The Latin American Socialism That Destroyed Venezuela and Cuba — and What Argentina Chose Instead
- Willmar E. Rodriguez
- May 13
- 12 min read
This is Article 2 of 6 in the series The Socialism They Never Told You About. If you haven't read Article 1 yet, I recommend starting there
Three countries, three decades, one pattern — and one exception that proves it all. In 2026, history delivered its verdict.
If socialism works, why are its people running away? That was the question I asked in the first version of this article. Today, in May 2026, it's no longer a question. It's an obituary.
Venezuela — How They Took Control
President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías did not come to power in 1998 and destroy Venezuela overnight. He did it methodically, institution by institution, year by year. To understand today's collapse, you have to understand how yesterday's control was built.
The judiciary — dismantled and replaced
In August 1999, just months after taking office, President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías declared the judiciary to be in a state of "emergency" by executive decree. He created an Emergency Judicial Commission with the power to suspend any judge who had seven or more complaints filed against them — regardless of their nature. The result: virtually no judge who had obtained their position before the "emergency" kept their seat. In November 1999, the Supreme Court of Justice was officially dissolved and replaced by a new Supreme Tribunal of Justice, packed with government loyalists. When judges ruled against the regime's agenda, they were simply removed or forced into early retirement. Judicial independence in Venezuela died in the first year of Chavismo.
The Constitution — rewritten to order
That same year, President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías convened a National Constituent Assembly in which his allied forces won 125 of 131 seats. The result was a new Constitution enacted in December 1999 — written specifically to serve the regime's political agenda. Among its key changes: the removal of Congress from the military promotion process, the expansion of the Armed Forces' role in public administration, and mechanisms that allowed the removal of justices by simple majority instead of the two-thirds required by the previous Constitution. The law was no longer a limit on power.
It became its instrument.
The media — silenced or bought
When President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías came to power, the government launched media policies designed to control the flow of information. Laws were passed limiting freedom of expression and punishing dissenting voices. RCTV — one of the country's oldest and most influential television networks — was shut down in 2007 under the pretext of "non-renewal of its broadcast license." Between 2003 and 2022, at least 285 radio stations closed in Venezuela — 71% of all media outlets shut down during that period, according to the NGO Espacio Público. Between 2013 and 2022, more than 60 newspapers stopped printing. Those that survived learned to self-censor. Reporters Without Borders documented that Venezuelan media became "almost entirely dominated by the government and its mandatory broadcasts." The goal was never to inform. It was to control what citizens were allowed to know.
The universities — infiltrated to indoctrinate
The 1999 Constitution and the laws that followed opened the door to ideological penetration of the education system. Between 2005 and 2010, a formal indoctrination program was pushed inside academic institutions and the Armed Forces through legal, doctrinal, and political mechanisms. The stated goal was to shape a new generation aligned with the "Bolivarian revolution." The result was the progressive destruction of university autonomy and the persecution of professors and students who dared to dissent.
The military — corrupted to be controlled
This is perhaps the most revealing mechanism of all. President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías did not only place military officers in administrative positions — he used them strategically to bind them to the regime through corruption. According to the testimony of a Venezuelan colonel and former president of Congress, the strategy was deliberate: first, break military morale through corruption and flattery; then politicize the Armed Forces by turning them into an instrument of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela; and finally, instill fear — those who followed orders received benefits, those who resisted faced persecution or prison.
According to Transparencia Venezuela, by 2021 active or retired military officers held positions on the boards of at least 103 state-owned companies and controlled 11 of the government's 34 ministries. They were not administrators — they were institutionalized accomplices. And once a military officer agrees to participate in illegal acts under the regime's orders, they are trapped: either keep obeying, or face prison.
Sources: Human Rights Watch — Rigging the Rule of Law: https://www.hrw.org/report/2004/06/16/rigging-rule-law/judicial-independence-under-siege-venezuela | Human Rights Watch — Chávez Allies Pack Supreme Court: https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/12/13/venezuela-chavez-allies-pack-supreme-court | Human Rights Watch — A Decade Under Chávez: https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/09/18/decade-under-chavez/political-intolerance-and-lost-opportunities-advancing-human | Reporters Without Borders — RCTV Closure: https://rsf.org/en/international-community-urged-rally-defence-venezuelas-media-after-rctvs-closure | Reporters Without Borders — Venezuela: https://rsf.org/en/country/venezuela | Reuters Institute — Exiled Venezuelan Journalists 2026: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/these-are-exiled-venezuelan-journalists-joining-forces-report-maduros-ouster-afar | Transparency International Defence & Security — Militarization and Corruption: https://ti-defence.org/venezuela-elections-2024-military-corruption-democracy/ | InSight Crime — Criminal Portfolio Sustaining Military Loyalty: https://insightcrime.org/investigations/criminal-portfolio-sustaining-military-loyalty-venezuela/ | Transparency International — Venezuela Corrupt Elite: https://us.transparency.org/news/despite-sanctions-the-networks-of-venezuelas-corrupt-elite-continue-to-reach-the-united-states/
Venezuela — The Results of the Model
That is the playbook. Now the results.
President Nicolás Maduro Moros was captured by U.S. forces on January 3, 2026. Chavismo, which began with President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías in 1999, ended in a jail cell. Twenty-seven years of socialism left this behind:
8.4 million Venezuelans have emigrated — the largest Latin American exodus without a war in the history of the continent.
68.5% of the population still lives in poverty as of 2025, despite a slight improvement over the previous year.
$15 a month was the salary of a Venezuelan university professor by the end of 2025. Teachers abandoned their classrooms. The country's historic universities operate with less than half their faculty.
2% of the basic nutritional needs of an elderly adult are covered by Venezuelan state pensions. The government that promised to take care of everyone cannot feed its own retirees.
Sources: IMF — Venezuelan Migrants Bring Economic Opportunity: https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2022/12/06/cf-venezuelas-migrants-bring-economic-opportunity-to-latin-america | UNHCR USA — Venezuela Crisis: https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/venezuela/ | Americas Quarterly — The Future of Venezuela's Diaspora: https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/the-future-of-venezuelas-diaspora/
The Infrastructure Collapse: Power, Water, and Everything Else
This is not just poverty in people's wallets. It is poverty in everything.
36% is the capacity at which Venezuela's National Electric System operates as of May 2026, with demand at its highest point in nine years.
Acting President Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez enacted a National Electric Rationing Plan with scheduled cuts — official, deliberate blackouts — of up to 12 hours a day in states like Zulia, Táchira, and Mérida. This means the Venezuelan government intentionally turns off the lights because it cannot generate enough power. And on top of those scheduled cuts, Venezuelans face additional unannounced blackouts with no official explanation. In Maracaibo, one resident put it plainly: "It's Russian roulette — you never know when the lights are going to go out."
Drinking water is no different. The water distribution system operates at 40% of its original capacity. In Sucre state, a February 2026 earthquake collapsed the Turimiquire system — leaving more than 200,000 families without safe drinking water. Some communities have gone more than 80 days without supply, depending on river water or improvised sources to survive. The United Nations was forced to allocate $2 million in emergency funds to address the crisis.
Why can't they fix it? Three reasons that feed into one another:
First, there is no money. The Venezuelan Engineers Association estimates that modernizing just the electrical grid would cost at least $20 billion. Money that does not exist because decades of Chavista socialism evaporated oil revenues through corruption and political patronage.
Second, there are no technicians. 17,000 qualified engineers and specialists from Corpoelec — between 50% and 60% of all electrical sector professionals — left the country. The company's workforce fell from 48,000 to 22,000 employees. They left for the same reasons as 8 million other Venezuelans: poverty-level wages and a country with no future.
Third, no one wants to invest. Companies like Siemens Energy and General Electric met with the Venezuelan government in April 2026 to explore system recovery — and left skeptical. The main obstacle: no one can guarantee Venezuela will pay them.
In 1998, Venezuela's electrical system was considered the best in Latin America in coverage, quality, technology, and reliability. Today it operates at 36%. That is what Chavista socialism did in 27 years to the best electrical infrastructure on the continent.
Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves. And it cannot keep its own lights on or guarantee clean drinking water to its citizens.
Sources: Electric Choice — Cuba & Venezuela Electricity Crisis 2026: https://www.electricchoice.com/blog/cuba-electricity-crisis/ | NPR — Cuba Hit by Island-Wide Blackout: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5749457/cuba-blackout-sanctions-oil | Prism Reports — Fuel Squeeze Deepens Blackouts: https://prismreports.org/2026/02/19/cuba-blockade-energy-crisis/
Cuba — 66 Years of the Experiment, and the Experiment Failed
Cuba was the original laboratory of socialism in the Western Hemisphere. Six and a half decades without political alternation, without a free press, without a real market under President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and his predecessors. The result was always the same: structural misery. But what is happening in 2026 has no precedent even within Cuba's own history.
-26% is the cumulative drop in Cuba's GDP projected between 2020 and 2026 according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean — worse than Haiti.
2.7 million Cubans have left the island since the pandemic, gutting the country's working-age population.
9.6 million residents remain in Cuba today — numbers comparable to the mid-1980s, before the country received Soviet subsidies.
500 pesos per dollar is the informal exchange rate in 2026. The Cuban peso is evaporating.
$14 a month is the average Cuban salary at the informal exchange rate in 2026. A dozen eggs costs $6.
And the final blow: since January 2026, Cuba has received no oil. Not one barrel.
President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez confirmed it publicly. The United States Navy intercepted Venezuelan tankers following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro Moros. The island needs 110,000 barrels a day to function normally — and produces only 40,000 of its own.
Sources: Wikipedia — 2026 Cuban Crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Cuban_crisis | Wikipedia — 2024–2026 Cuba Blackouts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%932026_Cuba_blackouts | TIME Magazine — The Crisis in Cuba, Explained: https://time.com/article/2026/03/17/cuba-economic-energy-crisis-trump-us-explainer/ | AS/COA — Seven Charts on Cuba's Economic Woes: https://www.as-coa.org/articles/seven-charts-cubas-economic-woes | CubaHeadlines — Cuban Economy Faces 15% GDP Decline: https://www.cubaheadlines.com/articles/328752
Latin American Socialism: Cuba and Venezuela — the Same Collapse, the Same Origin
What is happening in Venezuela is not an isolated case. Ninety miles from Florida, Cuba is living through the exact same collapse — for the exact same reasons.
Cuba's 14 main thermoelectric plants were built between 1970 and 1990 using Soviet technology. Their actual availability rate in 2025–2026 is between 35% and 45% — when any country with proper maintenance should exceed 80%. They have gone decades without renovation because there is no money, and there is no money because socialism consumed it all.
At peak demand, Cuba's generation capacity hovers around 1,361 megawatts against a demand of 3,100 — a deficit of nearly 1,739 megawatts. Seven of the 16 operating thermoelectric units are out of service due to breakdowns or lack of maintenance, including two of the three largest plants in the country.
The result: blackouts of up to 18 hours a day. Thousands of households have as little as one hour of electricity per day. A 68-year-old retiree in Havana cooks with charcoal and firewood in her courtyard for three families in her building. Cuba's own Minister of Energy and Mines admitted it publicly: "We are going to have more generation, but we are not going to eliminate the blackouts."
And the detail that ties everything back to Venezuela: nighttime light levels in cities like Santiago de Cuba and Holguín have fallen by up to 50% compared to historical averages, according to satellite imagery analysis by Bloomberg News. The supply collapse coincides exactly with the capture of President Nicolás Maduro Moros on January 3, 2026 — the day Cuba lost its oil patron.
Two socialist countries. Two electrical systems built with 1970s Soviet technology that no one ever upgraded. Two governments that for decades chose political control over infrastructure investment. Two populations paying the bill for that choice today.
Venezuela's grid operates at 36%. Cuba's between 35% and 45%. The numbers are nearly identical. So is the model.
Sources: Ambito.com, February 2026 — https://www.ambito.com/energia/cuba-crisis-energetica-apagones-record-escasez-combustible-y-golpe-la-mineria-islena-n6245672 | NPR — Cuba Blackout March 2026: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5749457/cuba-blackout-sanctions-oil | TIME — The Crisis in Cuba, Explained: https://time.com/article/2026/03/17/cuba-economic-energy-crisis-trump-us-explainer/ | AS/COA — Seven Charts on Cuba's Economic Woes: https://www.as-coa.org/articles/seven-charts-cubas-economic-woes
Argentina — The Country That Chose a Different Path
Argentina is perhaps the most instructive case because it illustrates both sides of the same pattern: what populist socialism destroys, and what happens when a nation decides to walk away.
Under the leadership of former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her Kirchnerist successors — Argentina's version of 21st century socialism — the result was always the same:
211% annual inflation in 2023, at the close of the last Kirchnerist government.
52.9% poverty rate in the first half of 2024 — the peak inherited by the incoming government.
8.8 million children living in poverty under the Kirchnerist government in 2023.
Between 2007 and 2015, the Kirchnerist government stopped publishing official poverty data — while independent organizations estimated real poverty was around 25%. Socialism does not only impoverish people: it also hides the impoverishment.
In December 2023, President Javier Gerardo Milei took office. And the numbers started moving in the opposite direction.
28.2% poverty rate in the second half of 2025 — the lowest level since 2018.
6.5% GDP growth in 2025.
~2.5% monthly inflation in 2025, versus the hyperinflationary levels of just a year earlier.
There is legitimate debate about measurement methodology and the social cost of the adjustment. There are indicators that still raise concern — unemployment reached 7.5% and 22,000 businesses closed during the transition. But the direction is undeniable:
when Argentina abandoned the model, the numbers reversed course. Immediately.
Argentina is not a closed case. It is a case in progress. But it is already enough evidence to ask the uncomfortable question: if the socialist model produces misery, why should it be surprising that abandoning it produces the opposite?
Sources: Buenos Aires Times — Poverty Fell to 28.2%: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/sharp-drop-in-argentinas-poverty-rate-delivers-boost-for-milei.phtml | Buenos Aires Times — Poverty Fell to 31.6% in H1 2025: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/poverty-in-argentina-fell-to-316-in-the-first-half-of-2025-reports-indec.phtml | Rio Times Online — From 52.9% to 28.2% Under Milei: https://www.riotimesonline.com/argentina-poverty-28-percent-lowest-since-2018/ | Semafor — Argentina Poverty Rate Falls: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/01/2025/argentina-poverty-rate-falls-in-boost-to-milei | Focus Economics — Argentina's Economy Under Milei: https://www.focus-economics.com/blog/argentina-economy-under-milei/
Latin American Socialism: The Pattern That Repeats — and That in 2026 Is Already a Verdict
The Latin American socialism playbook, applied in Cuba, Venezuela, and Argentina:
Come to power with promises of equality and social justice — always through elections
Nationalize key industries and expand public spending as a signal of redistribution
Control prices, exchange rates, and the media
When the economy collapses, manipulate the data or blame foreign imperialism
End result: structural poverty, mass emigration, and total dependence on the State
In 2026, the pattern has a conclusion that no defender of the system can ignore: all three cases resolved at the same time, and in the same direction.
President Nicolás Maduro Moros fell. Cuba, without Venezuela, cannot sustain itself alone. And Argentina, under President Javier Gerardo Milei, begins to breathe again precisely when it abandons the model that destroyed it.
The question you need to ask yourself is not whether socialism has good intentions. The question is: after Cuba, Venezuela, and Argentina — after watching the collapse happen in real time — what argument is left?
None that can be answered with data.
The Verdict of 2026
History does not always deliver its verdict in real time. This time it did.
In less than 18 months we witnessed the fall of the last major Chavista regime, the energy and water collapse of Cuba without its patron, and the beginning of Argentina's recovery after abandoning populism. Three moves on the same board, in the same direction, at the same time.
This is not ideology. These are facts. And facts do not lie — even if their governments did for decades.
Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
It should. The same mechanisms Chavismo used in Venezuela — the capture of the judiciary, the control of the media, the indoctrination of universities, institutionalized corruption, and the rewriting of laws — are being replicated, under different names and at different speeds, in other democracies across the Western world. In the United States and in Spain, attentive citizens already recognize the pattern: systematic attacks on judicial independence, pressure on media outlets that refuse to fall in line, narratives designed to divide and conquer, and promises of social justice that conceal an agenda of power consolidation.
Venezuela was not an accident. It was a blueprint. And that blueprint is being read elsewhere.
The difference between Venezuela in 1998 and any democracy today is not one of nature — it is one of time. Venezuelans also had elections. They also had a constitution. They also had institutions. They lost them vote by vote, law by law, silence by silence.
Knowing what happened there is not an exercise in Latin American history. It is a direct warning to every citizen who still has a vote in their hand.
Think before you vote.
Want to go deeper?
If this article made you think, the book Think Before You Vote: How to Choose Leaders with Clarity, Character, and Responsibility was written for exactly this moment. Not to tell you who to vote for — but to give you the tools the system never taught you: how to evaluate a leader, how to recognize empty promises before they become public policy, and how to cast your vote with knowledge, character, and responsibility.
The mistakes you see in Venezuela, Cuba, and Argentina did not happen overnight. They happened vote by vote, election by election, by citizens who deserved better information.
This book is that information.
📖 Available on: Amazon.
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