How Venezuela went from South America's richest to poorest economy despite massive oil reserves

In the early part of the last century, Venezuela was considered the leading economy in South America. At least part of the story is that the country discovered massive oil reserves in 1922. Currently, the country has the largest reserves of any country, 303 billion barrels. While that sounds good on paper, it doesn’t change the fact that the economy is the poorest in South America. The puzzle is, how did it get so bad with all that oil wealth waiting to be monetized?

The first big move in the wrong direction was in 1976...