Only in 2012 was there an improvement in the continual shortages of many goods and services, but at an extremely high cost, when the Chávez government purchased all sorts of products to grease the votes of its partisans. Venezuela is now suffering an acute shortage of available cash. How can an economy be in such a grave condition when Venezuela has registered more than $800 billion in oil sales?

Much of the explanation lies in the handling of all this oil. In 1998, Venezuela was producing 3.3 million barrels of oil a day. The country was exporting 2.7 million barrels a day and reaping the profits. Production has now fallen to 2.4 million, and only 900,000 barrels — exported daily to the U.S. (the hated “empire”) — is now directly paid for.

With the rest: About 800,000 barrels are consumed internally (so cheaply as to be almost free, and stimulating a lucrative black-market trade in illegal exports); 300,000 go directly to China, as payment for products and the repayment of loans; 100,000 barrels are allocated for the importation of gasoline; and 300,000 to various Caribbean countries that pay (when they do pay) at huge discounts and very protracted terms of payment.

Or they pay — like Cuba, which receives 100,000 barrels daily — with a supply of medical, educational and police personnel. (Cuba benefits so amply from Venezuelan oil that it actually exports some of its received supplies.) Venezuelan oil profits have shrunk by a third since the Chávez government came to power.

Amid the mourning for Chávez , or immediately afterward, a Chavista president will have to confront this reality and explain it to the Venezuelan people. But this president won’t be Chávez himself, the hypnotic Chávez , Chávez the magician, Chávez the leader who used to explain everything, justify and muffle everything.

It is likely that the reaction will be the typical one within Latin American political culture. The people will react with indignation. They will blame the Chavista government for not being at the level of their former leader and representative. They will say that Chávez wouldn’t have permitted this, Chávez would have prevented it. It will be the end of “Chavismo without Chávez .” And a great opportunity for the opposition.

In the last election, the Venezuelan opposition, after long years of errors and inconsistencies, united among themselves and chose an intelligent and courageous leader in Henrique Capriles. He lost to Chávez but did very well, winning almost 7 million votes.

During Chávez ’s physical decline and suffering, the opposition has continued to be critical of the government yet has also showed a noteworthy prudence. And it has done well to do so. Any overflow of vindictive or triumphant passions would be taken as a provocation and lead directly to violence.

If the opposition, after so much time, preserves its cohesion and energy, it could show further gains in the next national elections and recoup its losses, especially once the period of mourning has ended. And this awakening could well be supported by a force of protest that has now somewhat waned but remains latent, that of the Venezuelan students who played a crucial role in defeating a 2007 referendum that would have openly converted Venezuela to the Cuban model of government.

At stake is not only the economic recuperation of a country that has an ocean of now largely wasted oil, but the normalization of democracy, which has been sequestered for almost 14 years by Chávez ’s policies of political “redemption.” At stake is the fundamental possibility of contentious groups living together in a society that has been torn apart by discord, intolerance and a propaganda of hatred, by a devotion to an absolute binomial: friend versus enemy.

Few Latin-American governments have shown such devotion to this distinction. Once the mourning for Chávez has ended, it would be best if this distinction were to vanish from the political scene. Only then can Venezuelans arrive at reconciliation.

Enrique Krauze is a historian and author of “Mexico: A Biography of Power” and of “Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America.”