1. Moises Naim, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs: The Politics of Venezuela’s Economic Reform (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1993), p. 19; Herbert Adams Gibbons, The New Map of South America (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929), pp. 249, 252–53.

2. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 507 (“the devil”).

3. Terry L. Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Michael L. Ross, “The Political Economy of the Resource Curse,” World Politics 51 (1999): 297–322 (“ rent-seeking behavior”); Christina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, trans. Kristina Cordero (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 15 (Venezuelan academics).

4. Naim, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs, p. 24 (“reversed Midas touch”); interview with Ngazi Okonjo-Iweala.

5. Karl, The Paradox of Plenty, p. 71, 123 (“change the world!” “couldn’t lose”); Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, p. 5 (“magical liquid”); Gustavo Coronel, The Nationalization of the Venezuelan Oil Industry: From Technocratic Success to Political Failure (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983).

6. Karl, The Paradox of Plenty, p. 72 (“trap”); Naim, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs, pp. 34–35.

7. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, p. 59; Naim, Paper Tigers and Minotaurs, pp. 100–4.

8. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, pp. 4, 29, 43.

9. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, ch. 17.

10. Interview with Luis Giusti.

11. Interview with Luis Giusti.

12. Middle East Economic Survey, December 8, 1997 (Jakarta).

13. The New York Times, December 6, 1998 (“reeling”).

14. Interview with Luis Giusti (fire Giusti); Nicholas Kozloff, Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U. S. (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2006), p. 13; BusinessWeek (International Edition), October 26, 1998; Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, p. 107 (Caldera).

15. Chávez quotes in New York Times, April 10, 1999, May 2, 1999, July 27, 2000; Richard Gott, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution (London: Verso, 2005), p. 13 (“same sea”).

16. Brian A. Nelson, The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chávez and the Making of Modern Venezuela (New York: Nation Books, 2009), pp. 125–26 (chief of security); New York Times, July 28, 2000 (“annihilate,” “devils”).

17. Bernard Mommer, Changing Venezuelan Oil Policy, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, April 1999; Middle East Economic Survey, July 8, 2002.

18. Gott, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, p. 170.

19. Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, September 18, 2000 (“soaring oil prices”), September 25, 2000 (“brewing energy crisis”).