As a consequence of Venezuela's significant oil revenue and its high levels of international reserves, the economic crisis that affected most of Latin America with the loss of dynamism of the import-substitution industrialization process at the beginning of the 1970s (Maza Zavala and Malave Mata, 1992: 6) was somewhat delayed in reaching Venezuela. It was only in February 1983, on so-called Black Friday, that an economic crisis was recognized there. On that day, in response to the fall of oil prices in the international market and a massive capital flight that threatened to leave the country without reserves, the government of Luis Herrera Campins lowered the bolivar/dollar exchange rate, which had historically been overvalued. The accumulation model based on the distribution of oil revenue had become exhausted, making substantial changes in the direction of the country's economy unavoidable. Despite the devaluation of the bolivar, however, there was little attempt to develop coherent policies for confronting the crisis, and the decade of the 1980s saw for the most part a succession of governments without clear goals whose inefficiency and corruption prevented them from confronting the deepening crisis. Unaccountably, the repayment of the external debt received priority, and foreign exchange was handed out-in corrupt fashion-at a preferential exchange rate, stimulating private capital flight.' Instead of recognizing that the accumulation model based on oil revenue was exhausted, administrations maintained the fiction via foreign indebtedness (Baptista, 1993: 135):
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Lander et al. (1996) studied this question.