On the Road in Venezuela HARDtalk

The country with the biggest oil reserves in the world is in economic

meltdown. Venezuelans queue for hours for bread, the stick can't get

the medicines they need. Violent crime is thriving in the chaos.

Caracas is now the world's most dangerous capital. Hugo Chavez's

socialist revolution has lost its charismatic leader, but not yet its

grip on power. Opposition to Hugo Chavez's successor, Nicolas Maduro,

is mobilising. The National Assembly is at war with the government.

Venezuela is on the brink of a terrifying descent into darkness.

Can anyone pull it back from the brink? Foreign journalists are

rarely welcome in Venezuela, so we charter a small plane to the

country's Caribbean island of Margarita, where overseas visitors

can still slipping with little fuss. This used to be a bustling,

prospering tourist town. Now the flow of people, money and jobs has

dried up. Many local businesses have closed down. More are likely to

follow. The beaches have not lost their allure, but Venezuela has. A

broken economy, inflation spiralling beyond 1000%, and violent crime,

have tainted even these shores. This has to be one of the most beautiful

beaches I have ever seen. But even a decade ago, it would have been

packed with tourists from Europe, Latin America and the United States

as well. But today, you can see, there is barely a soul here. I have

this little piece of paradise all to myself. For you, it means there is

nothing to do. I am alone here. What do you do all day? Do you read a

book? Yes, I read a book, and try to... Walk around. Why do you think

there is nobody here? I think the economy is one of the big problems

here, but it is going to change, I think, also. From Margarita, we had

to Caracas, home to 5 million people, the epicentre of Venezuela's

economic meltdown. First appearances can be deceptive. Vast oil wealth,

even though mostly squandered, has created a veneer of normality. But

beneath the surface, the prolonged slump in oil prices means the

government is now drowning in debt, without the money to import basic

consumer supplies. Every day, tens of thousands of Caracas resident

spent all day in a desperate search for food. Bread is almost impossible

to find. Most bakeries have shut, as wheat imports have dried up.

Nappies, baby milk, a whole shopping list of essentials supposedly

subsidised by the government to make them affordable are missing from

supermarket shelves. On the black market, they cost more than the

average month the wage. Millions of Venezuelans are queueing, not

working. Caracas is encircled by sprawling slums, barios, which cling

to the hills. This one is home to a couple of 100 thousand people hit

hard by the shortages and rampant inflation. I am in one of the Jeeps

which specialises in transporting people up and down the mountain, and

the principle here in the slump is pretty straightforward. The higher

up the hill you live, well, the poorer you are. The irony here in

Caracas is that the poor have some of the best views, and much of the

housing here really isn't too bad. Hugo Chavez port an awful lot of

money into the slums like this. At the problem for people living here

right now is simply making enough money to eat. This family have three

daughters, both of them work, but are still struggling to survive.

Give me the reality of life today, living here.

You talk about despair, Leo, but are you also angry?

You have a picture of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro here in the

house. Do you still believe in the Revolution?

Thanks to the highest inflation rate in the world, the value of the

Bolivar has collapsed. The US dollar is king. Venezuela has three

exchange rates. The strictest, official one is ten Bolivar is to

the dollar. But out on the street blackmarket rate is 4000 to one

greenback, a reality that fuels inequality and crime. Hello, Carlos.

I need to change money. Thank you for coming. OK, so what have we got.

500 US dollars generates a mini mountain of bolivars. In Caracas,

kidnapping has become an epidemic. The victims no longer have to be

rich. They just need a family capable of scraping together a

couple of thousands of -- thousand dollars. I made contact with the

kidnap gang who led me deep into their barrio. What followed was one

of the more uncomfortable encounters of my life. When you take someone,

what do you do with them? Where do you take them, and how do you hold

them? You mean, if the family cannot pay,

or will not pay, you will kill them? So is it not possible for you to

make a good life for yourselves in the legal world?

Stephen, this is Hugo. I met Hugo Chavez in Washington seven years

ago. Hugo Chavez was headed in Washington for his left-wing

populism but has appealed to Venezuela's port was real. Many

believed in his socialist revolution. High oil prices allowed

him to spend many billions on subsidies and social programmes. He

won elections, and even beat off an attempted coup. In 2013, he died.

Then the oil price started to tumble, a double whammy which was

disastrous for the Chavismo movement. His successor, Maduro, a

former bus driver, lacks charisma and is blamed for disastrous

economic management. The opposition won a decisive victory in the last

National Assembly elections. Maduro's government recently

responded with Draconian new rules requiring all opposition parties to

register thousands of supporters to be afforded legal status. If the

intention was to strangle dissent, it has backfired. These people have

been lining up for hours in order to register their support for one of

the opposition political parties, and it is quite clear, talking to

them, that however long it takes, they will stay. They are determined

to have their voices heard. Why don't they let us have elections?

You think... They just put obstacles, and more obstacles, and

more obstacles. That's why we have to do all of this before. And many

people who are here are poor as well. And I wasn't poor, but now I

am poor. But Venezuela's opposition is far from united. There is a

multitude of competing parties, egos, and agendas. And an age-old

problem. Can parties rooted in the upper and middle classes win over

the poor? The biggest threat to Chavismo right now doesn't come from

the combination of long-standing political opponents, the alienation

of core supporters. We travel deep into the countryside, to hear from

farmers impoverished by a collapsed economy.

State-controlled crop prices have lagged way behind inflation, so

farmers have taken to a subsistence, hand to mouth existence.

This is the cocoa bean, needs to be dried, it needs to be prepared, but

this is your basic ingredient for chocolate. Rodolfo, given the state

of the economy here out in the countryside, do you see any future

here for you and your family? Were you a Hugo Chavez supporter in

the old days, and how do you feel about President Nicolas Maduro,

today? In the last two weeks, Venezuela has

been rocked by a series of anti-government demonstrations and

sporadic, violent clashes between protesters and police. The spark was

the government's short lived decision to abolish the powers of

the opposition dominated National Assembly. That decision was

reversed, but new anger was stirred when one of the most prominent

opposition leaders was banned from politics. The opposition is torn.

Undecided whether resistance to Maduro's government should be

focused in the political arena or on the streets. They learned a painful

lesson back in 2014. Then, the radicals, led by this man, took to

the streets demanding the immediate exit of Maduro. The violence that

followed killed more than 40. Lopez was convicted of incitement and

sentenced to 14 years in prison. He is Venezuela's highest profile

political prisoner. I head to the military prison, with Lopez's

mother. She tirelessly campaigns for her son's release. Do you think the

people of Venezuela really care about Leopoldo anti- situation?

That's a really interesting question. When you have a country

that has no food, has the highest inflation in the whole continent, it

has 28,000 people who die every year because of delinquency, to care

about a political prisoner is difficult. Ita on it in their minds.

The government would say that Leopoldo Lopez is in prison because

he refused to play the political game. He refused to accept that

there is a democratic process and he demanded change through street and

popular action and that's why in the end of the court of law convicted

him of incitement, because he was not being constitutional, he was

trying to subvert Venezuela's political system. He was calling for

people to go to the streets to protest. That's a constitutional

right in Venezuela. I just wonder whether you think he was going too

far? No, I don't think so. He has never been a radical. Leopoldo is a

strong and charismatic leader. People follow him. And that's what

he was doing, going to the streets, but never in a radical or violent

way. We are about 300 metres away from Leopoldo's cell. Can you

communicate with him from here? Well, maybe I will try to say hello.

He can hear me. And he is shouting very strong. Very

strongly. You hear the whistles? The guards are trying to drown out the

voice. I don't know if you can hear all of this, but his voice, Leopoldo

Lopez's voice, is coming across very clearly. It's a 300 metre distance

from the prison tower, where he is being held. What we can hear his

voice so strong and so clear. For you, this must be quite moving,

quite emotional to hear your son's voice like that? For us, having such

a limited opportunity, having our voice out internationally and to

have you here and you can see and feel, it is very important. It's

worth taking the message out and you, as a witness of his whole

confinement. Where do you find your strength from? From him. When you

listen to those calls, to those messages and, um, and we're out

here. This is what we have to do. We have to the best, our minds,

emotions, physical strength, to go on with this. A jeep has just come

out of the prison. Maybe they will take your camera. They want to talk

to us. This was the moment filming in Venezuela came to an abrupt end.

As the military police approached us from the prison, we attempted to

leave. We managed to conceal the camera in our car, but our cover was

blown. Within hours, state media accused

HARDtalk of illegally entering the country and filming in a prohibited

area. The producer and director was detained and interrogated for 24

hours before being deported. I slipped out of the country the next

day. Venezuela's socialist revolution is on the ropes. The

authorities don't want to face questions from foreign journalists,

but there can be no escaping the scale of the mass they're in. --

mess. Back at the BBC, in London, I need a former close adviser to both

Hugo Chavez and Maduro. Would it be fair to say that the lifeblood of

the Venezuelan socialist revolution really drained away with the death

of Hugo Chavez? Definitely the passing of president Hugo Chavez

created a great challenge for socialism. Not only in Venezuela,

but the region. Are you personally still a believer in Chavezmo? Yes,

absolutely. How can you be? It has mostly been a success. For the last

three years the country has been hit by both the terrible economic crisis

and a political crisis and I believe that decision-makers today from the

government and opposition are responsible for the situation of the

country. But what I do not agree with is this view that the Chavismo

is a failure, that the left is not viable in Latin America and we

should all espouse Conservative, free-market oriented policies.

You worked as a senior adviser to Hugo Chavez and you were a short

while an adviser to Maduro. You are in a better place than almost

anybody to explain to me why Venezuela is steadily going bust

when you have had hundreds of billions of dollars of oil revenue?

I was the head of the sovereign fund for a very short period of time and

I was, you know, sent out of government. It was a very short

period of time. But can you answer me the question, because a lot of

Venezuelans think the answer to my question is corruption.

Mismanagement of the economy. Absolutely failed governance. One

thing, first. Where has the money gone? Venezuela has experienced

economic growth for most of the Hugo Chavez period and his cycle. The

money went for the first time in Venezuela's east we... The

Venezuelan people... The political system got control of the oil and

that was heavily invested in education and healthcare, in

housing. The hospitals can't even afford medicines. But you know as

well as me, you don't ignore it, one thing is what you can do, what you

have invested already in the country, but you need a flow to

sustain that model. The country has gone again through a very, very

difficult economic crisis and doesn't have the means to keep

sustaining that rate... What you are saying is all of the money sent

during the -- spent during the Chavista years was spent in a way

that wasn't sustaining the economy? That's not what I'm saying. I am

saying that when you have an external shock, like my country is

suffering, you need to add that. You need to adapt your policy. When the

oil price was at $100, you don't need exactly the same policies as

today. That's what has happened. In Sydney economic or is making haven't

changed -- things in the economic policy. That's strangling the

Venezuelan economy. Venezuela should be the richest

country in Latin America. Instead it is the most chaotic, the most

gratuitously mismanaged. Its people have been wearied by the struggle to

survive and it's hard to see where salvation is coming from.