Alejandro Velasco

The grandiosity of it, like, in a kind of weird asymptotic relationship.

The bigger the design, the bigger the ambition, the more seductive it is.

Yes.

Maybe this is the time.

Yeah.

Right?

Economic principles be damned.

Geography be damned.

History be damned.

Maybe this is the moment.

In the same way that many of these projects end up being not completed, it dies with a whimper, not a bang.

But very soon, they realize the actual practical impossibility of the project.

The amount to spend to upkeep was far larger than any potential profit that it could return.

And so for as many shows as I remember Chavez bringing out the map and telling us exactly where the pipeline was going to go, I remember no shows where they said, and now it's no longer going to happen.

I mean, obviously, I don't know because I'm nodding Chavez's head.

But, you know, at least from everything that one has access to, both in his public pronouncements and what he wrote and speeches that he gave and interviews, et cetera, he was a true believer.

And I think that inspired among his supporters a sense of confidence.

Another project, for instance, Chavez funded this continental program to remove cataracts from people's eyes.

And so people would travel from all over the continent.

They would, you know,