Venezuela on Fire: How Maduro's Petro Plan Failed to Bail Out the Country

Since Maduro first took office in 2013, Venezuela has faced several brutal riots, including the "Mother of All Marches" in 2017 and the Caracas helicopter attack in the same year, and the current crisis is very likely to be the last for the regime.

Maduro's Guerra: From socialism to an usurpation of powerWhen Maduro entered office in 2013, he inherited one of the most shaky economies in the whole South American region.

The Venezuelan parliament then voted to begin impeachment proceedings against Maduro for violating democracy and urged the army to disobey the government in late October 2016.In 2016, Maduro's presidency was first labeled as a dictatorship.

Following a new twist in the political crisis, Forbes posted a story entitled "Sorry bond lords, Venezuela is a dictatorship now," while the Guardian came up with an article called "Let's call Venezuela what it is under Maduro: a dictatorship" later that year.

Perez, dubbed a "Terrorist" by Maduro, managed to flee the city, and headed an armed resistance until he was killed during an army raid in January, 2018.In July, Maduro finally created the Constituent Assembly - a body set up to draft and adopt a new constitution in order to provide stability and cease the protests, according to the president.

Maduro even offered the Petro to Russia's Vladimir Putin.

While crypto enthusiasts studied the Petro's white paper and came to a conclusion that it blatantly copied some parts of Dash's documentation available in the GitHub repository, Maduro was forced to increase the Petro's value from 3,600 to 9,000 bolivars in the midst of ongoing inflation.

The grand finale: Maduro vs. GuaidoIn May, 2018, Maduro was re-elected for his second six-year term during a vote that had shown the lowest turnout - equalling 40 percent - since Venezuela's democracy was restored in 1958.

Maduro has recently broke diplomatic ties with the U.S., giving the embassy staff 72 hours to leave the country.

Throughout a year of continuous protests and growing tension, neither Venezuela nor Maduro seem to pull anything good out of the whole Petro project.