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There really were millions of Venezuelan indigenous from the shanty towns who fully believed in Chavez and Chavismo. That’s why the early right wing CIA coup in 2002 was defeated, they came down from the hills and forced him back into power.
But the oil crash in 2014 and subsequent decade of low oil prices killed the client economy he had created. Maduro was also far less charismatic and moderately less competent (although Chavez’ competence was overstated when oil was above $90 a barrel). Followers only stay around you for so long when the money dries up.
By contrast, while Tehran and a handful of other cities in Iran had a moderately developed middle class and semi-advanced economy in 1979, most of the country was essentially very poor rural peasants, smallholders and workers in large towns and cities living in places without any significant development at all, and in some cases with lives little changed for centuries. The first shoots of sustained economic development had sprouted but it was early days, like Russia before 1917.
While these people participate much in the revolution itself, they nevertheless became its core constituency; all development their communities have had since 1979, the social housing, schools, universities, economic development, for them has been a product of it. They can’t remember, and have never been able to remember, good times before it.
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