In Venezuela, meanwhile, the situation was going from intolerable to unsustainable, as the economy flatlined, a humanitarian crisis deepened, and thousands of hungry and hopeless citizens streamed into neighbouring countries each day.

In August, after a failed attempt to assassinate him, Maduro unveiled a supposedly visionary recovery plan to tame hyperinflation and promised “an economic miracle” was on the way. But three months later – when I arrived to cover the 20th anniversary of Hugo Chávez’s election and his ill-fated Bolivarian revolution – I found a country in ruins.

The mood among government opponents – by now most of the population – was funereal. “People do not understand what is happening in Venezuela because it is too hard to believe,” one despairing doctor told me, lamenting how his oil-rich homeland had become “a war-torn nation – without a war”.

None of us knew it then, but within weeks the atmosphere would again shift dramatically.

The new year had hardly started when a young opposition politician called Juan Guaidó shot to fame, declaring himself Venezuela’s rightful leader and promising to force Maduro from power. Yet another historic shake-up appeared on the cards in Latin America.

When we met at his Caracas HQ in February, Guaidó – by that point recognised as Venezuela’s legitimate interim president by most western governments and, crucially, Trump’s White House – fiddled constantly with his smartphone and insisted his push for change was irreversible. Venezuela was heading for a renaissance comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Then came the crippling blackouts that cast millions of Venezuelans into the gloom and Maduro’s position further into question. During a visit to Venezuela’s second city, Maracaibo, we saw post-apocalyptic scenes of destruction and deprivation that offered a spine-chilling glimpse of the country’s possible future.

“I thought it was the start of a civil war,” a traumatised local journalist remembered of the carnival of looting outside her home.

Finally, and equally without warning, came last week’s attempted uprising against Maduro, which catapulted Venezuela back on to the front page and its future into even greater uncertainty.

As I write this from a plaza near Venezuela’s embassy in Mexico City – where portraits of Chávez and Maduro still adorn the walls – some are wondering if Guaidó’s movement is fading – as happened in Nicaragua, despite the initial conviction Ortega was doomed.

But after a year of twists and of turbulence, only a fool would try to forecast what comes next – for Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Amlo’s Mexico, and, least of all, for a Venezuela now claimed by two men.

Latin America is not an “operational concept”, a Brazilian foreign minister once mused, hinting at the unwieldy nature of a vast and complex region containing 33 countries and more than 630 million people.

As I enter my second year here, it’s not a predictable one either.