Friend of the blog Tom Doran writes in:

For an in-depth understanding of what Hugo Chavez did to his country, you should read the Daily Beast's own Michael Moynihan.

If you want the capsule version, just take a look at these two graphs, courtesy of blogger Lars Christensen:

Newsflash for the sentimental leftists polluting my Twitter timeline with Chavez apologia: state socialism doesn't work. Even if Chavez had been a model democrat - which he emphatically was not - he would still have been a failure.