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Since Hugo Chávez's death in 2013, Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro, Chávez's hand-picked successor, is facing economic and political turmoil. To keep fading Chavismo alive, Venezuela has turned to the Castro brothers for help and probably is getting more than it asked for. As Venezuela's former ambassador to the United Nations, Diego Arria, put it: “Venezuela is an occupied country. The Venezuelan regime is a puppet controlled by the Cubans. It is no longer Cuban tutelage; it is control.” 

After Chávez's death, he was succeeded by Maduro (initially as interim President, before narrowly winning the Venezuelan presidential election in 2013 by 1.49% of the vote). In the parliamentary elections of 2015, the result was a decisive defeat for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which lost control of the Assembly for the first time since 1999. Maduro and his PSVU party are hanging on to control by their fingertips. However, Maduro did appoint new supreme court justices right before the new Congress took office. Thus, they could overturn the opposition's legislation, creating possible government gridlock. 

Venezuela is on the brink of economic default. The country is plagued by electrical blackouts, some neighborhoods go days without water, and protests disrupt the already heavy traffic. Venezuela's economy shrank 7.1% in the third quarter of 2015 and it's been shrinking for seven consecutive quarters going back to the start of 2014. Inflation soared to 141% over the year ending in September 2015 and the International Monetary Fund projects inflation in Venezuela will increase 204% this year.  

The reasons for Venezuela's economic meltdown include the crashing oil prices. (Venezuela's economy depends mostly on oil.) The value of the bolivar, Venezuela's currency, has nosedived. And Venezuelans are bearing the brunt of the economy's problems. For example, the government cannot pay to import basic food items, leaving many supermarkets with empty shelves.  

Maduro was educated and groomed for for the Venezuelan leadership at Cuba's special school for political leadership, Escuela Ñico López, in the 1980s. That's why Maduro turned to Cuba for help. Actually, since his election in 1999, Chávez had already formed a major alliance with Fidel Castro and developed a significant trade relationship with Cuba, which intensified over the years. For example, In October 2000, Chávez and Castro signed the Convenio Integral de Cooperación under which Venezuela would send oil to Cuba and Venezuela would receive technical support in the fields of education, health care, sports, science, and technology. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Cuba controls all the levers of state security and intelligence that help chavismo keep a lid on dissent." This means that not only are there Cuban military personnel present in substantial quantities in Venezuela, but there are Cubans holding high-ranking positions in the Venezuelan government. 

According to the Washington Times, Maduro and other high-ranking officials travel to Cuba when summoned by the Castro brothers, They have been recorded talking about how they planned on following through with Castro's advice to "get rid of these bourgeois elections because [voters] make mistakes [and] here, with elections the way they are, we could be struck down. They could knock the revolution down."  

Gen. Antonio Rivero, a former Chávez ally, was arrested after he publicly denounced the presence of thousands of Cuban military and security personnel assigned to every level of the Venezuelan bureaucracy, up to and including the office of the minister of defense.  

What's next for Venezuela if Maduro's PSUV loses the presidency or the country goes into default? Will there be a Cuban-supported military coup? The U.S. has been accused of supporting the Venezuelan opposition parties. What, if anything, is the U.S. doing about the Cubanization of Venezuela? How will the U.S.-Cuban normalization effect future events in Venezuela?  

The pundits see all this as a tipping point, but probably not toward a more normal, less polarized political and economic future for Venezuela.