PJ Vogt

And then the other big thing that changes is just the price of oil, which, as you said, at the beginning of his presidency was at $8 a barrel.

It just shoots up.

At one point, it's at $100 a barrel.

I mean, it rises as high as around $160.

So you have this like huge, huge, huge, you both, the supply gets constricted a little bit by the U.S.

entering Iraq, but what you really have is like a huge demand surge because of China.

Chapter seven, total power.

Alejandro says that Hugo Chavez did not immediately use the immense gusher of money pouring out of Venezuela's oil business.

There were other matters to attend to.

One, the military.

While the coup against Chavez had been unsuccessful, it had revealed the members of the military who were disloyal.

So he purged them, which meant he now controlled the military.

Chavez also set about bringing Venezuela's national oil company, PDVSA, completely under his thumb, something no president before him had really done.

Just to pause on this for a moment, Chavez conducted these firings live on TV.

This was during an episode of Allo Presidente, with Chavez calling out the employees by name and blowing a soccer whistle to celebrate each termination.

There is one final part of Hugo Chavez's consolidation of power here.

It comes out of a real miscalculation by the opposition parties.

The opposition decides in 2005 to fully sit out the parliamentary elections as a protest against fraud they believe took place in an earlier election.

So how does Venezuela go really in just a decade from an oil-rich democracy with a popular democratically elected president to just abject disaster?

That story continues in our next episode, which will be out after the weekend.