Venezuela, once the richest country in South America, now has ruinous inflation and food rationing and is plagued by violent crime. How did this happen? In a great piece in The New Yorker, William Finnegan offers some answers. His report reads, at times, like something from the pages of a García Márquez novel: the president claims that a little bird brings him news from the afterlife of his predecessor; there’s a brigadier-general in charge of the distribution of cooking oil; and it’s said that ransoms for the return of kidnapping victims can be paid in cash at the front gates of a prison.