This is not some conspiracy theory. There are over 200,000 Cubans in Venezuela that came out of nowhere, many of which are military personnel. Cuban military over the last few months have been regularly patrolling and training on Venezuelan soil. Venezuelans are second-class workers towards often poorly trained Cuban doctors and other social workers, and Cubans have found their ways into positions of power in the Venezuelan government. Heck just a few posts up I posted a leaked Cuban Intelligence call.
There is a reason why there are high-ranking Chavista Army officials resigning after having refused to take orders from Cuban superiors, violence in the recent elections where Venezuelans refused Cubans entry to polling stations, and Venezuelan statesman claiming Venezuela is becoming a colony of Cuba. Those Venezuelan statesman are not wrong in claiming so either, Cuba
is extracting Venezuela's wealth and resources in a very exploitative manner.
Venezuela like many other South American countries is a country with a newly established and still rapidly growing middle class. The Venezuelan middle class depend on electricity for a variety of needs at home not too dissimilar to the west, off the top of my head, they have general lighting, fridges, televisions, computers, microwaves and air conditioning all reliant on electricity. I'd say those are mostly essential to maintaining the Venezuelan living standard. This same middle class often have businesses or work for businesses that require electricity to be productive, these businesses, especially the larger ones, are probably as wasteful in their energy usage as in the West. The Venezuelan poor, the large demographic of people living in the barrios but not in absolute poverty, are just as reliant on lighting, air conditioning, fridges, etc. as the middle class. Overall I think this paints a picture of energy consumption of the typical Venezuelan, not nearly as wasteful as say Americans, but the country does rely on electricity in maintaining it's average standard of living and in maintaining it's economy on both a micro and macro level. Pretty typical really, for a more developed Latin American country of today.
Now for what I personally saw while living in Venezuela is a different story. The story is simple, power outages every day, sometimes multiple times day, lasting for 2-4 hours on average in the cities. In the rural regions and where the barrios are, they regularly went for days without electricity. For my understanding it's gotten worse since leaving the country as well. This daily routine disrupts life in Venezuela, damages electronics, ruins perishable foods, hurts businesses reliant on electricity, reduces productivity and employment, and given that you live next to the equator and are dependent on air conditioning, harmful to health. To even state that Venezuelans are wasteful users of electricity given the current state of affairs in the country is outrageous at the very very least.
The worst part is that I don't see how electricity and power is an issue that even needs to be up for debate in a country like Venezuela. Venezuela is one of the most energy rich countries in the world with huge oil and natural gas reserves and extraordinary natural hydroelectric potential. (Not to mention Chavez' vision for a nuclear power program, though I think that probably died with him) Venezuela should be able power it's entire country with hydroelectricity alone, without the need for using it's oil and gas reserves for power, let alone having regular daily blackouts.
