PJ Vogt

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.

In the meantime, you can read a great article that Alejandro wrote, which is about Chavez and his political movement, which outlived him, Chavismo.

We'll have a link in the show notes.

We'll see you next week.

Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey.

It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Truthi Panamaneni.

Garrett Graham is our senior producer.

Emily Malterre is our associate producer.

Special thanks this week to Miguel Santiago Colon.

Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bazarian.

This episode was fact-checked by Piper Dumont.

Our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis.