While Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez finally lost his battle with cancer, he leaves behind a tormented nation of 28-million on virtual life support. The cost of living is soaring, as is the crime rate. Unemployment is high and political divisions are deep. What course this oil rich South American nation will take following the death of its charismatic leader remains highly unpredictable.

On a recent trip to Caracas to research reports for several publications, I spoke with a wide range of Venezuelans about their views on Chavez and conditions in the country. (On several earlier trips, I had seen Chavez in action up close twice.) As a rule, those at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum were the 58-year old leader’s strongest supporters. Those from the country’s middle and upper classes generally disdained the man and the policies he has enacted.

Interest in what Chavez was up to has always been high in the U.S. Because of his friendship with Fidel Castro and other unsavory authoritarian leaders around the world, he become a favorite whipping boy of critics here. TV preacher Pat Robertson wanted him assassinated, and politicians of all stripes have condemned him for various offenses, both real and imagined. Even after his death, the efforts to further demonize Chavez continued: CNN commentator Alex Castellanos suggested that Chavez had gone directly to hell.

Questions remain unanswered about what Chavez achieved. After 14 years as president, is the country he leaves behind better or worse off? Was the former paratroop officer a saint or a sinner? Now that he has passed from the scene, will the blustery Chavez be revered as a martyr or reviled as an unhinged demagogue who led his country down a road to ruin? The answer to those questions and others vary widely depending upon whom is asked.

“I like some of the things he has done,” said a 16-year old high school girl of Chavez while working in her mother’s gift shop in a central Caracas retail arcade this past December. Evidence of the late leader’s initiatives to help the poor are everywhere to be seen. Gleaming new cable car lines connect downtown Caracas with slums on the mountains that surround it, providing quick and dependable transportation for the city‘s countless janitors, maids and other workers. In neighborhoods that have seldom seen a medical doctor, clinics staffed by Cuban physicians and therapists treat the poorest of the poor. Government supermarkets provide food staples at bargain prices.

“But,” the girl added, “I don’t trust some of the people around him,” mentioning characters like Vice President Nicolas Maduro, the mustachioed, Machiavellian character who may become the new president. Maduro’s hardcore communist leanings trouble some while his lack of his boss’s charisma brings into doubt whether he can keep the Chavez revolution on track.

An attorney told me about how he experienced Chavez’s fabled magnetism, a key to his popularity. “I loathe the guy and everything he stands for,” the lawyer commented. “But one day he happened to be passing by on a street where I was attending a funeral service. Chavez came over and shook my hand and talked to me, and I’ll admit that it’s like I was under a spell.”

One of the great paradoxes of Chavez’s rule is that, although he was a committed socialist who delighted in taking rhetorical swipes at Uncle Sam, the traditional economic relationship between Venezuela and the U.S. remained largely changed after he became president. Regardless of political orientation, each country has always been a major trading partner of the other.

Not surprisingly, about 95 percent of what the country exports is oil, and the profits from the oil trade fund almost half of the federal government’s budget. According to a recent CIA analysis, Venezuelan exports to the U.S. are four times what they are to China and 10 times more than to Cuba, both political allies. Imports from the U.S. are twice as much as they are from China. Political posturing aside, Chavez maintained a pragmatic policy regarding trade with such a large — and relatively close — market as the United States. News that we are on track to achieve energy self-sufficiency in the next decade or so is met with alarm in Caracas, where the prospect of having to develop new and more distant markets for its petroleum exports is viewed with concern.

Although Venezuela’s poverty rate was cut almost in half during Chavez’s rule, it remains high at about 25 percent of the population. Out-of-control crime has always been a problem in the country, and it has remained so throughout the Chavez years. According to a report in El Universal, one of the nation’s major daily newspapers, murders in Venezuela have dramatically jumped in recent years to close to 75 annually for every 100,000 inhabitants. Most surveys find that the country ranks among the five most murderous nations in the world. By comparison, Chile registers just over three homicides per 100,000 a year.

Personal security has become a major concern in the capital of Caracas, a chaotic metropolis of 3 million. Municipal police have largely retreated into neighborhood command posts where they stay hunkered down. A new national, paramilitary-style police force, the Policia Nacional Bolivariana, has yet to prove its effectiveness. Indicative of the life-threatening environment, Norway recently moved its diplomatic mission to Bogota, Colombia.

Those who take to the streets on foot to explore the central core of the downtown will constantly be warned by local not to venture into certain areas. Sometimes it’s a simple no-no wave of a finger. Other times, well-meaning locals actually physically intervene. One afternoon, while on a walk to take photographs, I was literally pulled off the sidewalk and into a bar by a man who warned me, “Don’t go up this street. A guy on a motorcycle will race up beside you and shoot you just to take what you have. It happens all the time.”

Venezuela faces other daunting issues the Chavez revolution has been unable to effectively address. The national currency is wildly overvalued, making Caracas one of the most expensive cities in the world and giving birth to an active black market where dollars can fetch up to four times the official rate. Traffic moves at a crawl and waist-high piles of trash stand uncollected at every turn. Apartment complexes being built for the poor are sprouting up everywhere. Called by the government “Viviendas Dignas” (Dignity Dwellings), they are derided by critics as “Bird Houses,” due to their tiny windows and shoddy construction.

In many ways an intellectually uncomplicated man whose fiery rhetoric was more convincing than many of his domestic programs were successful, Chavez is perhaps best remembered as the contemporary incarnation of a caudillo — the macho Latin American strongman of legend. His cult-like status among his most fanatical followers was all but guaranteed when, in the early days of his revolution, he wrapped himself in the patriotic mythology of the country’s founding father, Simon Bolivar. In the eyes of many, Chavez established a logical link between his rule and the touchstone accomplishments of Bolivar two centuries ago. The country was renamed the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Bolivarian label was applied to everything from the nation’s armed forces to its currency.

“It’s silly that so many people have bought into the idea that Chavez is somehow the equal of Bolivar,” comments one Caracas observer. “Intellectually, it doesn’t make any sense. It appeals to patriotism and the national narrative, but it’s a bogus association. In the U.S., would anyone seriously compare Bill Clinton to George Washington?”

Venezuela will continue to struggle to overcome both basic and longstanding problems. Its enormous oil wealth has long fostered corruption and has also had an enervating effect on the society, producing false expectations that the wealth would somehow trickle down to all citizens. The country lacks a diversified economy and its social divisions are vast. Yet many factors are in place that could lead to a Venezuelan renaissance. It is natural resource rich, has considerable unrealized agricultural potential, and is in a geographically strategic position.

Although the issues are complex, with some luck and less divisive politics, Venezuela could yet emerge from its current mess.

Mark Holston, of Kalispell, is a contributing editor to LATINO Magazine and a contributor to Latin Business Chronicle, among other international publications.