 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. In the first part of this explainer series, we talked about how the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by U.S. and other imperialist countries are causing severe shortages of food, medicine and other necessities, fueling the current crisis Venezuela is facing. We focused primarily on how a set of severe economic sanctions were imposed in 2017 after Venezuelan right-wing forces backed by the U.S. failed to create an environment for a regime change. In this part, we will look at the set of sanctions that happened imposed in 2019. We will also look at the role Juan Guaido has played in creating the situation today. The 2019 sanctions were an even more severe blow to the Venezuelan economy. They made it virtually impossible for Venezuela to carry out trade with other countries. The sanctions were imposed in January 28th, just five days after National Assembly member Juan Guaido declared himself interim president of Venezuela. The U.S., several EU countries and the conservative regimes in Latin America were quick to declare the support for Guaido and reaffirm the stance that Maduro's government re-elected by a wide margin in May 2018 was illegitimate. The January sanctions cut off Venezuela from its largest oil market, the United States. In 2018 the U.S. alone had purchased 35.6% of Venezuela's oil exports. The U.S. also instructed other countries to halt oil trade with Venezuela or risk-facing sanctions themselves. With buyers as well as revenue from oil exports disappearing, Venezuela's oil production fell even further. As we already discussed in the first part of this explainer, Venezuela's economy is dependent on oil exports to a large extent. When exports go down, the country is deprived of capital to purchase necessary goods for the people. It is now projected that if this kind of hostility towards Venezuela persists, then the country's oil exports in 2019 will fall by a disastrous 67.2%. So what steps did the U.S. and its allies take to show the support for Guaido and what they call a free Venezuela? First, the U.S. blocked the Venezuelan government's access to Citgo, which is worth about $5.2 billion. Citgo is an affiliate of the Venezuelan public oil company PDVSA that owns and operates around 5,500 gas stations in the U.S. Around $1.2 billion worth of gold held in the Bank of England was also frozen along with the fertilizer company in Colombia, Monomeros, valued at around $269 million. This along with other frozen foreign assets means that not only can Venezuela not generate foreign revenue through exports, it also can't generate critical funds by selling off existing assets. Furthermore, the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration also blocked Venezuela from accessing international system of payments. This meant that the country could not even make use of existing cash reserves for imports. Even before the 2019 sanctions were imposed, other countries began blocking Venezuelan accounts in their national banks, fearing reaction from the U.S. In November 2017, for instance, a Puerto Rican intermediary institution, Ital Bank, closed the Venezuelan government's account because of concerns of reputational risk. The Venezuelan government had been using this account to carry out payments for food and medicine that it was buying from Puerto Rico. After Guaido's recognition, pretty much all such international payment options were taken away from Venezuela. A total of $4.5 billion is inaccessible to the Venezuelan government through closures of Venezuelan institutional bank accounts in international banks, such as the Bank of England, Citibank, Clearstream, Novo Banco and Sumito Mo. All of this has especially affected the innocent civilians of Venezuela. The denial of imports has led to an estimated 85% shortage of essential medicines. According to a September 2018 study, around 300,000 people were at risk in Venezuela due to lack of medicines. Man nutrition is rising and around 22% of children under the age of five are estimated to be stunted. The crisis has also severely impacted power supply and the electricity crisis has also contributed to deaths in hospitals due to power failures. These efforts by the US are having the intended effect of destabilizing the Venezuelan economy and government to the point where the economy screams just as the US made Chile's economy scream in order to remove the socialist government headed by Salvador Alandé. Like in Chile, where the country's nationalized copper was the target, in Venezuela, it is the nationalized oil reserves that are under attack, that it is the oil which is the target has been made clear multiple times by people in the Trump administration. For instance, Trump himself has been quoted saying about Venezuela, that's the country we should be going to war with. They have all that oil and their right on our back door. National security advisor John Bolton has been quoted saying, we're in conversation with major American companies now, it will make a big difference to the United States economically, if we could have oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. Major oil companies did have access to Venezuelan oil until Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998 and nationalized the country's oil resources, choosing instead to use the revenues generated from it for public good and development. Under Chavez, poverty levels in Venezuela hit a historic low, and the average household consumption grew significantly. This is not to say that the Venezuelan administration has been perfect over the years. Like any other country, the government of Venezuela also has its issues. But the extremely active culture of social movements in Venezuela has continuously been thriving to make progress on various issues through their struggles. The government of Venezuela has also made a concerted push towards creating participatory democratic structures that allow for broad and direct participation of Venezuela's working class in politics in an attempt to slowly break free from the old and restrictive liberal democratic regime. What the people of Venezuela currently want is not international tutelage on how to run their country, but freedom from international intervention, particularly USA's imperialist intervention in their policy decisions. In the last part of this explainer, we will look at some of the vibrant movements in Venezuela and how they are striving to create a better and more equal future. We will also look at the repeated attempts made by the US and Latin American countries to topple socialist governments and replace them with puppet regimes which could give them free access to their natural resources. Do subscribe for the latest updates from our channel and follow our website peoplesistach.org for more such stories.