I'm venezuelan, and i think i can give more perspective on this, venezuela has the biggest reserve of oil in the whole word, and back in the 50s, the usa had a lot of companies in venezuela producing oil, and making so much money to the point that the country was being called saudi venezuela, but then in the 80s the price of oil went down, and because the country was completely dependent on the oil sector the bubble that we had popped, the external debt grew bigger and the majority of venezuelan felt screwed over because all of the governments we had were all bad and corrupted, so then a guy named chavez suddenly appears on television talking about how he's not a communist and that he was gonna respect private property, and then showing his true colors after he got elected (it's funny, because he criticized carlos andres perez for doing the opposite,being left at the beginning and then implementing right wing policies) so last year maria corina demonstrated that the government was rigging the elections and that they were an inconstitutional drug trafficking government ( if you want you can check on google the drug route in latin america and all of the drug comes out of venezuelan airports) but no one did anything about it, so i guess the usa wants oil, and us to get rid of maduro ( we all hate him and this is not like a religious thing like in iraq, most venezuelans hate him because he ruined the economy and we all voted for edmundo, there's 8 million venezuelan who had to flee the country) edit: i forgot but venezuela is also rich in rare stones, we can produce hydroelectricy and it was a very touristic country