They're playing Risk with people's lives.
This is missing an important event that happened way before the timeline.
OPEC tanked Venezuela's oil prices and all their eggs were in one basket. (This was the gasoline shortage during the Carter administration.)
Venezuela had no other industry they were focusing on, so there was no diversification.
Then leaders were propped up who poured all of Venezuela's money into social programs with no monetary return so there was no way to recoup the expenditure.
And by the time this happened down to the present day state of affairs, all Venezuela has left to get out of debt is selling off their mineral rights.
I guarantee you the same people who those mineral rights end up sold off to are the same people who propped up these social spending policies (and the people who believe in them, who are not hedging this kind of spending with any sort of dividend yielding investment on the other side of the balance sheet... whether this was intentional or they were useful idiots, your guess is as good as mine) with one ultimate aim in mind - nab the resources.
This is how you go about borking an entire economy playing the long game.