(At present it stands at about $45 per barrel.)

I also spoke with anti-Chavistas from various walks of life. The dismantling of Petróleos de Venezuela, the highly productive oil corporation nationalized in 1975, and its astounding present level of corruption alarmed them. But their principal concern was the destruction of democracy: the confiscation of the major private television broadcaster, Radio Caracas Televisión, and Mr. Chávez’s growing personal domination over the government branches and electoral functions. There was a clear drift toward totalitarianism that Mr. Chávez had foreshadowed in his first visit to Cuba, when he had expressed his wish to be “el todo” — “the embodiment of everything” — as Fidel Castro had become in Cuba.

The death of Mr. Chávez was followed by the anointment (in a monarchical style) of his successor. But nothing prepared Venezuelans for the disaster that followed. There has been terrible economic and social destruction. Across 15 years, a trillion dollars’ worth of oil income has been squandered and 80 percent of Venezuelans have fallen into poverty. The estimated inflation rate for 2017 is 720 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Venezuela has become the Zimbabwe of the Americas, a shameless alliance of corrupt politicians and the military acquiescent to the dictates of Cuba. Some of these leaders are accused of involvement in international drug trafficking. They have kidnapped the Latin American nation that is richest in oil resources, which they wish to appropriate for themselves, permanently and at whatever human cost it may require.

The killings by Mr. Maduro’s government are not yet comparable to the genocidal dictatorships of Chile and Argentina in the 1970s. Nor is the government a carbon copy of the Castro regime, which ended, with one stroke, all autonomous freedoms and institutions and is the longest-lasting dictatorship in modern history.

But the pressure toward totalitarianism by the Maduro government has been met by heroic resistance, recalling the Solidarity movement in Poland and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia but with much greater spilling of blood.

It is impossible to know how all this will end. But there is a potential answer, one that Rómulo Betancourt formulated in 1959 and that has been reaffirmed by the O.A.S. secretary, Luis Almagro, whose valiant leadership has restored the dignity and initiative of the organization. It is recognized in international law as the Betancourt Doctrine:

“Regimes that do not respect human rights and violate the freedoms of their citizens,” it says, “should be submitted to a rigorous quarantine and eradicated through the collective action of the international juridical community.”