Even as recently as 2013, Salon magazine was proclaiming the virtue of Chavez and his brand of socialism calling it an "economic miracle."
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/0...zs_economic_miracle/
I found this statement poignant:
"When a country goes socialist and it craters, it is laughed off as a harmless and forgettable cautionary tale about the perils of command economics. When, by contrast, a country goes socialist and its economy does what Venezuela’s did, it is not perceived to be a laughing matter – and it is not so easy to write off or to ignore. It suddenly looks like a threat to the corporate capitalism, especially when said country has valuable oil resources that global powerhouses like the United States rely on."
Venezuela not so much cratered, rather fell off a cliff.