The crisis in Venezuela: despite vast oil resources, this South American nation is facing economic, social, and possibly political collapse.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

Yenerly Nino, 18, had been standing in line outside a big-box store in Caracas for more than five hours. Inside, the shelves were mostly empty, but she waited anyway, hoping to buy corn flour, vegetable oil, and laundry detergent. Soldiers patrolled the line, ready to arrest anyone who tried to cut.

"This is pathetic," Nino said.

Venezuela's problems are evident in its chronic shortages of all kinds of basic goods. Diapers are in such short supply that some shoppers carry their babies' birth certificates in case stores demand them before letting them buy. In January, McDonald's ran out of potatoes and had to replace french fries with yucca fries. Social media is full of urgent pleas from people trying to find prescription medications. Even hospitals are scrounging for medical supplies.

"I've seen people die on the operating table because we didn't have the basic tools for surgeries," says Valentina Herrera, 35, a pediatrician at a public hospital in Maracay, a city near Caracas.

Faced with an economy in ruins, President Nicolas Maduro has responded by cracking down on protesters and opponents and by blaming Venezuela's problems on a familiar target: the U.S.

"In Venezuela we are thwarting a coup supported and promoted from the north," Maduro tweeted recently. "The aggression of power from the United States is total and on a daily basis."

How did things get this way? And what does it have to do with the U.S.?

For more than a decade, Venezuela's socialist-run economy has been kept afloat by oil exports--the nation is the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the U.S.--which funds nearly half of Venezuela's budget. But the price of crude oil has dropped more than 50 percent since last summer, and the Venezuelan government is effectively broke.

'They've Killed a 14-Year-Old'

Even before the drop in oil prices, Venezuela's economy was in deep trouble, largely because of a system of government-imposed price controls. The policy was meant to keep Venezuelans happy by requiring that certain goods, such as cooking oil, milk, and toilet paper, be sold at low prices. The problem is that most importers have stopped bringing goods into the country since they can't make a profit, and there's no incentive for local producers to fill the gap. That means empty store shelves and long lines for whatever is available.

Meanwhile, the goods that aren't subject to price controls--and those on the black market--are skyrocketing in price.

The result of all this is an...