Erika Barris

They need us just as much as we need them.

This minister, his name was Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, would eventually change the way the whole world thinks and talks about oil.

He was the one who took the first step in Venezuela's long march towards taking control over the country's oil.

So in the years after the war, oil continued to flow generously and so did money.

A lot into foreign hands, but more than ever into the hands of the Venezuelan government.

And all that money started streaming into the country.

There was new infrastructure, new jobs, a growing middle class.

All thanks to oil.

That is the world Miguel Tinker Salas entered into in the 1950s.

You were born in an oil camp?

In the camp, Creole Petroleum defined everything about the lives of the people who lived there.

That was the beginning of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

They said, we're going to agree on how much oil to produce.

And by doing that, they set a price.

At the opening speech of an early OPEC conference in Caracas, Juan Pablo spoke to his fellow founding members.

He tells them we can't ignore the low price we're charging to rich countries for our finite resources.

He says we can't let our chance to rise out of poverty just slip away from us.

But Venezuela and all the petro-states were still at the mercy of big swings in demand for oil, whether driven by supply or by politics.

Yep.

Miguel would grow up to be a Venezuelan historian, mostly here in the U.S., but in the 70s, he was still in Caracas for one of the biggest booms Venezuela experienced.