Alejandro Velasco

But again, where you feel the most impact is in the country's economy and politics as oil becomes this...

fantastic resource and the riches of it come to Venezuela, even though they're indirect because it's mostly owned by foreign oil companies, even though there are treaties that are signed by successive Venezuelan governments.

Even that spillover wealth

induces moments of tremendous growth and tremendous riches.

You see that in the 1940s.

You see that in the 1950s.

There is a real general sense that Venezuela is changing.

The cities are growing, that people are leaving the countryside because now there's nothing really there for them.

And what's there is...

This both, you know, service economy that's rising to support the oil industry, its executives, its immigrants, etc.

But also that we don't want to be left behind, right?

And so you have this massive urbanization that happens between the 1950s and 1960s.

And in the 1960s, you have the return of democracy in Venezuela after a dictatorship that lasted 10 years and was overthrown in 1958.

The first president who becomes democratically elected after 1958's dictatorship is Romulo Atancourt, who had written a book called Venezuela, Oil and Politics.

I mean, it doesn't get as, you know, more on the nose than that.

And in that book, basically what he argues is that the way in which Venezuela can control its own natural resource is

is going to inform how its politics can be defined as democratic or not.

In two ways.

The first one is we need to exert more control, literal control over our oil.

It cannot just be