bring catastrophic economic decline, accompanied by human suffering among the population, despite enormous oil wealth (Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world). GDP will fall by 35% from 2013 to 2017. This is the worst economic collapse ever seen in the Americas or Western Europe. Inflation reaches 18,000% at the beginning of 2018, and then 1,290,000% at the end of the same year. Emigration to Colombia stands at 5,000 people a day during the same period. Infant mortality exceeds that of civil war-torn Syria.
