A couple notes:
1) CAP (Carlos Andres Perez) was one of Venezuela's most venerable politicians, but he was also one of the most corrupt (at least until Chavez came around). The running joke when he was elected for the second of his non-consecutive terms (until Chavez, Presidents couldn't serve consecutive terms) was that he had stolen so much his first term that he didn't need to steal any more. That being said, it was par for the course, and Chavez has been as corrupt or more than his predecessors. I assume Maduro and the rest of the "Boligarchs" will be the same.
2) CAP's impeachment was a bit more complicated than you portray. There was a week worth of riots when he raised bus fairs (the exchange rate was probably 100:1 at around the time, so 10 centavos was 1/10 of 1 cent; FWIW, he also doubled the price of gasoline from 10 cents/gallon to a whopping 20 cents/per gallon) that resulted in about 500 people dying when the National Guard was called in. I was in Caracas at the time and I later joked that while kids in America had snow days, I had riot days. He was later the victim of an attempted coup by Chavez, but it failed (this shortly after I had moved to the States). Officially Chavez was ousted for embezzlement, which he was likely guilty of, but as I said, that was par for the course [there's even an expression in Venezuela that people are either "vivos" (wise guys) or "pendejos" (chumps), a statement akin to the old SEC quip that if you ain't cheatin' you ain't trying']. Unofficially, things weren't the same in Venezuela after the Caracazo (riots) and the deaths produced. For the same reason, things may not be the same in Caracas after the recent deaths.
3) Politicians of all stripes have failed the Venezuelan people. The populist streak you describe could be satisfied quite easily if they were given merely competent government. There are a lot of parallels to Argentina, (
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/2...ry-decline), which is facing its own issues. Maybe it's the paradox of plenty (
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/2...ry-decline) As an aside, I took a course from Terry Karl on the Political Economy of Development, she once quipped that the election between Chavez and Irene Saez, a former Miss Universe, was "Beauty against the Beast", and Karl is no righty. She was also one of my favorite professors at Stanford, along with Mike McFaul, the now former US Ambassador to Russia.
4) The comparisons to Cuba are interesting. I do think that because Cuba has been under communist rule much longer, there is no viable opposition. People in Venezuela still remember a pre-Chavez world. Also, Raul is a blood relative of Fidel, and has been in the power structure for decades. Maduro is a former bus driver and union guy, who has ridden Chavez' coattails to power. Most importantly, there is the oil issue. Venezuela and its governments are absolutely dependent on oil revenue to run the country. You can say what you want about Chavez' predecessors, but one of the few trappings of good governance in the decades pre-Chavez was that they left PDVESA (the oil company) alone, and it was reasonably well run. Chavez installed his cronies in the company as a response to a strike against his meddling. Those guys knew nothing of running an oil company, and consequently Venezuelan oil production has been cut by about a third (it doesn't help that many of Venezuela's reserves are heavy crude that require a fair bit of capital investment, which is not going to be forthcoming under the current conditions). Chavez stayed afloat because the price of oil went from $30/bl to over $100/bl during his term. But oil prices have stagnated and even fallen, and Venezuela has a budget mess. So, unless the price of oil rises again, Maduro is going to be screwed, because he simply won't be able to continue using oil revenue to feed the populist streak.
BC
