Venezuela is a sad, sad case. I've been trying to get friends to pay attention to what's going on in your country for years, but most of them are convinced that it's the media overexaggerating. Or worse, they believe it, but "that's not real socialism", and they press on to bring those same policies home.
And it is beginning here, too, I sense it. Slowly snowballing. Things missing from store shelves, everywhere you go. Prices on certain items, skyrocketed from last year. We are obliged to use replacements and salvaged materials, if they can be found. And so much more time spent waiting. Nothing like what you and your countrymen have been going through, of course, but it puts me on edge because I can see where this most likely ends.
I still hold out hope that the lesson will be learned. Like how most countries learned a few hundred years ago that monarchy kind of sucks. And that realization stuck. Now almost all monarchies remaining are just symbolic, figureheads. So it is possible that we can dispense with state tyranny, as well.
We humans do not learn well from our collective experience. We make terrible mistakes, time and again. And yet I do feel that things have the potential to become better.