You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Venezuelans Saw Oil as Their Birthright.

Now Trump Is Claiming It.Long-held beliefs in Venezuela about sovereign control over oil are fraying as the U.S. lays claim to the country’s oil reserves.Sunrise over the Cardón Refinery in Punta Cardón, Venezuela. Oil has shaped Venezuela to an extent rare outside the Middle East, becoming a defining feature of the country’s social fabric.Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York TimesVenezuelans Saw Oil as Their Birthright.

Now Trump Is Claiming It.Long-held beliefs in Venezuela about sovereign control over oil are fraying as the U.S. lays claim to the country’s oil reserves.Sunrise over the Cardón Refinery in Punta Cardón, Venezuela. Oil has shaped Venezuela to an extent rare outside the Middle East, becoming a defining feature of the country’s social fabric.Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York TimesSimon Romero and Isayen HerreraSimon Romero is a former Caracas bureau chief who has covered energy politics across Latin America.

Isayen Herrera reports on Venezuela for The New York Times.Like generations before him, Leonardo Silva grew up steeped in beliefs about the extraordinarily abundant resource that made Venezuela special. All the oil under their feet was theirs, they felt.

Virtually free gasoline was a birthright. To be born atop this bounty was like winning the lottery.Mr.

Silva, 38, said his generation viewed oil as a cornerstone of the country’s national identity, when a booming economy allowed Venezuela to occupy a privileged tier in the global order. His children, he said, have a far less rosy view.“To them oil isn’t important, it’s secondary,” said Mr.

Silva, who works at a foundation in Caracas helping people with disabilities. “They don’t have that culture of us being a rich country. They just know that if you don’t work, you don’t eat.”Oil has shaped Venezuela to an extent that is rare outside the Middle East for more than a century, becoming a defining feature of the social fabric like baseball, beauty pageants or the veneration of the liberation hero Simón Bolívar.But now the U.S. government is taking control of a huge portion of Venezuela’s oil.

And, pressed by economic need, long-held nationalist convictions about oil, starting with the need for sovereign control, are giving way to a more complex web of perspectives.The ways in which Venezuelans are re-evaluating oil, and by extension their reliance on it, are the result of immense upheaval over the last decade. Oil production plummeted because of mismanagement, political purges, corruption and sanctions.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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