Author: Johan Obdola

Venezuela’s collapse was not a descent into chaos. It was a conversion.Over the past fifteen years, the country did not merely succumb to corruption; it underwent a functional transformation from a sovereign state into an integrated criminal platform. This was not accidental. It was engineered. Institutions were not weakened; they were repurposed. The military ceased to function primarily as a defensive force and became a mechanism for controlling trafficking corridors. Customs, ports and airports stopped facilitating trade and began enabling illicit flows. Financial institutions no longer stabilised the economy but laundered and redistributed criminal revenue. By the mid-2010s, Venezuela had…