"[1] As of 2018, the vast majority of mayoral and gubernatorial offices are held by PSUV candidates, while the opposition Democratic Unity (MUD) coalition won two thirds of parliamentary seats in 2015.

[2] Political hostility between the PSUV and MUD have led to several incidents where both pro-government and opposition demonstrations have turned violent, with an estimated 150 dead as a result in 2017.

A fall in oil prices in the mid-1980s caused an economic crisis to take hold in Venezuela, and the country had accrued significant levels of debt.

Nevertheless, the administration of the left-leaning President Jaime Lusinchi was able to restructure the country's debt repayments and offset an economic crisis but allow for the continuation of the government's policies of social spending and state-sponsored subsidies.

[7] Lusinchi's political party, the Democratic Action, was able to remain in power following the 1988 election of Carlos Andrés Pérez as president.

He also took measures to decentralize and modernize the Venezuelan political system by the direct election of state governors, who had previously been appointed by the president.

[8] In response to the government's economic reforms and the resulting increase in the price of gasoline and transportation, a wave of protests and riots known as El Caracazo started on 27 February 1989 in Guarenas, spreading to Caracas and surrounding towns.

[27] Several scandals affected the program as allegations of corruption were formulated against Generals involved in the plan, arguing that significant amounts of money had been diverted.

Barrio Adentro constitutes an attempt to deliver a de facto form of universal health care, seeking to guarantee access to quality and cradle-to-grave medical attention for all Venezuelan citizens.

In July 2007, Douglas León Natera, chairman of the Venezuelan Medical Federation, reported that up to 70% of the modules of Barrio Adentro were either abandoned or were left unfinished.

The program also seeks to develop agreeable and integrated housing zones that make available a full range of social services—from education to healthcare—which likens its vision to that of New Urbanism.

[39] The program uses volunteers to teach reading, writing and arithmetic to the more than 1.5 million Venezuelan adults who were illiterate prior to Chávez's election to the presidency in 1999.

The program is military-civilian in nature and sends soldiers to—among other places—remote and dangerous locales in order to reach the most undereducated, neglected and marginalized adult citizens to give them regular schooling and lessons.

[40] David Rosnick and Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research responded to these doubts, finding that the data used by Rodríguez and Ortega was too crude a measure since the Household Survey from which it derived was never designed to measure literacy or reading skills and their methods were inappropriate to provide statistical evidence regarding the size of Venezuela's national literacy program.

Endless food lines, a severe shortage of basic goods and an annual inflation rate estimated at 160 percent became the standard image of a country long considered a "petrostate".

The Venezuelan Penal Forum, a nongovernmental group that provides legal assistance to detainees, counts more than 90 people it considers political prisoners.

[52] El Universal explains how the Venezuelan migrant crisis in Venezuela has been caused by the "deterioration of both the economy and the social fabric, rampant crime, uncertainty and lack of hope for a change in leadership in the near future.

[59] According to a 2017 study, Bolivarianism failed to spread further through Latin America and the Caribbean "in nations where political parties and democratic institutions remained functioning, and where the left and civil society valued democracy, pluralism, and liberal rights due to brutal autocratic experiences".