"Venezuela was a pretty miserable place for 80% of the population. "

If you DO actually go back and look at the history of Venezuela, you will see that they had good development indicator right up to '92 -'93. High Literacy rates, low(ish) levels of extreme poverty (Low by Middle income country Standards), high levels of health spending. In his entire time in office, Chavez never got spending on health back up to the CAP levels, and he took 6 years to get extreme Poverty back to the same level as  '92.

Why did everything turn south in '92? Because someone launched a coup that killed all hope of decent economic reform, and led to a Financial crisis that killed the economy. Some Army guy call Chavez, you may have heard of him