America Can Have the Oil

María-Elena Pombo has created “petroleum weavings,” turning threads made from oil into elaborate yarnlike wall hangings. Oil, she told us, has shaped her life. Her father, an oil engineer, met her mother after he moved to Cabimas, an oil town. Because of Venezuela’s oil wealth, Pombo, now 37 years old, studied for free at an excellent public university in Caracas.

For decades, all Venezuelans enjoyed the perks of living in a land where oil was a birthright. They could fill their cars for almost nothing.