Maria-Elena Pombo has created 'petroleum weavings,' turning threads made from oil into elaborate yarnlike wall hangings. Oil, she told us, has shaped her life. Her father, an oil engineer, met her mother after he moved to Cabimas, an oil town. Because of Venezuela's oil wealth, Pombo, now 37 years old, studied for free at an excellent public university in Caracas. For decades, all Venezuelans enjoyed the perks of living in a land where oil was a birthright. They could fill their cars for almost nothing. Education and other public services were heavily subsidized as well. Academics might argue over the wisdom of the state's largesse. But people expected, at the very least, affordable gas as a material benefit from the nation's abundance of oil. President Trump's military intervention in Venezuela this month was, in part, a bid to seize the source of this wealth. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. Trump made no secret of his desire to exploit them in what many have...
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