How many Americans have actually visited Venezuela and by visiting I don't mean going to an all inclusive resort in Curacao but actually lived among these people and developed a sense of what their lives are like?
The answer to the problems in Venezuela should be obvious if patriotic propaganda were set aside and the same would apply to most Central American and Caribbean countries. America considers Latin America to be it's Backyard and therefore free to be used for American interests in anyway it chooses. I have lived in South America, Central America and the Caribbean so I have seen it with my own eyes.
This mindset of entitlement to rule foreign nations by proxy and control the elections and resources of other nations has been standard operating procedure for the US government and it's agencies for many decades. Venezuela has oil and precious metals, both of which are strategic resources and since the Mexican oil fields are being quickly depleted the Venezuelan oil fields are the closest source of petrochemicals to power the US military industrial complex. (the flag wavers have probably stopped reading by this point but I will continue in order to answer your question)
The only system of government that had any chance of standing up to this sort of imperialist power is a socialist dictator because the democratic process is so easily manipulated if you are willing to throw enough money at it in order to secure the results you want (plus a complete lack of scruples, restraint, ethics or decency of course - CIA kind of shit). So you see populist dictators like Castro in Cuba, Chavez in Venezuela (dead now of cancer but Castro warned him he was too lack in his security precautions), Noriega in Nicaragua (probably about to be overthrown for supporting Venezuela by trading food stuffs for oil) and Ortiega in Panama (too much coke up the nose so he became unreliable as a watchdog over the all important Panama Canal), they pop up and to a certain extent and they play the game but they also make things just a tiny bit better for the local people than it was under the puppet master regimes they displace.
The problem that usually arises is that the people discover their new found luxury (like 3 squares a day and a much lower chance of dying violently before the age of 30) and they want more of it so their socialist dictator gives them a little more in order to hold onto his populist power. Eventually this cycle becomes too much to bear for the powers that be in the US but also other global corporate interests are equally offended so that means the country and it's dictator must be vilified and regime change implemented either through the expedient method of assassination or foreign supported revolution but also by the new method of choice, trade embargo. You just make the people suffer by bringing you allies to bear pressure on the exports that every country must have to survive in the global economy and with the banking interests on board to choke off the life line of money it usually means the replacement of the current leader for a new more pliable one in the course of only a few short years. The benevolent dictators that manage to survive these actions tend to be pretty shrewd operators, Castro survived hundreds of assassination attempts and the many decades long embargo on Cuba - all because he took back his country from the control of various cartels that had enslaved it. The Cubans are tough SOB's, Americans would have cried into their security blankets and caved in long ago but that's another tale for another day. I hope this answered your question. This is all common knowledge among the people I have known and lived beside in Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Mexico.