Kenny Malone

And when Terry told him that she was planning to do some research on OPEC, Juan Pablo told her, no, no, look elsewhere.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes.

That one translates pretty clearly.

Corruption is another classic feature of the resource curse.

And Terry was seeing some of this up close.

Nothing.

The most striking thing she saw out there?

was what looked like a big old tire on the ground.

In Terry's defense, it is the name of a copper company, and the groundbreaking Ice Cube movie, Anaconda, had not come out yet.

So how was she to know?

In the 80s, oil prices dropped.

Venezuela's boom turned again to bust.

Some Venezuelans continued to expect oil-fueled handouts from its oil-rich government.

But the well was simply dry, or maybe not dry, but worth a lot less.

There were massive cuts to services and subsidies.

In the 1990s, Venezuelan leaders moved to save its oil economy by encouraging the foreign oil companies to come back and giving them better contracts.

And that did keep oil money flowing, but the Venezuelan masses were still not getting what they wanted.

Their discontent continued to grow, and that ushered in a new political force, Hugo Chavez.

By that time, there were just three American companies left.