The links between Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Nicolas Maduro | Axel Kaiser

The Fraser Institute in Canada does that work of measuring economic freedom. In 1970, Venezuela was 14, uh, 14 in the world in terms of economic freedom; it was about like 90 countries, more or less, that they were measuring back then. Um, Chile was one of the last countries because we had had the Socialist experiment of Salvador Allende, which was an attempt to impose a totalitarian communist system in Chile. We were last in the country, and we had hyperinflation and scarcity of basic goods and services, and so on and so forth.

So it was a complete catastrophe that ended up in the coup of 1973 led by General Pinochet. But Venezuela, over time and over the decades, especially after they nationalized in the 70s the oil industry, we have to remember Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. Um, they nationalized it and they started falling in the ranking of economic freedom systematically.

So, by the time Chavez came to power in 1988, Venezuela was doing very poorly in the rankings of economic freedom. You had a very kleptocratic, kleptocratic corrupt system that, um, you know, a rent-seeking society, let's say. Everyone was trying to live out of the government handouts and corrupt deals between the corporate interests and the politicians.

Chavez was elected. He had been a soldier who had attempted a coup in 1992 against Carlos Andres Pérez. So he was a "golpista," what we call a "golpista" in Spanish, so someone who tried to overthrow a democratically elected president and install a dictatorship. Everyone knew who Chavez was; many people died in 1992, and he ended up in prison. But well-meaning center-leftists in Venezuela pardoned him so he could go out of jail, and then he went to see Fidel Castro.

Fidel Castro recognized immediately that he had, um, you know, a puppet that he could guide in order to take control over Venezuela. So Castro and Cuba have been the masterminds behind what is going on in this country, and they have, um, you know, extracted huge sums of wealth from Venezuela. Because after the collapse of the Soviet Union, at some point, Russia stopped funding the Cuban dictatorship, and so Venezuela played that role.

And Chavez saw in Fidel Castro a fatherly figure for him, and this is really an important thing. Because he was loyal to Fidel until the very end, and the intelligence services from Cuba, who are very effective, we have to say, um, in consolidating power, they have been there in Cuba for over 60 years, so they know what they're doing. These are the people advising the regime as to what to do to deal with the opposition and to purge the military and things like that.

But Venezuela was already, um, in a situation where they had lost, um, their economic freedom, and their per capita incomes, as compared to other countries in Latin America, started to fall dramatically. And while Chile embraced free market reforms, uh, especially influenced by the Chicago School of Economics, Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, George Stigler, and people like that, we became the wealthiest country in per capita terms in Latin America.

So you can see that, uh, in the 70s, Chile was at the bottom of the economic freedom ranking. We went up to the top, even top 10 at some point, and we became the wealthiest country in Latin America. And Venezuela was the complete opposite. They went from being the freest country in Latin America to now the last country in the ranking in the world, 162 among 162 countries that are measured. It's a complete disaster, and this is socialism. This is what I mean.

So the Nordic countries are really on the top, uh, countries in terms of economic freedom. These are not really socialist countries. And I remember Bernie Sanders saying this all the time, and he got a response, I think it was the Prime Minister from Sweden, who told him, "We are not socialist." You have corporate tax in Sweden that is lower than in the United States, more or less. In some of these Nordic countries, you have.

So what they do is they tax very heavily personal income, right? And I don't like it because you have lots of, uh, human capital flight; people who are very qualified go to the United States or other parts. But still, they're very productive countries, and they have very large degrees of economic freedom. Economic freedom means free trade, stable currency, protection of property rights, reasonable size of government, and so on.

Um, so it is a social democracy, like, um, Anthony Giddens-type of social democracy, what Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were at the time or German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who made all the reforms in Germany allowing Germany in the 2000s to experience, um, a boom, an economic boom that Merkel benefited from.

Okay, so here, what we have is the extreme far-left experiments that are very anti-capitalist. This is what you see in Venezuela now—the consolidation of this ideology. And we have to remember that Maduro was chosen by Chavez as his successor, and the reason for this was that Maduro, compared to Diosdado Cabello, who is another criminal and one of the main leaders of this socialist cartel, Maduro is a doctrinaire.

He was the hardcore socialist, and he was foreign affairs minister to the Chavez Administration. He was instrumental in building up the whole network of, uh, Venezuela and the Chavismo on an international level in Europe, in Asia, in different parts. And Chavez aligned himself very rapidly with Russia and with Iran and with China.

So this is part of the Cold War 2.0 that we are experiencing. Venezuela is playing for them. And, um, now we have—and I want to stress this, Jordan, because it's important—you have a minimum wage of $3 in Venezuela. You have accumulated inflation of 2 million per or more. You have a collapse of 70% of GDP—70%. You have a collapse of over 80% of all production in Venezuela, and they have squandered almost a trillion dollars in wealth.

Because when Chavez came to power, you had a barrel of oil at $8 or so, and it skyrocketed to over $120. So only because of that, they got almost a trillion dollars; they destroyed all that wealth. And people say, "Oh, this is, you know, Caribbean type of politics." This is the result of socialism everywhere you go, and you see what the socialists, when they implement this system.

And again, I don't mean the Nordic type of welfare state, which is not socialism—at least not real socialism. They destroy the country where they, uh, run it. It's—you can see it in Eastern Germany as compared to Western Germany during the Cold War; it was a very poor country compared to Western Germany. And so on. I mean, everyone knows the different examples: North Korea, South Korea, and so on and so forth.

But it's important to remember that, uh, Fidel Castro, Cuba, and Russia, Vladimir Putin, and Iran, Hezbollah are behind Maduro. I have to stress this, because this is not only a Venezuelan problem; this is going to be a crucial problem for the United States and for national security in the United States.

Well, let's dig into that. One of the other—so there's three or four things I'd like to cover as we move forward right now. I want to talk more about the opposition in Venezuela and what you think people outside Venezuela can do to aid the opposition. I want to talk about the ordinary life of the typical Venezuelan now. I want to talk about where that trillion dollars went and maybe we can do that while talking about your claim, for example, that the Maduro government has basically also become a narco dictatorship.