중남미

President Chávez promised frequently to construct a prosperous and democratic Venezuela with “21st century socialism” during the last eight years in spite of the prevailing “Washington Consensus,” a declaration of socialism’s death in the early 1990s. Is his policy an alternative model? He succeeded in controlling poverty expansion with extensive social programs and government’s control over the economy. Chávez’s leftist populism, however, will be vulnerable to oil contraction. Venezuela waged a massive government-led industrialization with rising petrodollars in the later half of the 1970s, which ended in failure when oil price fluctuated.