Alejandro Velasco

A few months later, in April of 2002, Hugo Chávez is briefly overthrown after a series of popular protests

All of them having to do with control over the nation's oil company called PDVSA and what it was going to do in this moment.

That led to confrontations in the streets, which left several people dead, which then induced a coup that ousted Chavez from power.

Then the United States and the Bush administration openly said, this was great.

And we absolutely support this coup.

And we're ready to work with the new government in Venezuela.

And it's fantastic that Hugo Chavez is no longer in power.

But isn't the new government in power for like three days or something?

Yes.

In the most improbable and truly unprecedented turn of events, Hugo Chavez returns to office within 72 hours.

Oops.

Oops is right.

And so when he returns, you see all sort of pack peddling on the part of the White House.

But really, by that point, I think the damage is not only done, but irreparable.

I think by that point, it really convinces Chávez that there's no possibility to think about the United States government as anything other than this kind of, that if anyone steps outside of what the U.S.

government, especially as a, at the time, a unipolar power in the world, that there's nothing that they won't do to try to countermand that.

How fast does that happen?

So it takes a little bit of time.

It really begins to surge after 2003 and the U.S.

invasion of Iraq.