Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
, consisting of a
continent
A continent is any of several large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents. Ordered from largest in area to smallest, these seven ...
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...
. It has a territorial extension of , and its population was estimated at 29 million in 2022. The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of
Caracas
Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
.
The continental territory is bordered on the north by the
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...
and the
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...
, on the west by
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
,
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
on the south,
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...
to the north-east and on the east by
Guyana
Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...
. The Venezuelan government maintains a claim against Guyana to
Guayana Esequiba
(), sometimes also called or Essequibo, is a disputed territory of west of the Essequibo River that is administered and controlled by Guyana but claimed by Venezuela.
. Venezuela is a
federal
Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to:
Politics
General
*Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies
*Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...
presidential republic
A presidential system, or single executive system, is a form of government in which a head of government, typically with the title of president, leads an executive branch that is separate from the legislative branch in systems that use separation ...
Capital District
A capital district, capital region or capital territory is normally a specially designated administrative division where a country's seat of government is located. As such, in a federal model of government, no state or territory has any poli ...
and
federal dependencies
The Federal Dependencies of Venezuela ( es, link=no, Dependencias Federales de Venezuela) encompass most of Venezuela's offshore islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Venezuela, excluding those islands that form the State of Nueva Espa ...
covering Venezuela's offshore islands. Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America; the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north and in the capital.
The territory of Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to
declare independence
"Declare Independence" is a song written and recorded by Icelandic singer Björk. The track was released as the third single from her sixth full-length studio album, '' Volta''. The single was released on 1 January 2008. Björk's dedication of ...
from the Spanish and to form part, as a department, of the first federal Republic of Colombia (historiographically known as
Gran Colombia
Gran Colombia (, "Great Colombia"), or Greater Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: ''República de Colombia''), was a state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central America from 1819 to 18 ...
). It separated as a full sovereign country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional military dictators until the mid-20th century. Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments, as an exception where most of the region was ruled by military dictatorships, and the period was characterized by economic prosperity. Economic shocks in the
1980s
File:1980s replacement montage02.PNG, 420px, From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, ''Columbia'', lifts off in 1981; US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ease tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the ...
and 1990s led to major political crises and widespread social unrest, including the deadly
Caracazo
The ''Caracazo'' is the name given to the wave of protests, riots and looting. that started on 27 February 1989 in Guarenas, spreading to Caracas and surrounding towns. The weeklong clashes resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, thousand ...
1998 Venezuelan presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 6 December 1998. The main candidates were Hugo Chávez, a career military officer who led a coup d'état against then-president Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992; and former Carabobo Governor Henriqu ...
, the catalyst for the
Bolivarian Revolution
The Bolivarian Revolution is a political process in Venezuela that was led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement and later the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The Bolivarian Revolution i ...
Constitution of Venezuela
The Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela (CRBV)) is the current and twenty-sixth constitution of Venezuela. It was drafted in mid-1999 by a constituent assembly that h ...
was imposed. The government's
populist
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against " the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term developed ...
social welfare
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet Basic needs, basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refe ...
policies were bolstered by soaring oil prices, temporarily increasing social spending, and reducing
economic inequality
There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...
and poverty in the early years of the regime. However, poverty began to increase in the 2010s. The
2013 Venezuelan presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 14 April 2013 following the death of President Hugo Chávez on 5 March 2013. Nicolás Maduro—who had assumed the role of acting president since Chávez's death—was declared winner with a narrow ...
was widely disputed leading to widespread protest, which triggered another nationwide
crisis
A crisis ( : crises; : critical) is either any event or period that will (or might) lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society. Crises are negative changes in the human or environmental affair ...
that continues to this day. Venezuela has experienced
democratic backsliding
Democratic backsliding, also called autocratization, is the decline in the democratic characteristics of a political system, and is the opposite of democratization. Democracy is the most popular form of government, with more than half of the nat ...
, shifting into an
authoritarian state
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voti ...
freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic News media, media, especially publication, published materials, should be conside ...
and
civil liberties
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may ...
developing country
A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreem ...
and ranks 113th on the
Human Development Index
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, whi ...
. It has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and
cocoa
Cocoa may refer to:
Chocolate
* Chocolate
* ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree
* Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao''
* Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...
, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The excesses and poor policies of the incumbent government led to the collapse of Venezuela's entire economy. The country struggles with record
hyperinflation
In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as t ...
malnutrition
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...
, severe crime and corruption. These factors have precipitated the Venezuelan migrant crisis where more than three million people have fled the country. By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by
credit rating agencies
A credit rating agency (CRA, also called a ratings service) is a company that assigns credit ratings, which rate a debtor's ability to pay back debt by making timely principal and interest payments and the likelihood of default. An agency may ra ...
. The crisis in Venezuela has contributed to a rapidly deteriorating human rights situation, including increased abuses such as torture, arbitrary imprisonment, extrajudicial killings and attacks on human rights advocates. Venezuela is a charter member of the UN,
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
(OAS),
Union of South American Nations
The Union of South American Nations (USAN; es, links=no, Unión de Naciones Suramericanas, UNASUR; pt, links=no, União de Nações Sul-Americanas, UNASUL; nl, links=no, Unie van Zuid-Amerikaanse Naties, UZAN; French: ''Union des nations s ...
(UNASUR),
ALBA
''Alba'' ( , ) is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. It is also, in English language historiography, used to refer to the polity of Picts and Scottish people, Scots united in the ninth century as the Kingdom of Alba, until it developed i ...
,
Mercosur
The Southern Common Market, commonly known by Spanish abbreviation Mercosur, and Portuguese Mercosul, is a South American trade bloc established by the Treaty of Asunción in 1991 and Protocol of Ouro Preto in 1994. Its full members are Argentina ...
,
Latin American Integration Association
The Latin American Integration Association / Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración / Associação Latino-Americana de Integração (LAIA / ALADI) is an international and regional scope organization. It was created on 12 August 1980 by the ...
(LAIA) and
Organization of Ibero-American States
The Organization of Ibero-American States ( es, Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos, pt, Organização de Estados Iberoamericanos, ca, Organització d'Estats Iberoamericans; abbreviated as OEI), formally the Organization of Ibero-American ...
(OEI).
Etymology
According to the most popular and accepted version, in 1499, an expedition led by
Alonso de Ojeda
Alonso de Ojeda (; c. 1466 – c. 1515) was a Spanish explorer, governor and conquistador. He travelled through modern-day Guyana, Venezuela, Trinidad, Tobago, Curaçao, Aruba and Colombia. He navigated with Amerigo Vespucci who is famous ...
visited the Venezuelan coast. The stilt houses in the area of
Lake Maracaibo
Lake Maracaibo (Spanish: Lago de Maracaibo; Anu: Coquivacoa) is a lagoon in northwestern Venezuela, the largest lake in South America and one of the oldest on Earth, formed 36 million years ago in the Andes Mountains. The fault in the northern se ...
reminded the Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, Italy, so he named the region ''Veneziola'', or "Little Venice". The Spanish version of ''Veneziola'' is ''Venezuela''.
Martín Fernández de Enciso
Martín Fernández de Enciso ( 1470 – 1528) was a Spanish lawyer, colonial official and geographer. He was intrumental in the colonization of the Isthmus of Darien, one of Spain's earliest attempts to occupy the mainland of the Americas. His ...
, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew, gave a different account. In his work ''Summa de geografía'', he states that the crew found
indigenous people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
Evidence exists of human habitation in the area now known as Venezuela from about 15,000 years ago. Leaf-shaped tools from this period, together with chopping and plano-convex scraping implements, have been found exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Rio Pedregal in western Venezuela.
Late Pleistocene
The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...
hunting artifacts, including spear tips, have been found at a similar series of sites in northwestern Venezuela known as "El Jobo"; according to
radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was dev ...
, these date from 13,000 to 7,000 BC.
It is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the Spanish conquest; it has been estimated at around one million. In addition to indigenous peoples known today, the population included historical groups such as the
Kalina
Kalina may refer to:
People
* Kalina people, or Caribs, an indigenous people of the northern coastal areas of South America
* Kalina language, or Carib, the language of the Kalina people
* Kalina (given name)
* Kalina (surname)
* Noah Kalina, ...
Caquetio
Caquetio, Caiquetio, or Caiquetia are natives of northwestern Venezuela, living along the shores of Lake Maracaibo at the time of the Spanish conquest. They moved inland to avoid enslavement by the Spaniards, while their numbers were drastically ...
,
Mariche
Mariche is the name of a former native Venezuelan tribe.
Not much information from them as a tribe has survived to the present day. It is known that their descendants lived in what is now called Filas de Mariches, distrito Sucre, Estado Miranda an ...
, and Timoto–Cuicas. The Timoto–Cuica culture was the most complex society in Pre-Columbian Venezuela, with pre-planned permanent villages, surrounded by irrigated, terraced fields. They also stored water in tanks. Their houses were made primarily of stone and wood with thatched roofs. They were peaceful, for the most part, and depended on growing crops. Regional crops included potatoes and
ulluco
''Ullucus'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Basellaceae, with one species, ''Ullucus tuberosus'', a plant grown primarily as a root vegetable, secondarily as a leaf vegetable. The name ''ulluco'' is derived from the Quechua word , ...
s."Venezuela". ''Friends of the Pre-Columbian Art Museum''. (retrieved 9 July 2011) They left behind works of art, particularly anthropomorphic ceramics, but no major monuments. They spun vegetable fibers to weave into textiles and mats for housing. They are credited with having invented the
arepa
''Arepa'' () is a type of food made of ground maize dough stuffed with a filling, eaten in the northern region of South America since pre-Columbian times, and notable primarily in the cuisine of Colombia and Venezuela, but also present in the cuis ...
, a staple in
Venezuelan cuisine
Venezuelan cuisine is influenced by its EuropeanKohnstamm, Thomas; Kohn, Beth"Venezuela."Lonely Planet. Accessed October 2011. (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French), West African, and indigenous traditions. Venezuelan cuisine varies greatly ...
.
After the conquest, the population dropped markedly, mainly through the spread of new infectious diseases from Europe. Two main north–south axes of pre-Columbian population were present, who cultivated maize in the west and
manioc
''Manihot esculenta'', commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively cultivated a ...
in the east. Large parts of the ''
llanos
The Llanos (Spanish ''Los Llanos'', "The Plains"; ) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the tropical and subtropical grasslands, sav ...
'' were cultivated through a combination of
slash and burn
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegeta ...
and permanent settled agriculture.
Colonization
In 1498, during his third voyage to the Americas,
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
* lij, Cristoffa C(or)ombo
* es, link=no, Cristóbal Colón
* pt, Cristóvão Colombo
* ca, Cristòfor (or )
* la, Christophorus Columbus. (; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506) was a ...
sailed near the
Orinoco Delta
The Orinoco Delta is a vast river delta of the Orinoco River, located in eastern Venezuela.
Location
The Orinoco Delta is one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela.
It covers the whole of Delta Amacuro State and a few square kilometers of M ...
and landed in the
Gulf of Paria
The Gulf of Paria ( ; es, Golfo de Paria) is a shallow (180 m at its deepest) semi-enclosed inland sea located between the island of Trinidad (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) and the east coast of Venezuela. It separates the two countries ...
. Amazed by the great offshore current of freshwater which deflected his course eastward, Columbus expressed in a letter to Isabella and Ferdinand that he must have reached Heaven on Earth (terrestrial paradise):
Spain's colonization of mainland Venezuela started in 1522, establishing its first permanent South American settlement in the city of
Cumaná
Cumaná () is the capital city of Venezuela's Sucre State. It is located east of Caracas. Cumaná was one of the first cities founded by Spain in the mainland Americas and is the oldest continuously-inhabited Hispanic-established city in South ...
.
German colonization
In the 16th century, the king of Spain granted a concession in Venezuela to the
Welser
Welser was a Germans, German banking and merchant family, originally a patrician (post-Roman Europe), patrician family based in Augsburg and Nuremberg, that rose to great prominence in international high finance in the 16th century as bankers t ...
family of German bankers and merchants.
Klein-Venedig
(Little Venice) or Welserland (pronunciation vɛl.zɐ.lant was the most significant territory of the German colonization of the Americas, from 1528 to 1546, in which the Welser banking and patrician family of the Free Imperial Cities of Pr ...
became the most extensive initiative in the
German colonization of the Americas
German attempts at the colonization of the Americas consisted of German Venezuela (german: Klein-Venedig, also german: Welser-Kolonie), St. Thomas and Crab Island in the 16th and 17th centuries.
History
Klein-Venedig
''Klein-Venedig'' ( ...
, from 1528 to 1546. The
Welser
Welser was a Germans, German banking and merchant family, originally a patrician (post-Roman Europe), patrician family based in Augsburg and Nuremberg, that rose to great prominence in international high finance in the 16th century as bankers t ...
family of
Augsburg
Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...
and
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
were bankers to the Habsburgs and financiers of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who was also King of Spain and had borrowed heavily from them to pay bribes for his
Imperial election
The election of a Holy Roman Emperor was generally a two-stage process whereby, from at least the 13th century, the King of the Romans was elected by a small body of the greatest princes of the Empire, the prince-electors. This was then followed ...
.
In 1528, Charles V granted the Welsers the right to explore, rule and colonize the territory, as well as to seek the mythical golden town of
El Dorado
El Dorado (, ; Spanish for "the golden"), originally ''El Hombre Dorado'' ("The Golden Man") or ''El Rey Dorado'' ("The Golden King"), was the term used by the Spanish in the 16th century to describe a mythical tribal chief (''zipa'') or king o ...
. The first expedition was led by
Ambrosius Ehinger
Ambrosius Ehinger, also (Ambrosio Alfínger in Spanish) Dalfinger, Thalfinger, (ca. 1500 in Thalfingen near Ulm – 31 May 1533 near Chinácota in modern-day Colombia) was a German conquistador and the first governor of the Welser concessi ...
in 1529. After the deaths of first Ehinger (1533), then
Nikolaus Federmann
Nikolaus Federmann ( es, link=no, Nicolás Féderman, ) (c. 1505, Ulm – February 1542, Valladolid) was a German adventurer and conquistador in what is modern-day Venezuela and Colombia. He is a significant figure in the history of Klein-Venedi ...
, and
Georg von Speyer
Georg von Speyer (1500, Speyer, Holy Roman Empire – 11 June 1540, Coro, Klein-Venedig) was a German conquistador in New Granada and Venezuela. His birth name was Georg Hohermuth but he chose to call himself after his place of birth. He ...
(1540),
Philipp von Hutten
Philipp von Hutten (18 December 1505 – 17 May 1546) was a German adventurer and an early European explorer and conquistador of Venezuela. He is a significant figure in the history of Klein-Venedig (1528 - 1546), the concession of Venezuela Prov ...
persisted in exploring of the interior. In absence of von Hutten from the capital of the province, the crown of Spain claimed the right to appoint a governor. On Hutten's return to the capital,
Santa Ana de Coro
Coro, historically known as Neu-Augsburg, is the capital of Falcón State and the second oldest city of Venezuela (after Cumaná). It was founded on July 26, 1527, by Juan de Ampíes as Santa Ana de Coro. It is established at the south of the Par ...
, in 1546, the Spanish governor
Juan de Carvajal
Juan de Carvajal was a Spanish conquistador and one of the first governors of Venezuela Province.
Carvajal was born in Spain in 1509. He was in Venezuela in the 1540s, a time when territory there had been assigned to the Welser family by the E ...
had Hutten and
Bartholomeus VI. Welser Bartholomeus VI. Welser (''the younger'', 26 October 1512 – c. 17 May 1546) was a member of the Welser banking family, which had acquired the colonial rights to Venezuela Province in 1528 and created Klein-Venedig. He was the son of Bartholom ...
executed. Subsequently,
Charles V Charles V may refer to:
* Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558)
* Charles V of Naples (1661–1700), better known as Charles II of Spain
* Charles V of France (1338–1380), called the Wise
* Charles V, Duke of Lorraine (1643–1690)
* Infan ...
revoked Welser's concession. The Welsers transported German miners to the colony, in addition to 4,000 African
slaves
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
as hard work to paintings
sugar cane
Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalks t ...
plantations. Many of the German colonists died from tropical diseases, to which they had no
immunity
Immunity may refer to:
Medicine
* Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease
* ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press
Biology
* Immune system
Engineering
* Radiofrequence immunity desc ...
cacique
A ''cacique'' (Latin American ; ; feminine form: ''cacica'') was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, the indigenous inhabitants at European contact of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The term is a Spa ...
s'' (leaders) such as
Guaicaipuro
Cacique Guaicaipuro was a legendary native (indigenous) Venezuelan chief of both the Teques and Caracas tribes. Though known today as Guaicaipuro, in documents of the time his name was written Guacaipuro.http://www.saber.ula.ve/bitstream/handle/ ...
() and
Tamanaco
Tamanaco was a native Venezuelan chief, who as leader of the Mariches and Quiriquires tribes led (during part of the 16th century) the resistance against the Spanish conquest of Venezuelan territory in the central region of the country, specially ...
(died 1573) attempted to resist Spanish incursions, but the newcomers ultimately subdued them; Tamanaco was put to death by order of
Caracas
Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
' founder,
Diego de Losada
Diego de Losada y Cabeza de Vaca (1511 – 1569) was a Spanish conquistador and the founder of Santiago de León de Caracas, the current capital of Venezuela.
Losada was born in Rionegro del Puente, in what is now the province of Zamora. H ...
.
In the 16th century, during the Spanish colonization, indigenous peoples such as many of the
Mariches
Mariche is the name of a former native Venezuelan tribe.
Not much information from them as a tribe has survived to the present day. It is known that their descendants lived in what is now called Filas de Mariches, distrito Sucre, Estado Miranda ...
, themselves descendants of the Kalina, were converted to
Roman Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...
. Some of the resisting tribes or leaders are commemorated in place names, including Caracas, Chacao and
Los Teques
Los Teques
) is the capital of the state of Miranda and the municipality of Guaicaipuro Municipality. It is located in the capital region of north-central Venezuela. More specifically, southwest of Caracas, 10° 21' 00" N latitude and 67° 02' 3 ...
. The early colonial settlements focused on the northern coast, but in the mid-18th century, the Spanish pushed farther inland along the
Orinoco River
The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers , with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the wor ...
. Here, the
Ye'kuana
The Ye'kuana, also called Ye'kwana, Ye'Kuana, Yekuana, Yequana, Yecuana, Dekuana, Maquiritare, Makiritare, So'to or Maiongong, are a Cariban-speaking tropical rain-forest tribe who live in the Caura River and Orinoco River regions of Venezuela ...
(then known as the Makiritare) organized serious resistance in 1775 and 1776.
Spain's eastern Venezuelan settlements were incorporated into
New Andalusia Province
New Andalusia Province or Province of Cumaná (1537–1864) was a province of the Spanish Empire, and later of Gran Colombia and Venezuela. It included the territory of present-day Venezuelan states Sucre, Venezuela, Sucre, Anzoátegui and Mon ...
. Administered by the
Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo
The Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo was the first court of the Spanish crown in America. It was created by Ferdinand V of Castile in his decree of 1511, but due to disagreements between the governor of Hispaniola, Diego Colon and the Crown, ...
from the early 16th century, most of Venezuela became part of the
Viceroyalty of New Granada
The Viceroyalty of New Granada ( es, Virreinato de Nueva Granada, links=no ) also called Viceroyalty of the New Kingdom of Granada or Viceroyalty of Santafé was the name given on 27 May 1717, to the jurisdiction of the Spanish Empire in norther ...
in the early 18th century, and was then reorganized as an autonomous
Captaincy General
A captaincy ( es, capitanía , pt, capitania , hr, kapetanija) is a historical administrative division of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. It was instituted as a method of organization, directly associated with the home-rule a ...
starting in 1777. The town of Caracas, founded in the central coastal region in 1567, was well-placed to become a key location, being near the coastal port of
La Guaira
La Guaira () is the capital city of the Venezuelan state of the same name (formerly named Vargas) and the country's main port. It was founded in 1577 as an outlet for Caracas, to the southeast. The town and the port were badly damaged during ...
whilst itself being located in a valley in a mountain range, providing defensive strength against
pirate
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
s and a more fertile and healthy climate.
Independence and 19th century
After a series of unsuccessful uprisings, Venezuela, under the leadership of
Francisco de Miranda
Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez de Espinoza (28 March 1750 – 14 July 1816), commonly known as Francisco de Miranda (), was a Venezuelan military leader and revolutionary. Although his own plans for the independence of the Spani ...
, a Venezuelan marshal who had fought in the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
and the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
First Republic of Venezuela
The First Republic of Venezuela ( es, Primera República de Venezuela) was the first independent government of Venezuela, lasting from 5 July 1811, to 25 July 1812. The period of the First Republic began with the overthrow of the Spanish colonial ...
on 5 July 1811. This began the
Venezuelan War of Independence
The Venezuelan War of Independence ( es, Guerra de Independencia de Venezuela, links=no, 1810–1823) was one of the Spanish American wars of independence of the early nineteenth century, when independence movements in Latin America fought agai ...
llanero
A (, ‘plainsman’) is a South American herder. The name is taken from the Llanos grasslands occupying eastern Colombia and western-central Venezuela.
During the Spanish American wars of independence, lancers and cavalry served in both ar ...
s'', helped bring down the republic.
Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios (24 July 1783 – 17 December 1830) was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and B ...
, new leader of the independentist forces, launched his
Admirable Campaign
The Admirable Campaign () was a military action led by Simón Bolívar in which the provinces of Mérida, Barinas, Trujillo and Caracas were conquered by the Patriots.Arana, M., 2013, Bolivar, New York: Simon & Schuster, Its objective was to fr ...
in 1813 from New Granada, retaking most of the territory and being proclaimed as ''El Libertador'' ("The Liberator"). A second Venezuelan republic was proclaimed on 7 August 1813, but lasted only a few months before being crushed at the hands of
royalist
A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of governme ...
caudillo
José Tomás Boves
José Tomás Boves (Oviedo, Asturias, September 18, 1782 – Urica, Venezuela, December 5, 1814), was a royalist caudillo of the Llanos during the Venezuelan War of Independence, particularly remembered for his use of brutality and atrociti ...
and his personal army of ''llaneros''.
The end of the French invasion of homeland Spain in 1814 allowed the preparation of a large expeditionary force to the American provinces under general
Pablo Morillo
Pablo Morillo y Morillo, Count of Cartagena and Marquess of La Puerta, a.k.a. ''El Pacificador'' (The Peace Maker) (5 May 1775 – 27 July 1837) was a Spanish general.
Biography
Morillo was born in Fuentesecas, Zamora, Spain. In 1791 ...
, with the goal to regain the lost territory in Venezuela and New Granada. As the war reached a stalemate on 1817, Bolívar reestablished the
Third Republic of Venezuela
The Third Republic of Venezuela ( es, Tercera República de Venezuela) is the reestablished Republic of Venezuela declared by Simón Bolívar in the year 1817, during the Venezuelan War of Independence. The beginning of the Third Republic of Ve ...
on the territory still controlled by the patriots, mainly in the Guayana and
Llanos
The Llanos (Spanish ''Los Llanos'', "The Plains"; ) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the tropical and subtropical grasslands, sav ...
regions. This republic was short-lived as only two years later, during the
Congress of Angostura
The Congress of Angostura was convened by Simón Bolívar and took place in Angostura (today Ciudad Bolívar) during the wars of Independence of Colombia and Venezuela, culminating in the proclamation of the Republic of Colombia (historiograph ...
of 1819, the union of Venezuela with New Granada was decreed to form the Republic of Colombia (historiographically
Republic of Gran Colombia
Gran Colombia (, "Great Colombia"), or Greater Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: ''República de Colombia''), was a state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central America from 1819 to 18 ...
). The war continued for some years, until full victory and
sovereignty
Sovereignty is the defining authority within individual consciousness, social construct, or territory. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within the state, as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the perso ...
was attained after Bolívar, aided by
José Antonio Páez
José Antonio Páez Herrera (; 13 June 1790 – 6 May 1873) was a Venezuelan leader who fought against the Spanish Crown for Simón Bolívar during the Venezuelan War of Independence. He later led Venezuela's independence from Gran Colombia.
H ...
and
Antonio José de Sucre
Antonio José de Sucre y Alcalá (; 3 February 1795 – 4 June 1830), known as the "Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho" ( en, "Grand Marshal of Ayacucho"), was a Venezuelan independence leader who served as the president of Peru and as the second pr ...
, won the
Battle of Carabobo
The Battle of Carabobo, on 24 June 1821, was fought between independence fighters, led by Venezuelan General Simón Bolívar, and the Royalist forces, led by Spanish Field Marshal Miguel de la Torre. Bolívar's decisive victory at Carabobo led ...
on 24 June 1821. On 24 July 1823,
José Prudencio Padilla
Admiral José Prudencio Padilla López (19 March 1784, in Riohacha, – 2 October 1828) was a Neogranadine military leader who fought in the Spanish American wars of independence. He is best known for his victory in the Battle of Lake Mara ...
and
Rafael Urdaneta
Rafael José Urdaneta y Farías (October 24, 1788 – August 23, 1845) was a Venezuelan General and hero of the Spanish American wars of independence. He served as President of Gran Colombia from 1830 until 1831. He was an ardent supporter ...
helped seal Venezuelan independence with their victory in the
Battle of Lake Maracaibo
The Battle of Lake Maracaibo also known as the "Naval Battle of the Lake" was fought on 24 July 1823 on Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo between fleets under the commands of Republican Admiral José Prudencio Padilla and royalist Captain Ángel Labo ...
. New Granada's congress gave Bolívar control of the Granadian army; leading it, he liberated several countries and founded the Republic of Colombia (
Gran Colombia
Gran Colombia (, "Great Colombia"), or Greater Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: ''República de Colombia''), was a state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central America from 1819 to 18 ...
).
Sucre, who won many battles for Bolívar, went on to liberate
Ecuador
Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...
and later become the second president of
Bolivia
, image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg
, flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center
, flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
. Venezuela remained part of Gran Colombia until 1830, when a rebellion led by Páez allowed the proclamation of a newly independent Venezuela, on 22 September; Páez became the first president of the new
State of Venezuela
("God and Federation") (since 1863)
, national_anthem =
, common_languages = Spanish
, religion =
, currency = Venezuelan peso
, leader1 = José Antonio Páez
, leader2 = Ju ...
. Between one-quarter and one-third of Venezuela's population was lost during these two decades of warfare (including perhaps one-half of the
Venezuelans of European descent
European Venezuelans or White Venezuelans are Venezuelan citizens who self-identify in the national census as white, tracing their heritage to European ethnic groups. According to the official census report, although "white" literally involves ...
Library of Congress Country Studies
The Country Studies are works published by the Federal Research Division of the United States Library of Congress, freely available for use by researchers. No copyright is claimed on them. Therefore, they have been dedicated to the public domain a ...
.
The colors of the
Venezuelan flag
The current eight stars flag of Venezuela was introduced in 2006. The basic design includes a horizontal tricolour flag, tricolour of yellow, blue, and red, dating to the original flag introduced in 1811, in the Venezuelan War of Independence.
F ...
are yellow, blue, and red: the yellow stands for land wealth, the blue for the sea that separates Venezuela from Spain, and the red for the blood shed by the heroes of independence.
Slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
in Venezuela was abolished in 1854. Much of Venezuela's 19th-century history was characterized by political turmoil and dictatorial rule, including the Independence leader José Antonio Páez, who gained the presidency three times and served a total of 11 years between 1830 and 1863. This culminated in the
Federal War
The Federal War ( es, Guerra Federal) — also known as the Great War or the Five Year War — was a civil war (1859–1863) in Venezuela between the Conservative party and the Liberal party over the monopoly the Conservatives held over governm ...
(1859–1863), a civil war in which hundreds of thousands died in a country with a population of not much more than a million people. In the latter half of the century,
Antonio Guzmán Blanco
Antonio José Ramón de La Trinidad y María Guzmán Blanco (28 February 1829 – 28 July 1899) was a Venezuelan military leader, statesman, diplomat and politician. He was the president of Venezuela for three separate terms, from 1870 until 1 ...
, another ''caudillo'', served a total of 13 years between 1870 and 1887, with three other presidents interspersed.
In 1895, a longstanding dispute with Great Britain about the territory of Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of
British Guiana
British Guiana was a British colony, part of the mainland British West Indies, which resides on the northern coast of South America. Since 1966 it has been known as the independent nation of Guyana.
The first European to encounter Guiana was S ...
and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory, erupted into the
Venezuela Crisis of 1895
The Venezuelan crisis of 1895 occurred over Venezuela's longstanding dispute with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland about the territory of Essequibo and Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela ...
. The dispute became a diplomatic crisis when Venezuela's lobbyist, William L. Scruggs, sought to argue that British behavior over the issue violated the United States'
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was a United States foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile ac ...
of 1823, and used his influence in Washington, D.C., to pursue the matter. Then, U.S. president
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...
adopted a broad interpretation of the doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies, but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere. Britain ultimately accepted arbitration, but in negotiations over its terms was able to persuade the U.S. on many of the details. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the issue and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.
In 1899,
Cipriano Castro
José Cipriano Castro Ruiz (12 October 1858 – 4 December 1924) was a high-ranking member of the Venezuelan military, politician and the president of Venezuela from 1899 to 1908. He was the first man from the Andes to rule the country, and was ...
, assisted by his friend
Juan Vicente Gómez
Juan Vicente Gómez Chacón (24 July 1857 – 17 December 1935) was a Venezuelan military general
A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air ...
, seized power in Caracas, marching an army from his base in the Andean state of
Táchira
Táchira State ( es, Estado Táchira, ) is one of the 24 states of Venezuela. The state capital is San Cristóbal.
Táchira State covers a total surface area of and as of the 2011 census, had a population of 1,168,908. At the end of the 19t ...
. Castro defaulted on Venezuela's considerable foreign debts and declined to pay compensation to foreigners caught up in Venezuela's civil wars. This led to the
Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
, in which Britain, Germany and Italy imposed a naval blockade of several months before international arbitration at the new
Permanent Court of Arbitration
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) is a non-UN intergovernmental organization located in The Hague, Netherlands. Unlike a judicial court in the traditional sense, the PCA provides services of arbitral tribunal to resolve disputes that arise ...
in
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
was agreed. In 1908, another dispute broke out with the Netherlands, which was resolved when Castro left for medical treatment in Germany and was promptly overthrown by
Juan Vicente Gómez
Juan Vicente Gómez Chacón (24 July 1857 – 17 December 1935) was a Venezuelan military general
A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air ...
(1908–1935).
20th century
The discovery of massive
oil deposits
A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations.
Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presence ...
in Lake Maracaibo during World War I proved to be pivotal for Venezuela and transformed the basis of its economy from a heavy dependence on agricultural exports. It prompted an economic boom that lasted into the 1980s; by 1935, Venezuela's per capita gross domestic product was Latin America's highest. Gómez benefited handsomely from this, as corruption thrived, but at the same time, the new source of income helped him centralize the Venezuelan state and develop its authority.
He remained the most powerful man in Venezuela until his death in 1935, although at times he ceded the presidency to others. The ''gomecista'' dictatorship (1935–1945) system largely continued under
Eleazar López Contreras
José Eleazar López Contreras (5 May 1883 – 2 January 1973) was the president of Venezuela between 1935 and 1941. He was an army general and one of Juan Vicente Gómez's collaborators, serving as his War Minister from 1931. In 1939, López C ...
, but from 1941, under
Isaías Medina Angarita
Isaías Medina Angarita (6 July 1897 – 15 September 1953) was a Venezuelan military and political leader, the president of Venezuela from 1941 until 1945, during World War II. He followed the path of his predecessor Eleazar López Contreras ...
, was relaxed. Angarita granted a range of reforms, including the legalization of all political parties. After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, immigration from Southern Europe (mainly from Spain,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
, Portugal, and France) and poorer Latin American countries markedly diversified Venezuelan society.
In 1945, a civilian-military coup overthrew Medina Angarita and ushered in a three-year period of democratic rule (1945–1948) under the mass membership party Democratic Action, initially under
Rómulo Betancourt
Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (22 February 1908 – 28 September 1981; ), known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was the president of Venezuela, serving from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of Acción De ...
, until
Rómulo Gallegos
Rómulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 – 5 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of nine months during 1948, he governed as the first freely elected president in Venezuela's history. He was ...
won the 1947 Venezuelan presidential election (generally believed to be the first free and fair elections in Venezuela). Gallegos governed until overthrown by a military junta led by the triumvirate ,
Marcos Pérez Jiménez
Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez (25 April 1914 – 20 September 2001) was a Venezuelan military and general officer of the Army of Venezuela and the dictator of Venezuela from 1950 to 1958, ruling as member of the military junta from 195 ...
, and Gallegos' Defense Minister,
Carlos Delgado Chalbaud
Carlos Román Delgado Chalbaud Gómez (20 January 1909 – 13 November 1950) was a Venezuelan career military officer. He was the president of Venezuela from 1948 to 1950 as leader of a military junta. In 1945, he was one of the high-ranking o ...
, in the 1948 Venezuelan ''coup d'état''.
The most powerful man in the military ''junta'' (1948–1958) was Pérez Jiménez (though Chalbaud was its titular president) and was suspected of being behind the death in office of Chalbaud, who died in a bungled kidnapping in 1950. When the junta unexpectedly lost the election it held in 1952, it ignored the results and Pérez Jiménez was installed as president, where he remained until 1958.
The military dictator Pérez Jiménez was forced out on 23 January 1958. In an effort to consolidate a young democracy, the three major political parties (
Acción Democrática
Democratic Action ( es, Acción Democrática, AD) is a Venezuelan social democratic and centre-left political party established in 1941.
The party played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, leading the government durin ...
Unión Republicana Democrática
The Democratic Republican Union ( es, Unión Republicana Democrática, URD) is a Venezuelan political party founded in 1945.
History
When the party appeared on course to win the 1952 election for a constituent assembly, then-dictator Marcos ...
(URD), with the notable exception of the
Communist Party of Venezuela
The Communist Party of Venezuela ( es, Partido Comunista de Venezuela, PCV) is a communist party and the oldest continuously existing party in Venezuela. It was the main leftist political party in Venezuela from its foundation in 1931 until it ...
), signed the
Puntofijo Pact
The Puntofijo Pact (or Punto Fijo Pact) was a formal arrangement arrived at between representatives of Venezuela's three main political parties in 1958, Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI (Social Christian Party), and Unión Republicana Democr ...
power-sharing agreement. The two first parties would dominate the political landscape for four decades.
During the presidencies of
Rómulo Betancourt
Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (22 February 1908 – 28 September 1981; ), known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was the president of Venezuela, serving from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of Acción De ...
(1959–1964, his second term) and
Raúl Leoni
Raúl Leoni Otero (26 April 1905 – 5 July 1972) was the president of Venezuela from 1964 until 1969. He was a member of the Generation of 1928 and a charter member of the Acción Democrática party, and the first Labor minister of Venezuela (d ...
Rafael Caldera
Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez ( (); 24 January 1916 – 24 December 2009), twice elected the president of Venezuela, served for two five-year terms (1969–1974 and 1994–1999), becoming the longest serving democratically elected leade ...
's first presidency (1969–1974); Caldera had won the 1968 election for COPEI, being the first time a party other than Democratic Action took the presidency through a democratic election. The new democratic order had its antagonists. Betancourt suffered an attack planned by the Dominican dictator
Rafael Trujillo
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina ( , ; 24 October 189130 May 1961), nicknamed ''El Jefe'' (, "The Chief" or "The Boss"), was a Dominican dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic from February 1930 until his assassination in May 1961. He ser ...
in 1960, and the leftists excluded from the Pact initiated an armed insurgency by organizing themselves in the Armed Forces of National Liberation, sponsored by the Communist Party and Fidel Castro. In 1962 they tried to destabilize the military corps, with failed revolts in Carúpano and Puerto Cabello. At the same time, Betancourt promoted a foreign policy, the
Betancourt Doctrine
The Rómulo Betancourt Doctrine is a doctrine of foreign policy promoted by the president of Venezuela Rómulo Betancourt that establishes the rupture of diplomatic relations with governments without democratic and dictatorial origins.
History
Whe ...
, in which he only recognized elected governments by popular vote.The election in 1973 of
Carlos Andrés Pérez
Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (27 October 1922 – 25 December 2010) also known as CAP and often referred to as '' El Gocho'' (due to his Andean origins), was a Venezuelan politician and the president of Venezuela from 12 March 1974 to 12 M ...
coincided with an oil crisis, in which Venezuela's income exploded as oil prices soared; oil industries were nationalized in 1976. This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standards of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability.
In the 1980s, the Presidential Commission for State Reform (COPRE) emerged as a mechanism of political innovation. Venezuela was preparing for the decentralization of its political system and the diversification of its economy, reducing the large size of the State. The COPRE operated as an innovation mechanism, also by incorporating issues into the political agenda that were generally excluded from public deliberation by the main actors of the Venezuelan democratic system. The most discussed topics were incorporated into the public agenda: decentralization, political participation, municipalization, judicial order reforms and the role of the State in a new economic strategy. The social reality of the country made the changes difficult to apply.
Economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis. Hundreds of people were killed by Venezuelan security forces and the military in the ''
Caracazo
The ''Caracazo'' is the name given to the wave of protests, riots and looting. that started on 27 February 1989 in Guarenas, spreading to Caracas and surrounding towns. The weeklong clashes resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, thousand ...
'' riots of 1989 during the presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989–1993, his second term) and after the implementation of economic austerity measures.
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republ ...
, who in 1982 had promised to depose the bipartisanship governments, used the growing anger at economic austerity measures to justify a coup d'état attempt in February 1992; a second coup d'état attempt occurred in November. President Carlos Andrés Pérez (re-elected in 1988) was impeached under embezzlement charges in 1993, leading to the interim presidency of
Ramón José Velásquez
Ramón José Velásquez Mujica (28 November 1916 – 24 June 2014) was a Venezuelan politician, historian, journalist, and lawyer. He served as the president of Venezuela between 1993 and 1994.
Background and personal life
Velásquez was born ...
(1993–1994). Coup leader Chávez was pardoned in March 1994 by president Rafael Caldera (1994–1999, his second term), with a clean slate and his political rights reinstated, allowing Chávez to win and maintain the presidency continuously from 1999 until his death in 2013. Chávez won the elections of 1998, 2000, 2006 and 2012 and the presidential referendum of 2004. The only gaps in his presidency occurred during the two-day de facto government of
Pedro Carmona Estanga
Pedro Francisco Carmona Estanga (born 6 July 1941) is a former Venezuelan business leader who was briefly installed as acting president of Venezuela in place of Hugo Chávez, following the attempted military coup in April 2002.Diosdado Cabello Rondón acted as interim president for a few hours.
Bolivarian government: 1999–present
The Bolivarian Revolution refers to a
left-wing populism
Left-wing populism, also called social populism, is a political ideology that combines left-wing politics with populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric often consists of anti-elitism, opposition to the Establishment, and speaking for the "comm ...
social movement
A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may ...
and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republ ...
, who founded the
Fifth Republic Movement
The Fifth Republic Movement (Spanish: ''Movimiento V uintaRepública'', MVR) was a socialist political party in Venezuela. It was founded in July 1997, following a national congress of the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200, to support the ca ...
in 1997 and the
United Socialist Party of Venezuela
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela ( es, Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, PSUV) is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left Socialism, socialist political party which has been the ruling party of Venezuela since ...
in 2007. The "Bolivarian Revolution" is named after
Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios (24 July 1783 – 17 December 1830) was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and B ...
, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the
Spanish American wars of independence
The Spanish American wars of independence (25 September 1808 – 29 September 1833; es, Guerras de independencia hispanoamericanas) were numerous wars in Spanish America with the aim of political independence from Spanish rule during the early ...
in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule. According to Chávez and other supporters, the "Bolivarian Revolution" seeks to build a mass movement to implement
Bolivarianism
Bolivarianism is a mix of panhispanic, socialist and national-patriotic ideals named after Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century Venezuelan general and liberator from the Spanish monarchy then in abeyance, who led the struggle for independence thr ...
—
popular democracy
: ''Not to be mistaken with Irish or Marxist-Leninist People's Democracy. For the Italian party see Popular Democracy (United Left). For the Ecuatorian party see Christian Democratic Union (Ecuador)''
Popular democracy is a notion of direct demo ...
, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption—in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar's ideas from a
populist
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against " the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term developed ...
perspective, using
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
rhetoric.
Hugo Chávez: 1999–2013
A collapse in confidence in the existing parties led to Chávez being elected president in 1998 and the subsequent launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999
constituent assembly
A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...
to write a new Constitution of Venezuela. Chávez also initiated
Bolivarian missions
The Bolivarian missions are a series of over thirty social programs implemented under the administration of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and continued by Chávez's successor, Nicolás Maduro. The programs focus on helping the mos ...
, programs aimed at helping the poor.
In April 2002, Chávez was briefly ousted from power in the
2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt
A failed coup d'état on 11 April 2002 saw the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, ousted from office for 47 hours before being restored to power. Chávez was aided in his return to power by popular support and mobilization against the coup b ...
following popular demonstrations by his opponents, but Chavez returned to power after two days as a result of demonstrations by poor Chávez supporters in Caracas and actions by the military.
Chávez also remained in power after an all-out national strike that lasted from December 2002 to February 2003, including a strike/lockout in the state oil company
PDVSA
Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA, ) (English: Petroleum of Venezuela) is the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company. It has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil as well as exploration and production ...
.
Capital flight
Capital flight, in economics, occurs when assets or money rapidly flow out of a country, due to an event of economic consequence or as the result of a political event such as regime change or economic globalization. Such events could be an increas ...
before and during the strike led to the reimposition of currency controls (which had been abolished in 1989), managed by the
CADIVI
The National Center for Foreign Commerce ( es, Centro Nacional de Comercio Exterior, CENCOEX), formerly the Commission for the Administration of Currency Exchange (Comisión de Administración de Divisas CADIVI), is the Venezuelan government body ...
agency. In the subsequent decade, the government was forced into several currency devaluations."Venezuela The homecoming" Economist.com (23 February 2013). Retrieved on 20 April 2013.Farzad, Roben. (15 February 2013 "Venezuela's Double-Edged Devaluation" Businessweek.com. Retrieved on 20 April 2013. These devaluations have done little to improve the situation of the Venezuelan people who rely on imported products or locally produced products that depend on imported inputs while dollar-denominated oil sales account for the vast majority of Venezuela's exports. According to Sebastian Boyd writing at
Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg Televi ...
, the profits of the oil industry have been lost to "social engineering" and corruption, instead of investments needed to maintain oil production.
Chávez survived several further political tests, including an August 2004 recall referendum. He was elected for another term in December 2006 and re-elected for a third term in October 2012. However, he was never sworn in for his third period, due to medical complications. Chávez died on 5 March 2013 after a nearly two-year fight with cancer. The presidential election that took place on Sunday, 14 April 2013, was the first since Chávez took office in 1999 in which his name did not appear on the ballot.
Nicolás Maduro
= 2013–2018
=
Poverty and inflation began to increase into the 2010s.Charlie Devereux & Raymond Colitt. 7 March 2013.
Nicolás Maduro
Nicolás Maduro Moros (; born 23 November 1962) is a Venezuelan politician and president of Venezuela since 2013, with his presidency under dispute since 2019.
Beginning his working life as a bus driver, Maduro rose to become a trade unio ...
was elected in 2013 after the death of Chavez. Chavez picked Maduro as his successor and appointed him vice president in 2013. Maduro was elected president in a shortened election in 2013 following Chavez's death.
Nicolás Maduro has been the
president of Venezuela
The president of Venezuela ( es, Presidente de Venezuela), officially known as the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is the head of state and head of government in Ven ...
Henrique Capriles Radonski
Henrique Capriles Radonski (; born 11 July 1972) is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer, who served as the 36th Governor of Miranda from 2008 to 2017.
Born in Caracas, he received a degree in law from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, ...
, who had 49.12% of the votes. The
Democratic Unity Roundtable
The Democratic Unity Roundtable ( es, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, MUD) was a catch-all electoral coalition of Venezuelan political parties formed in January 2008 to unify the opposition to President Hugo Chávez's United Socialist Party of ...
contested his election as fraud and as a violation of the constitution. An audit of 56% of the vote showed no discrepancies, and the
Supreme Court of Venezuela
The Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela was Venezuela's highest court until the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela replaced it with the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.
Under the 1961 Constitution of Venezuela, Supreme Court justices were elected by jo ...
ruled that under Venezuela's Constitution, Nicolás Maduro was the legitimate president and was invested as such by the Venezuelan
National Assembly
In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...
(Asamblea Nacional). Opposition leaders and some international media consider the government of Maduro to be a dictatorship. Since February 2014, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have protested over high levels of criminal violence, corruption, hyperinflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods due to policies of the federal government. Demonstrations and riots have resulted in over 40 fatalities in the unrest between Chavistas and opposition protesters and opposition leaders, including
Leopoldo López
Leopoldo Eduardo López Mendoza (born 29 April 1971) is a Venezuelan opposition leader. He co-founded the political party Primero Justicia in 2000 with Henrique Capriles and Julio Borges and was elected mayor of the Chacao Municipality of Carac ...
and
Antonio Ledezma
Antonio José Ledezma Díaz (born 1 May 1955) is a Venezuelan lawyer, politician and former political prisoner. After unsuccessfully challenging for the leadership of Democratic Action in 1999, he founded a new party, the Fearless People's Al ...
were arrested. Human rights groups condemned the arrest of
Leopoldo López
Leopoldo Eduardo López Mendoza (born 29 April 1971) is a Venezuelan opposition leader. He co-founded the political party Primero Justicia in 2000 with Henrique Capriles and Julio Borges and was elected mayor of the Chacao Municipality of Carac ...
. In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, the opposition gained a majority.
Venezuela devalued its currency in February 2013 due to rising shortages in the country,which included those of milk, flour, and other necessities. This led to an increase in malnutrition, especially among children. Venezuela's economy had become strongly dependent on the exportation of oil, with crude accounting for 86% of exports, and a high price per barrel to support social programs. Beginning in 2014 the
price of oil
The price of oil, or the oil price, generally refers to the spot price of a barrel () of benchmark crude oil—a reference price for buyers and sellers of crude oil such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), Brent Crude, Dubai Crude, OPEC Ref ...
plummeted from over $100/bbl to $40/bbl a year and a half later. This placed pressure on the Venezuelan economy, which was no longer able to afford vast social programs. To counter the decrease in oil prices, the Venezuelan Government began taking more money from
PDVSA
Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA, ) (English: Petroleum of Venezuela) is the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company. It has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil as well as exploration and production ...
, the state oil company, to meet budgets, resulting in a lack of reinvestment in fields and employees. Venezuela's oil production decreased from its height of nearly per day. In 2014, Venezuela entered an
economic recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by various ...
. In 2015, Venezuela had the world's highest inflation rate with the rate surpassing 100%, which was the highest in the country's history. In 2017,
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
's administration imposed more
economic sanctions
Economic sanctions are commercial and financial penalties applied by one or more countries against a targeted self-governing state, group, or individual. Economic sanctions are not necessarily imposed because of economic circumstances—they may ...
against Venezuela's state-owned oil company
PDVSA
Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA, ) (English: Petroleum of Venezuela) is the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company. It has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil as well as exploration and production ...
and Venezuelan officials. Economic problems, as well as crime and corruption, were some of the main causes of the 2014–present Venezuelan protests. Since 2014, roughly 5.6 million people have fled Venezuela.
In January 2016, President Maduro decreed an "economic emergency", revealing the extent of the crisis and expanding his powers. In July 2016, Colombian border crossings were temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household and health items in Colombia. In September 2016, a study published in the Spanish-language ''
Diario Las Américas
''Diario las Américas'' is the first Spanish-language newspaper founded in South Florida, the second oldest in the United States dedicated to Spanish-speaking readers, after ''La Opinión'', in Los Angeles.
Its first copy circulated on July 4, ...
'' indicated that 15% of Venezuelans are eating "
food waste
Food loss and waste is food that is not eaten. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous and occur throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Overall, about o ...
discarded by commercial establishments".
Close to 200 riots had occurred in Venezuelan prisons by October 2016, according to Una Ventana a la Libertad, an advocacy group for better prison conditions. The father of an inmate at Táchira Detention Center in Caracas alleged that his son was cannibalized by other inmates during a month-long riot, a claim corroborated by an anonymous police source but denied by the Minister of Correctional Affairs.
In 2017, Venezuela experienced a constitutional crisis in the country. In March 2017, opposition leaders branded President Maduro a dictator after the Maduro-aligned Supreme Tribunal, which had been overturning most
National Assembly
In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...
decisions since the opposition took control of the body, took over the functions of the assembly, pushing a lengthy political standoff to new heights. The Supreme Court backed down and reversed its decision on 1 April 2017. A month later, President Maduro announced the
2017 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election
Constituent Assembly elections were held in Venezuela on 30 July 2017 to elect the members of the 2017 Constituent National Assembly ( es, Asamblea Nacional Constituyente; ANC). Unlike the 1999 Constituent National Assembly, which was assembled ...
and on 30 August 2017, the 2017 Constituent National Assembly was elected into office and quickly stripped the National Assembly of its powers.
In December 2017, President Maduro declared that leading opposition parties would be barred from taking part in the following year's presidential vote after they boycotted mayoral polls.
= Since 2018
=
Maduro won the 2018 election with 67.8% of the vote. The result was challenged by countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, France and the United States who deemed it fraudulent and moved to recognize
Juan Guaidó
Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez (born 28 July 1983) is a Venezuelan politician, a former member of the Social democracy, social-democratic Popular Will party, and federal deputy to the National Assembly (Venezuela), National Assembly representing ...
as president. Other countries including Cuba, China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran continued to recognize Maduro as president, although China, facing financial pressure over its position, reportedly began hedging its position by decreasing loans given, cancelling joint ventures, and signaling willingness to work with all parties. A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman denied the reports, describing them as "false information".
In January 2019 the Permanent Council of the
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
(OAS) approved a resolution "to not recognize the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro's new term as of the 10th of January of 2019".
In August 2019, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose a total economic embargo against Venezuela. In March 2020, the Trump administration indicted Maduro and several Venezuelan officials, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Tribunal, on charges of drug trafficking,
narcoterrorism
Narcoterrorism, in its original context, is understood to refer to the attempts of narcotics traffickers to influence the policies of a government or a society through violence and intimidation, and to hinder the enforcement of anti-drug laws by t ...
, and corruption.
In June 2020, a report by the US organisation
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (formerly the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, or RFK Center) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) nonprofit human rights advocacy organization. It was named after U.S. Senate, Uni ...
documented
enforced disappearance
An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organiza ...
s in Venezuela that occurred in the years 2018 and 2019. During the period, 724 enforced disappearances of political detainees were reported. The report stated that Venezuelan security forces subjected victims, who had been disappeared, to illegal interrogation processes accompanied by torture and cruel or inhuman treatment. The report stated that the Venezuelan government strategically used enforced disappearances to silence political opponents and other critical voices it deemed a threat.
Geography
Venezuela is located in the north of South America; geologically, its mainland rests on the
South American Plate
The South American Plate is a major tectonic plate which includes the continent of South America as well as a sizable region of the Atlantic Ocean seabed extending eastward to the African Plate, with which it forms the southern part of the Mid-A ...
. It has a total area of and a land area of , making Venezuela the 33rd largest country in the world. The territory it controls lies between latitudes 0° and 16°N and longitudes 59° and 74°W.
Shaped roughly like a triangle, the country has a coastline in the north, which includes numerous islands in the Caribbean and the northeast borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Most observers describe Venezuela in terms of four fairly well defined
topographical
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.
Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...
regions: the
Maracaibo lowlands
The Maracaibo Basin, also known as Lake Maracaibo natural region, Lake Maracaibo depression or Lake Maracaibo Lowlands, is a foreland basin and one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela, found in the northwestern corner of Venezuela in South ...
in the northwest, the northern mountains extending in a broad east–west arc from the Colombian border along the northern Caribbean coast, the wide plains in central Venezuela, and the
Guiana Highlands
The Guianas, sometimes called by the Spanish loan-word ''Guayanas'' (''Las Guayanas''), is a region in north-eastern South America which includes the following three territories:
* French Guiana, an overseas department and region of France
* ...
in the southeast.
The northern mountains are the extreme northeastern extensions of South America's Andes mountain range.
Pico Bolívar
Pico Bolívar is the highest mountain in Venezuela, at 4,978 metres (16,332 ft).Pérez et al (Sep. 2005)"Alturas del Pico Bolívar y otras cimas andinas venezolanas a partir de observaciones Gps."INCI v.30, n.4, Caracas sep. 2005. Retrieved ...
, the nation's highest point at , lies in this region. To the south, the dissected
Guiana Highlands
The Guianas, sometimes called by the Spanish loan-word ''Guayanas'' (''Las Guayanas''), is a region in north-eastern South America which includes the following three territories:
* French Guiana, an overseas department and region of France
* ...
contain the northern fringes of the Amazon Basin and
Angel Falls
Angel Falls ( es, Salto Ángel; Pemon language: ''Kerepakupai Merú'' meaning "waterfall of the deepest place", or ''Parakupá Vená'', meaning "the fall from the highest point") is a waterfall in Venezuela.
It is the List of waterfalls by hei ...
, the world's highest waterfall, as well as ''
tepui
A tepui , or tepuy (), is a table-top mountain or mesa found in South America, especially in Venezuela and western Guyana. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran S ...
s'', large table-like mountains. The country's center is characterized by the ''llanos'', which are extensive plains that stretch from the Colombian border in the far west to the Orinoco River
delta
Delta commonly refers to:
* Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet
* River delta, at a river mouth
* D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta")
* Delta Air Lines, US
* Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19
Delta may also ...
in the east. The Orinoco, with its rich alluvial soils, binds the largest and most important
river system
In geomorphology, drainage systems, also known as river systems, are the patterns formed by the streams, rivers, and lakes in a particular drainage basin. They are governed by the topography of land, whether a particular region is dominated by h ...
of the country; it originates in one of the largest watersheds in Latin America. The Caroní and the
Apure
Apure State ( es, Estado Apure, ) is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. Its territory formed part of the provinces of Mérida, Maracaibo, and Barinas, in accordance with successive territorial ordinations pronounced by the colonial author ...
are other major rivers.
Venezuela borders Colombia to the west,
Guyana
Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...
to the east, and Brazil to the south. Caribbean islands such as
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...
,
Grenada
Grenada ( ; Grenadian Creole French: ) is an island country in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea at the southern end of the Grenadines island chain. Grenada consists of the island of Grenada itself, two smaller islands, Carriacou and Pe ...
,
Curaçao
Curaçao ( ; ; pap, Kòrsou, ), officially the Country of Curaçao ( nl, Land Curaçao; pap, Pais Kòrsou), is a Lesser Antilles island country in the southern Caribbean Sea and the Dutch Caribbean region, about north of the Venezuela coast ...
,
Aruba
Aruba ( , , ), officially the Country of Aruba ( nl, Land Aruba; pap, Pais Aruba) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands physically located in the mid-south of the Caribbean Sea, about north of the Venezuela peninsula of ...
, and the
Leeward Antilles
The Leeward Antilles ( nl, Benedenwindse Eilanden) are a chain of islands in the Caribbean – specifically, the southerly islands of the Lesser Antilles (and, in turn, the Antilles and the West Indies) along the southeastern fringe of the C ...
lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela has territorial disputes with Guyana, formerly United Kingdom, largely concerning the Essequibo area and with Colombia concerning the
Gulf of Venezuela
The Gulf of Venezuela is a gulf of the Caribbean Sea bounded by the Venezuelan states of Zulia and Falcón and by La Guajira Department, Colombia. The western side is formed by the Guajira Peninsula. A strait connects it with Maracaibo Lake to ...
. In 1895, after years of diplomatic attempts to solve the border dispute, the dispute over the Essequibo River border flared up. It was submitted to a "neutral" commission (composed of British, American, and Russian representatives and without a direct Venezuelan representative), which in 1899 decided mostly against Venezuela's claim.
Climate
Venezuela is entirely located in the tropics over the Equator to around 12° N. Its climate varies from humid low-elevation plains, where average annual temperatures range as high as , to glaciers and highlands (the ''
páramo
Páramo () can refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems located in the Andes Mountain Range, South America. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as "all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline". A narrower ...
s'') with an average yearly temperature of . Annual rainfall varies from in the semiarid portions of the northwest to over in the Orinoco Delta of the far east and the Amazonian Jungle in the south. The precipitation level is lower in the period from August through April. These periods are referred to as hot-humid and cold-dry seasons. Another characteristic of the climate is this variation throughout the country by the existence of a mountain range called "Cordillera de la Costa" which crosses the country from east to west. The majority of the population lives in these mountains.
The country falls into four horizontal temperature zones based primarily on elevation, having tropical, dry, temperate with dry winters, and polar (
alpine tundra
Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high elevation, with an associated alpine climate, harsh climate. As the latitude of a location approaches the poles, the threshold elevation for alp ...
) climates, amongst others. In the tropical zone—below —temperatures are hot, with yearly averages ranging between . The temperate zone ranges between with averages from ; many of Venezuela's cities, including the capital, lie in this region. Colder conditions with temperatures from are found in the cool zone between , especially in the Venezuelan Andes, where pastureland and permanent snowfield with yearly averages below cover land above in the ''páramos''.
The highest temperature recorded was in
Machiques
Machiques is a city in Zulia State, Venezuela, located in the northwest portion of the country. It is close to the border with Colombia, and the area's main economic activity is cattle raising. On 16 August 2005 West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 ...
, and the lowest temperature recorded was , it has been reported from an uninhabited high altitude at Páramo de Piedras Blancas (
Mérida state
Mérida or Merida may refer to:
Places
*Mérida (state), one of the 23 states which make up Venezuela
*Mérida, Mérida, the capital city of the state of Mérida, Venezuela
*Merida, Leyte, Philippines, a municipality in the province of Leyte
*M ...
), even though no official reports exist, lower temperatures in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Mérida are known.
Biodiversity and conservation
Venezuela lies within the
Neotropical realm
The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone.
Definition
In bioge ...
habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
s range from the Andes Mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive ''llanos'' plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east. They include xeric scrublands in the extreme northwest and coastal
mangrove
A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evoluti ...
forests in the northeast. Its
cloud forest
A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud c ...
s and lowland
rainforest
Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainfores ...
s are particularly rich.
Animals
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage in ...
of Venezuela are diverse and include
manatee
Manatees (family Trichechidae, genus ''Trichechus'') are large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammals sometimes known as sea cows. There are three accepted living species of Trichechidae, representing three of the four living species ...
s,
three-toed sloth
The three-toed or three-fingered sloths are arboreal neotropical mammals . They are the only members of the genus ''Bradypus'' and the family Bradypodidae. The four living species of three-toed sloths are the brown-throated sloth, the maned sloth ...
,
two-toed sloth
''Choloepus'' is a genus of xenarthran mammals of Central and South America within the monotypic family Choloepodidae, consisting of two-toed sloths, sometimes also called two-fingered sloths. The two species of ''Choloepus'' (which means "lame ...
,
Amazon river dolphin
The Amazon river dolphin (''Inia geoffrensis''), also known as the boto, bufeo or pink river dolphin, is a species of toothed whale classified in the family Iniidae. Three subspecies are currently recognized: ''I. g. geoffrensis'' (Amazon river ...
s, and
Orinoco Crocodile
The Orinoco crocodile (''Crocodylus intermedius'') is a critically endangered crocodile. Its population is very small, and they can only be found in the Orinoco river basin in Colombia and Venezuela. Extensively hunted for their skins in the 19 ...
s, which have been reported to reach up to in length. Venezuela hosts a total of 1,417 bird species, 48 of which are endemic. Important birds include
ibis
The ibises () (collective plural ibis; classical plurals ibides and ibes) are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, that inhabit wetlands, forests and plains. "Ibis" derives from the Latin and Ancient Greek word f ...
es,
osprey
The osprey (''Pandion haliaetus''), , also called sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor reaching more than in length and across the wings. It is brown o ...
s,
kingfisher
Kingfishers are a family, the Alcedinidae, of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, ...
s, and the yellow-orange
Venezuelan troupial
The Venezuelan troupial (''Icterus icterus'') is the national bird of Venezuela. It is found in Colombia, Venezuela, and the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, Trinidad, and Puerto Rico. Together with the orange-backed troupial an ...
, the national bird. Notable
mammal
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...
s include the
giant anteater
The giant anteater (''Myrmecophaga tridactyla'') is an insectivorous mammal native to Central and South America. It is one of four living species of anteaters, of which it is the largest member. The only extant member of the genus ''Myrmecopha ...
,
jaguar
The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus '' Panthera'' native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the largest cat species in the Americas and the th ...
, and the
capybara
The capybaraAlso called capivara (in Brazil), capiguara (in Bolivia), chigüire, chigüiro, or fercho (in Colombia and Venezuela), carpincho (in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) and ronsoco (in Peru). or greater capybara (''Hydrochoerus hydro ...
, the world's largest
rodent
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are na ...
. More than half of Venezuelan avian and mammalian species are found in the Amazonian forests south of the Orinoco.
For the fungi, an account was provided by R.W.G. Dennis which has been digitized and the records made available on-line as part of the Cybertruffle Robigalia database. That database includes nearly 3,900 species of fungi recorded from Venezuela, but is far from complete, and the true total number of fungal species already known from Venezuela is likely higher, given the generally accepted estimate that only about 7% of all fungi worldwide have so far been discovered.
Among plants of Venezuela, over 25,000 species of
orchids
Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant.
Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...
are found in the country's cloud forest and lowland rainforest ecosystems. These include the ''flor de mayo'' orchid (''
Cattleya mossiae
''Cattleya mossiae'' (literally 'Moss' Cattleya'), commonly known as the Easter orchid, is a species of labiate ''Cattleya'' orchid. The white-flowered form is sometimes known as ''Cattleya wagneri''. The diploid chromosome number of ''C.  ...
''), the national flower. Venezuela's national tree is the Tabebuia chrysantha, araguaney, whose characteristic lushness after the rainy season led novelist
Rómulo Gallegos
Rómulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 – 5 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of nine months during 1948, he governed as the first freely elected president in Venezuela's history. He was ...
to name it "''[l]a primavera de oro de los araguaneyes''" (the golden spring of the araguaneyes). The tops of the tepuis are also home to several carnivorous plants including the marsh pitcher plant, Heliamphora, and the insectivorous bromeliad, Brocchinia reducta.
Venezuela is among the top 20 countries in terms of endemism. Among its animals, 23% of reptile, reptilian and 50% of amphibian species, including the Mannophryne trinitatis, Trinidad poison frog, are endemic. Although the available information is still very small, a first effort has been made to estimate the number of fungal species endemic to Venezuela: 1334 species of fungi have been tentatively identified as possible endemics of the country. Some 38% of the over 21,000 plant species known from Venezuela are unique to the country.
Venezuela is one of the 10 most biodiverse countries on the planet, yet it is one of the leaders of deforestation due to economic and political factors. Each year, roughly 287,600 hectares of forest are permanently destroyed and other areas are degraded by mining, oil extraction, and logging. Between 1990 and 2005, Venezuela officially lost 8.3% of its forest cover, which is about 4.3 million ha. In response, federal protections for critical habitat were implemented; for example, 20% to 33% of forested land is protected. Venezuela had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 8.78/10, ranking it 19th globally out of 172 countries. The country's biosphere reserve is part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves; five wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention. In 2003, 70% of the nation's land was under conservation management in over 200 protected areas, including 43 national parks. list of national parks of Venezuela, Venezuela's 43 national parks include Canaima National Park, Morrocoy National Park, and Mochima National Park. In the far south is a reserve for the country's Yanomami tribes. Covering , the area is off-limits to farmers, miners, and all non-Yanomami settlers.
Venezuela was one of the few countries that did not enter an Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, INDC at COP21. Many terrestrial ecosystems are considered IUCN Red List of Ecosystems#Risk Categories, endangered, specially the dry forest in the northern regions of the country and the coral reefs in the Caribbean coast.
There are some 105 protected areas in Venezuela, which cover around 26% of the country's continental, marine and insular surface.
Hydrography
The country is made up of three river basins: the
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...
, the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Valencia, which forms an endorheic basin.
On the Atlantic side it drains most of Venezuela's river waters. The largest basin in this area is the extensive Orinoco basin whose surface area, close to one million km2, is greater than that of the whole of Venezuela, although it has a presence of 65% in the country. The size of this basin - similar to that of the Danube - makes it the third largest in South America, and it gives rise to a flow of some 33,000 m³/s, making the Orinoco the third largest in the world, and also one of the most valuable from the point of view of renewable natural resources. The Rio or Brazo Casiquiare is unique in the world, as it is a natural derivation of the Orinoco river, Orinoco that, after some 500 km in length, connects it to the Negro River, which in turn is a tributary of the Amazon River, Amazon. The Orinoco receives directly or indirectly rivers such as the Ventuari, the Caura, the Caroní River, Caroní, the Meta, the Arauca River, Arauca, the Apure and many others. Other Venezuelan rivers that empty into the Atlantic are the waters of the San Juan and Cuyuní basins. Finally, there is the Amazon River, which receives the Guainía, the Negro and others. Other basins are the
Gulf of Paria
The Gulf of Paria ( ; es, Golfo de Paria) is a shallow (180 m at its deepest) semi-enclosed inland sea located between the island of Trinidad (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) and the east coast of Venezuela. It separates the two countries ...
and the Essequibo River, Esequibo River.
The second most important watershed is the Caribbean Sea. The rivers of this region are usually short and of scarce and irregular flow, with some exceptions such as the Catatumbo River, Catatumbo, which originates in
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
and drains into the Maracaibo Lake basin. Among the rivers that reach the Maracaibo lake basin are the Chama, the Escalante, the Catatumbo, and the contributions of the smaller basins of the Tocuyo, Yaracuy, Neverí and Manzanares rivers.
A minimum drains to the Lake Valencia basin. Of the total extension of the rivers, a total of 5400 km are navigable. Other rivers worth mentioning are the Apure, Arauca, Caura, Meta, Barima, Portuguesa River, Portuguesa, Ventuari and Zulia, among others.
The country's main lakes are Lake Maracaibo -the largest in South America- open to the sea through the natural channel, but with fresh water, and Lake Valencia with its endorheic system. Other noteworthy bodies of water are the Guri Reservoir, Guri reservoir, the Altagracia lagoon, the Camatagua reservoir and the Mucubají lagoon in the Andes. Navigation in Lake Maracaibo through the natural channel is useful for the mobilization of oil resources.
Relief
The Venezuelan natural landscape is the product of the interaction of tectonic plates that since the Paleozoic have contributed to its current appearance. On the formed structures, seven physical-natural units have been modeled, differentiated in their relief and in their natural resources.
The relief of Venezuela has the following characteristics: coastline with several peninsulas and islands, adenas of the Andes mountain range (north and northwest), Lake Maracaibo (between the chains, on the coast); Orinoco river delta, region of peneplains and plateaus (tepui, east of the Orinoco) that together form the Guyanas massif (plateaus, southeast of the country).
The oldest rock formations in South America are found in the complex basement of the Guyanas highlands and in the crystalline line of the Maritime and Cordillera massifs in Venezuela. The Venezuelan part of the Guyanas Altiplano consists of a large granite block of gneiss and other crystalline Archean rocks, with underlying layers of sandstone and shale clay.
The core of granite and cordillera is, to a large extent, flanked by sedimentary layers from the Cretaceous, folded in an anticline structure. Between these orographic systems there are plains covered with tertiary and quaternary layers of gravel, sands and clayey marls. The depression contains lagoons and lakes, among which is that of
, and presents, on the surface, alluvium, alluvial deposits from the Quaternary, on layers of the Cretaceous and Tertiary particularly important; because of them oil infiltrations emerge.
*The coasts
They present a landscape with intermountain depressions (separated by mountains), mountainous areas, a massif and an island group.
*Lara (state), Lara-Falcón-Yaracuy System
The reliefs of mountain ranges contrast with those of the peninsula, coastal plains and intermountain depressions.
*Lake Maracaibo Basin
The basin of the lake and the plains of the
Gulf of Venezuela
The Gulf of Venezuela is a gulf of the Caribbean Sea bounded by the Venezuelan states of Zulia and Falcón and by La Guajira Department, Colombia. The western side is formed by the Guajira Peninsula. A strait connects it with Maracaibo Lake to ...
make up two plains: the northern one, drier, and the southern one, humid and with swamps.
*The Andes
The corpulent volumes of mountain ranges and mountain ranges predominate, as well as intramontane valleys (located within the mountains).
*The plains
They form extensive sedimentary basins, with a predominantly flat relief, except the eastern
Llanos
The Llanos (Spanish ''Los Llanos'', "The Plains"; ) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the tropical and subtropical grasslands, sav ...
, which show plateaus, and the Unare depression, formed by the erosion of the mesa.
*Guiana Shield
It exhibits a varied relief, shaped by different rocks, orogenic events and erosion over millions of years. That is why here there are peneplains, mountain ranges, foothills and the characteristic tepuis.
*Orinoco Delta
With few contrasts, it builds a complex system of lands and waters, with varied sedimentary contributions and innumerable channels and islands.
Valleys
The valleys are undoubtedly the most important type of landscape in the Venezuelan territory, not because of their spatial extension, but because they are the environment where most of the country's population and economic activities are concentrated. On the other hand, there are valleys throughout almost all the national space, except in the great sedimentary basins of the Llanos and the depression of the Maracaibo Lake, except also in the Amazonian peneplains.
By their modeling, the valleys of the Venezuelan territory belong mainly to two types: valleys of fluvial type and valleys of glacial type. Much more frequent, the former largely dominate the latter, which are restricted to the highest parts of the Andes. Moreover, most glacial valleys are relics of a past geologic epoch, which culminated some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. They are frequently retouched today by fluvial events. Consequently, any attempt to categorize the Venezuelan valleys, based exclusively on the characteristics of their modeling, would be quite elementary.
The deep and narrow Andean valleys are very different from the wide depressions of Aragua and Carabobo, in the Venezuelan Coastal Range, Cordillera de la Costa, or from the valleys nestled in the Mesas de Monagas. These examples indicate that the configuration of the local relief is decisive in identifying regional types of valleys. Likewise, due to their warm climate, the Guayana valleys are distinguished from the temperate or cold Andes, Andean valleys by their humid environment. Both are, in turn, different from the semi-arid depressions of the states of Lara and Falcón.
The Andean valleys, essentially agricultural, precociously populated but nowadays in loss of speed, do not confront the same problems of space occupation as the strongly urbanized and industrialized valleys of the central section of the Cordillera de la Costa. On the other hand, the unpopulated and practically untouched The Guianas, Guiana valleys are another category this area is called the Lost World (''Mundo Perdido'').
The Andean valleys are undoubtedly the most impressive of the Venezuelan territory because of the energy of the encasing reliefs, whose summits often dominate the valley bottoms by 3,000 to 3,500 meters of relative altitude. They are also the most picturesque in terms of their style of habitat, forms of land use, handicraft production and all the traditions linked to these activities. these activities
Deserts
Venezuela has a great diversity of landscapes and climates, including arid and dry areas. The main desert in the country is in the state of Falcon near the city of Coro. It is now a protected park, the Médanos de Coro National Park. The park is the largest of its kind in Venezuela, covering 91 square kilometres. The landscape is dotted with cacti and other xerophytic plants that can survive in humidity-free conditions near the desert.
Desert wildlife includes mostly lizards, iguanas and other reptiles. Although less frequent, the desert is home to some foxes, giant anteaters and rabbits. There are also some native bird populations, such as the sparrowhawk, tropical mockingbird, scaly dove and crested quail.
Other desert areas in the country include part of the Guajira Desert in the Guajira Municipality in the north of Zulia State and facing the
Gulf of Venezuela
The Gulf of Venezuela is a gulf of the Caribbean Sea bounded by the Venezuelan states of Zulia and Falcón and by La Guajira Department, Colombia. The western side is formed by the Guajira Peninsula. A strait connects it with Maracaibo Lake to ...
, the Médanos de Capanaparo in the Santos Luzardo National Park in Apure State, the Medanos de la Isla de Zapara in Zulia State, the so-called Hundición de Yay in the Andrés Eloy Blanco Municipality of Lara State, and the Urumaco Formation also in Falcón State.
Government and politics
Following the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958, Venezuelan politics were dominated by the Third Way Christian democracy, Christian democratic COPEI and the center-left social democracy, social democratic Democratic Action (AD) parties; this two-party system was formalized by the ''puntofijismo'' arrangement. Economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which resulted in hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for corruption in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, who had led the first of the 1992 coup attempts, and the launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.
The opposition's attempts to unseat Chávez included the 2002 Venezuelan ''coup d'état'' attempt, the Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003, and the Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004, all of which failed. Chávez was re-elected in December 2006 but suffered a significant defeat in 2007 with the narrow rejection of the 2007 Venezuelan constitutional referendum, which had offered two packages of constitutional reforms aimed at deepening the Bolivarian Revolution.
Two major blocs of List of political parties in Venezuela, political parties are in Venezuela: the incumbent leftist bloc United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), its major allies Fatherland for All (PPT) and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), and the opposition bloc grouped into the electoral coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática. This includes A New Era (UNT) together with allied parties Project Venezuela, Justice First, Movement for Socialism (Venezuela), Movement for Socialism (MAS) and others. Hugo Chávez, the central figure of the Venezuelan political landscape since his election to the presidency in 1998 as a political outsider, died in office in early 2013, and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro (initially as interim president, before narrowly winning the
2013 Venezuelan presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 14 April 2013 following the death of President Hugo Chávez on 5 March 2013. Nicolás Maduro—who had assumed the role of acting president since Chávez's death—was declared winner with a narrow ...
).
The Venezuelan president is elected by a vote, with direct and universal suffrage, and is both head of state and head of government. The term of office is six years, and (as of 15 February 2009) a president may be re-elected an unlimited number of times. The president appoints the vice president and decides the size and composition of the cabinet and makes appointments to it with the involvement of the legislature. The president can ask the legislature to reconsider portions of laws he finds objectionable, but a simple parliamentary majority can override these objections.
The president may ask the National Assembly to pass an Enabling act#In Venezuela, enabling act granting the ability to rule by decree in specified policy areas; this requires a two-thirds majority in the Assembly. Since 1959, six Venezuelan presidents have been granted such powers.
The unicameral Venezuelan parliament is the ''Asamblea Nacional'' ("National Assembly"). The number of members is variable – each state and the Capital district elect three representatives plus the result of dividing the state population by 1.1% of the total population of the country. Three seats are reserved for representatives of Venezuela's indigenous peoples. For the 2011–2016 period the number of seats is 165. All deputies serve five-year terms.
The voting age in Venezuela is 18 and older. Voting is not compulsory voting, compulsory.
The Law of Venezuela, legal system of Venezuela belongs to the Civil law (legal system), Continental Law tradition. The highest judiciary, judicial body is the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (Venezuela), Supreme Tribunal of Justice or ''Tribunal Supremo de Justicia'', whose magistrates are elected by parliament for a single two-year term. The National Electoral Council (Venezuela), National Electoral Council (''Consejo Nacional Electoral'', or ''CNE'') is in charge of electoral processes; it is formed by five main directors elected by the National Assembly. Supreme Court president Luisa Estela Morales said in December 2009 that Venezuela had moved away from "a rigid division of powers" toward a system characterized by "intense coordination" between the branches of government. Morales clarified that each power must be independent adding that "one thing is separation of powers and another one is division".
Suspension of constitutional rights
The 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, 2015 parliamentary elections were held on 6 December 2015 to elect the 164 deputies and three indigenous representatives of the National Assembly. In 2014, a series of protest and demonstrations began in Venezuela, attributed to inflation, violence and shortages in Venezuela. The government has accused the protest of being motivated by fascists, opposition leaders, capitalism and foreign influence, despite being largely peaceful.
President Maduro acknowledged PSUV defeat, but attributed the opposition's victory to an intensification of an economic war. Despite this, Maduro said "I will stop by hook or by crook the opposition coming to power, whatever the costs, in any way". In the following months, Maduro fulfilled his promise of preventing the democratically and constitutionally elected National Assembly from legislating. The first steps taken by PSUV and government were the substitution of the entire Supreme court a day after the Parliamentary Elections contrary to the Constitution of Venezuela, acclaimed as a fraud by the majority of the Venezuelan and international press. The ''Financial Times'' described the function of the Supreme Court in Venezuela as "rubber stamping executive whims and vetoing legislation". The PSUV government used this violation to suspend several elected opponents, ignoring again the Constitution of Venezuela. Maduro said that "the Amnesty law (approved by the Parliament) will not be executed" and asked the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional before the law was known.
On 16 January 2016, Maduro approved an unconstitutional economic emergency decree, relegating to his own figure the legislative and executive powers, while also holding judiciary power through the fraudulent designation of judges the day after the election on 6 December 2015. From these events, Maduro effectively controls all three branches of government. On 14 May 2016, constitutional guarantees were in fact suspended when Maduro decreed the extension of the economic emergency decree for another 60 days and declared a State of Emergency, which is a clear violation of the
Constitution of Venezuela
The Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela (CRBV)) is the current and twenty-sixth constitution of Venezuela. It was drafted in mid-1999 by a constituent assembly that h ...
in the Article 338th: "The approval of the extension of States of emergency corresponds to the National Assembly." Thus, constitutional rights in Venezuela are considered suspended in fact by many publications and public figures.
On 14 May 2016, the
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
was considering the application of the Inter-American Democratic Charter sanctions for non-compliance to its own constitution.
In March 2017, the Venezuelan Supreme Court took over law making powers from the National Assembly but reversed its decision the following day.
Foreign relations
Throughout most of the 20th century, Venezuela maintained friendly relations with most Latin American and Western nations. Relations between Venezuela and the United States government worsened in 2002, after the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt during which the U.S. government recognized the short-lived interim presidency of Pedro Carmona. In 2015, Venezuela was declared a national security threat by U.S. president Barack Obama. Correspondingly, ties to various Latin American and Middle Eastern countries not allied to the U.S. have strengthened. For example, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki declared in 2015 that Venezuela was his country's "most important ally".
Venezuela seeks alternative Western Hemisphere, hemispheric integration via such proposals as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade proposal and the newly launched Latin American television network teleSUR. Venezuela is one of five nations in the world—along with Russia, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria—to have recognized the independence of International recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Venezuela was a proponent of Organization of American States, OAS's decision to adopt its Anti-Corruption Convention and is actively working in the
Mercosur
The Southern Common Market, commonly known by Spanish abbreviation Mercosur, and Portuguese Mercosul, is a South American trade bloc established by the Treaty of Asunción in 1991 and Protocol of Ouro Preto in 1994. Its full members are Argentina ...
trade bloc to push increased trade and energy integration. Globally, it seeks a "polarity in international relations, multi-polar" world based on strengthened ties among undeveloped countries.
On 26 April 2017, Venezuela announced its intention to withdraw from the OAS. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez said that President
Nicolás Maduro
Nicolás Maduro Moros (; born 23 November 1962) is a Venezuelan politician and president of Venezuela since 2013, with his presidency under dispute since 2019.
Beginning his working life as a bus driver, Maduro rose to become a trade unio ...
plans to publicly renounce Venezuela's membership on 27 April 2017. It will take two years for the country to formally leave. During this period, the country does not plan on participating in the OAS.
Venezuela is involved in a long-standing disagreement about the control of the
Guayana Esequiba
(), sometimes also called or Essequibo, is a disputed territory of west of the Essequibo River that is administered and controlled by Guyana but claimed by Venezuela.
area.
Venezuela may suffer a deterioration of its power in international affairs if the global energy transition, transition to renewable energy is completed. It is ranked 151 out of 156 countries in the index of Geopolitical Gains and Losses after energy transition (GeGaLo).
Military
The Bolivarian National Armed Forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana, FANB) are the overall unified military forces of Venezuela. It includes over 320,150 men and women, under Article 328 of the Constitution, in 5 components of Ground, Sea and Air. The components of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces are: the Venezuelan Army, the Venezuelan Navy, the Venezuelan Air Force, the Venezuelan National Guard, and the Venezuelan National Militia.
, a further 600,000 soldiers were incorporated into a new branch, known as the Armed Reserve. The president of Venezuela is the commander-in-chief of the national armed forces. The main roles of the armed forces are to defend the sovereign national territory of Venezuela, airspace, and islands, fight against drug trafficking, to search and rescue and, in the case of a natural disaster, civil protection. All male citizens of Venezuela have a constitutional duty to register for the military service at the age of 18, which is the age of majority in Venezuela.
Law and crime
In Venezuela, a person is murdered every 21 minutes. Violent crimes have been so prevalent in Venezuela that the government no longer produces the crime data. In 2013, the homicide rate was approximately 79 per 100,000, one of the world's highest, having quadrupled in the past 15 years with over 200,000 people murdered. By 2015, it had risen to 90 per 100,000. The country's body count of the previous decade mimics that of the Iraq War and in some instances had more civilian deaths even though the country is at peacetime. The capital Caracas has one of the greatest homicide rates of any large city in the world, with 122 homicides per 100,000 residents. In 2008, polls indicated that crime was the number one concern of voters. Attempts at fighting crime such as Operation Liberation of the People were implemented to crack down on gang-controlled areas but, of reported criminal acts, less than 2% are prosecuted. In 2017, the ''Financial Times'' noted that some of the arms procured by the government over the previous two decades had been diverted to paramilitary civilian groups and criminal syndicates.
Venezuela is especially dangerous for foreign travelers and investors who are visiting. The United States Department of State and the Government of Canada have warned foreign visitors that they may be subjected to robbery, kidnapping for a ransom or sale to terrorist organizations and murder, and that their own diplomatic travelers are required to travel in armored vehicles. The United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office has advised against all travel to Venezuela. Visitors have been murdered during robberies and criminals do not discriminate among their victims. Former Miss Venezuela 2004 winner Mónica Spear and her ex-husband were murdered and their 5-year-old daughter was shot while vacationing in Venezuela, and an elderly German tourist was murdered only a few weeks later.
There are approximately 33 prisons holding about 50,000 inmates. They include; El Rodeo outside of Caracas, Yare Prison in the northern state of Miranda, and several others. Venezuela's prison system is heavily overcrowded; its facilities have capacity for only 14,000 prisoners.
Human rights
Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have increasingly criticized Venezuela's human rights record, with the former organization noting in 2017 that the Chavez and subsequently the Maduro government have increasingly concentrated power in the executive branch, eroded constitutional human rights protections and allowed the government to persecute and repress its critics and opposition. Other persistent concerns as noted by the report included poor prison conditions, the continuous Mass media in Venezuela, harassment of independent media and human rights defenders by the government. In 2006, the Economist Intelligence Unit rated Venezuela a "hybrid regime" and the third least democratic regime in Latin America on the Democracy Index. The Democracy index downgraded Venezuela to an authoritarian regime in 2017, citing continued increasingly dictatorial behaviors by the Maduro government.
Corruption
Corruption in Venezuela is high by world standards and was so for much of the 20th century. The discovery of oil worsened political corruption, and by the late 1970s, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso's description of oil as "the Devil's excrement" had become a common expression in Venezuela. Venezuela has been ranked one of the most corrupt countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index since the survey started in 1995. The 2010 ranking placed Venezuela at number 164, out of 178 ranked countries in government transparency. By 2016, the rank had increased to 166 out of 178. Similarly, the World Justice Project ranked Venezuela 99th out of 99 countries surveyed in its 2014 Rule of Law Index.
This corruption is shown with Venezuela's significant involvement in Illegal drug trade in Venezuela, drug trafficking, with Colombian cocaine and other drugs transiting Venezuela towards the United States and Europe. In the period 2003 - 2008 Venezuelan authorities seized the fifth-largest total quantity of cocaine in the world, behind Colombia, the United States, Spain and Panama. In 2006, the government's agency for combating illegal drug trade in Venezuela, ''National Anti-Drug Office, ONA'', was incorporated into the office of the vice-president of the country. However, many major government and military officials have been known for their involvement with drug trafficking; especially with the October 2013 incident of men from the Venezuelan National Guard placing 1.3 tons of cocaine on a Paris flight knowing they would not face charges.
Administrative divisions
Venezuela is divided into 23 states (''estados''), a capital district (''distrito capital'') corresponding to the city of Caracas, and the Federal Dependencies (''Dependencias Federales'', a special territory). Venezuela is further subdivided into 335 municipalities (''municipios''); these are subdivided into over one thousand parishes (''parroquias''). The states are grouped into nine administrative regions (''regiones administrativas''), which were established in 1969 by presidential decree.
The country can be further divided into ten geographical areas, some corresponding to climatic and biogeographical regions. In the north are the Venezuelan Andes and the Coro region, a mountainous tract in the northwest, holds several Mountain range, sierras and valleys. East of it are lowlands abutting
Lake Maracaibo
Lake Maracaibo (Spanish: Lago de Maracaibo; Anu: Coquivacoa) is a lagoon in northwestern Venezuela, the largest lake in South America and one of the oldest on Earth, formed 36 million years ago in the Andes Mountains. The fault in the northern se ...
and the
Gulf of Venezuela
The Gulf of Venezuela is a gulf of the Caribbean Sea bounded by the Venezuelan states of Zulia and Falcón and by La Guajira Department, Colombia. The western side is formed by the Guajira Peninsula. A strait connects it with Maracaibo Lake to ...
.
The Cordillera de la Costa Central, Central Range runs parallel to the coast and includes the hills surrounding
Caracas
Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
; the Eastern Range, separated from the Central Range by the Gulf of Cariaco, covers all of Sucre (state), Sucre and northern Monagas. The Insular Region (Venezuela), Insular Region includes all of Venezuela's island possessions: Nueva Esparta and the various Federal Dependencies. The Orinoco Delta, which forms a triangle covering Delta Amacuro, projects northeast into the Atlantic Ocean.
Additionally, the country maintains a historical claim on the territory it calls Guyana Esequiba, which is equivalent to about 160,000 square kilometers and corresponds to all the territory administered by Guyana west of the Esequibo River.
In 1966 the British and Venezuelan governments signed the Geneva Agreement to resolve the conflict peacefully. In addition to this agreement, the Port of Spain Protocol of 1970 set a deadline to try to resolve the issue, without success to date.
Largest cities
Economy
Venezuela has a market-based mixed economy dominated by the petroleum sector, which accounts for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of exports, and more than half of government revenues. Per capita GDP for 2016 was estimated to be US$15,100, ranking 109th in the world. Venezuela has the Gasoline usage and pricing, least expensive petrol in the world because the consumer price of petrol is heavily subsidized. The private sector controls two-thirds of Venezuela's economy.
A part of the Venezuelan economy depends on remittances.
The Central Bank of Venezuela is responsible for developing monetary policy for the Venezuelan bolívar which is used as currency. The president of the Central Bank of Venezuela serves as the country's representative in the International Monetary Fund. The U.S.-based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, cited in ''The Wall Street Journal'', claims Venezuela has the weakest property rights in the world, scoring only 5.0 on a scale of 100; expropriation without compensation is not uncommon.
As of 2011, more than 60% of Venezuela's international reserves was in gold, eight times more than the average for the region. Most of Venezuela's gold held abroad was located in London. On 25 November 2011, the first of US$11 billion of repatriated gold bullion arrived in Caracas; Chávez called the repatriation of gold a "sovereign" step that will help protect the country's foreign reserves from the turmoil in the U.S. and Europe. However government policies quickly spent down this returned gold and in 2013 the government was forced to add the dollar reserves of state owned companies to those of the national bank to reassure the international bond market.
Manufacturing contributed 17% of GDP in 2006. Venezuela manufactures and exports heavy industry products such as steel, aluminium and cement, with production concentrated around Ciudad Guayana, near the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world and the provider of about three-quarters of Venezuela's electricity. Other notable manufacturing includes electronics and automobiles, as well as beverages, and foodstuffs. Agriculture in Venezuela accounts for approximately 3% of GDP, 10% of the labor force, and at least a quarter of Venezuela's land area. The country is not self-sufficient in most areas of agriculture. In 2012, total food consumption was over 26 million metric tonnes, a 94.8% increase from 2003.
Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil, and it is a founding member of OPEC. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995 as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak. The 1990s also saw Venezuela experience a Venezuelan banking crisis of 1994, major banking crisis in 1994.
The recovery of oil prices after 2001 boosted the Venezuelan economy and facilitated social spending. With social programs such as the Bolivarian Missions, Venezuela initially made progress in social development in the 2000s, particularly in areas such as health, education, and poverty. Many of the social policies pursued by Chávez and his administration were jump-started by the Millennium Development Goals, eight goals that Venezuela and 188 other nations agreed to in September 2000. The sustainability of the Bolivarian Missions has been questioned due to the Bolivarian state's overspending on public works and because the Chávez government did not save funds for future economic hardships like other OPEC nations; with economic issues and poverty rising as a result of their policies in the 2010s. In 2003 the government of Hugo Chávez implemented currency controls after capital flight led to a devaluation of the currency. This led to the development of a parallel market of dollars in the subsequent years. The fallout of the Financial crisis of 2007–2010, 2008 global financial crisis saw a renewed economic downturn. Despite controversial data shared by the Venezuelan government showing that the country had halved malnutrition following one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, shortages of staple goods began to occur in Venezuela and malnutrition began to increase.
In early 2013, Venezuela devalued its currency due to growing shortages in the country. The shortages included, and still include, necessities such as toilet paper, milk, and flour. Fears rose so high due to the toilet paper shortage that the government occupied a toilet paper factory, and continued further plans to nationalize other industrial aspects like food distribution. Venezuela's bond ratings have also decreased multiple times in 2013 due to decisions by the president Nicolás Maduro. One of his decisions was to force stores and their warehouses to sell all of their products, which led to even more shortages in the future. In 2016, consumer prices in Venezuela increased 800% and the economy declined by 18.6%, entering an economic depression. Venezuela's outlook was deemed negative by most bond-rating services in 2017. For 2018 an inflation rate of 1,000,000 percent was projected, putting Venezuela in a similar situation to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s.
Tourism
Tourism has been developed considerably in recent decades, particularly because of its favorable geographical position, the variety of landscapes, the richness of plant and wildlife, the artistic expressions and the privileged tropical climate of the country, which affords each region (especially the beaches) throughout the year.
Margarita Island is one of the top tourist destinations for enjoyment and relaxation. It is an island with a modern infrastructure, bordered by beautiful beaches suitable for extreme sports, and features castles, fortresses and churches of great cultural value.
Los Roques Archipelago is made up of a set of islands and keys that constitute one of the main tourist attractions in the country. With exotic crystalline beaches, Morrocoy is a national park, formed by small keys very close to the mainland, which have grown rapidly as one of the greatest tourist attractions in the Venezuelan Caribbean.
Canaima National Park extends over 30,000 km2 to the border with Guyana and Brazil, due to its size it is considered the sixth largest national park in the world. About 65% of the park is occupied by rock plateaus called tepuis. These constitute a unique biological environment, also presenting great geological interest. Its steep cliffs and waterfalls (including Angel Falls, which is the highest waterfall in the world, at 1,002 m) form spectacular landscapes.
The state of Mérida (state), Mérida, for the beauty of its Andean landscapes and its pleasant climate, is one of the main tourist centers of Venezuela. It has an extensive network of hotels not only in its capital city, but also throughout the state. Starting from the same city of Mérida, is the longest and highest cable car in the world, which reaches the Pico Espejo of 4,765 m. It is also necessary to recommend to travel through magnificent roads, the southern moors, where you can find good hotels and restaurants.
Shortages
Shortages in Venezuela have been prevalent following the enactment of price controls and other policies during the economic policy of the Hugo Chávez government. Under the economic policy of the Nicolás Maduro government, greater shortages occurred due to the Venezuelan government's policy of withholding United States dollars from importers with price controls.
Shortages occur in regulated products, such as milk, various types of meat, coffee, rice, oil, flour, butter, and other goods including basic necessities like toilet paper, personal hygiene products, and even medicine. As a result of the shortages, Venezuelans must search for food, wait in lines for hours and sometimes settle without having certain products. Government of Venezuela, Maduro's government has blamed the shortages on "bourgeois criminals" hoarding goods.
A drought, combined with a lack of planning and maintenance, has caused a hydroelectricity shortage. To deal with lack of power supply, in April 2016 the Maduro government announced rolling blackouts and reduced the government workweek to only Monday and Tuesday. A multi-university study found that, in 2016 alone, about 75% of Venezuelans lost weight due to hunger, with the average losing about 8.6 kg (19 lbs) due to the lack of food.
By late-2016 and into 2017, Venezuelans had to search for food on a daily basis, occasionally resorting to eating wild fruit or garbage, wait in lines for hours and sometimes settle without having certain products. By early 2017, priests began telling Venezuelans to label their garbage so needy individuals could feed on their refuse. In March 2017, Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves in the world, began having shortages of gasoline in some regions with reports that fuel imports had begun.
Petroleum and other resources
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves, and the eighth largest natural gas reserves in the world. Compared to the preceding year another 40.4% in crude oil reserves were proven in 2010, allowing Venezuela to surpass Saudi Arabia as the country with the largest reserves of this type. The country's main petroleum deposits are located around and beneath Lake Maracaibo, the Gulf of Venezuela (both in Zulia State, Zulia), and in the Orinoco River basin (Orinoco#Eastern Venezuelan basin, eastern Venezuela), where the country's largest reserve is located. Besides the largest conventional oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela has non-conventional oil deposits (Heavy crude oil, extra-heavy crude oil, bitumen and tar sands) approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil. The electricity sector in Venezuela is one of the few to rely primarily on hydropower, and includes the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world.
In the first half of the 20th century, U.S. oil companies were heavily involved in Venezuela, initially interested only in purchasing concessions. In 1943 a new government introduced a 50/50 split in profits between the government and the oil industry. In 1960, with a newly installed democratic government, Hydrocarbons Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso led the creation of OPEC, the consortium of oil-producing countries aiming to support the price of oil.
In 1973, Venezuela voted to nationalize its oil industry outright, effective 1 January 1976, with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) taking over and presiding over a number of holding companies; in subsequent years, Venezuela built a vast refining and marketing system in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1990s PDVSA became more independent from the government and presided over an ''apertura'' (opening) in which it invited in foreign investment. Under Hugo Chávez a 2001 law placed limits on foreign investment.
The state oil company PDVSA played a key role in the December 2002 – February 2003 national strike which sought President Chávez' resignation. Managers and skilled highly paid technicians of PDVSA shut down the plants and left their posts, and by some reports sabotaged equipment, and petroleum production and refining by PDVSA almost ceased. Activities eventually were slowly restarted by returning and substitute oil workers. As a result of the strike, around 40% of the company's workforce (around 18,000 workers) were dismissed for "dereliction of duty" during the strike.
Transport
Venezuela is connected to the world primarily via air (List of airports in Venezuela, Venezuela's airports include the Simón Bolívar International Airport (Venezuela), Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, near Caracas and La Chinita International Airport near
) and sea (with major sea ports at La Guaira, Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello). In the south and east the Amazon rainforest region has limited cross-border transport; in the west, there is a mountainous border of over shared with Colombia. The Orinoco River is navigable by oceangoing vessels up to inland, and connects the major industrial city of Ciudad Guayana to the Atlantic Ocean.
Venezuela has a limited Instituto de Ferrocarriles del Estado, national railway system, which has no active rail connections to other countries. The government of Hugo Chávez tried to invest in expanding it, but Venezuela's rail project is on hold due to Venezuela not being able to pay the $7.5 billion and owing China Railway nearly $500 million.
Several major cities have metro systems; the Caracas Metro has been operating since 1983. The Maracaibo Metro and Valencia Metro (Venezuela), Valencia Metro were opened more recently.
Venezuela has a road network of nearly in length, placing the country List of countries by road network size, around 45th in the world; around a third of roads are paved.
Demographics
Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America; the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital Caracas, which is also the largest city. About 93% of the population lives in urban areas in northern Venezuela; 73% live less than from the coastline. Though almost half of Venezuela's land area lies south of the Orinoco, only 5% of Venezuelans live there. The largest and most important city south of the Orinoco is Ciudad Guayana, which is the sixth most populous conurbation. Other major cities include Barquisimeto, Valencia, Carabobo, Valencia, Maracay, Maracaibo, Barcelona-Puerto La Cruz, Mérida, Mérida, Mérida and San Cristóbal, Táchira, San Cristóbal.
According to a 2014 study by sociologists of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.5 million Venezuelans, or about 4% to 6% of the country's population, have left Venezuela since 1999 following the Bolivarian Revolution.
Ethnicity
The people of Venezuela come from a variety of ancestries. It is estimated that the majority of the population is of pardo, or mixed, ethnic ancestry. Nevertheless, in the 2011 census, which Venezuelans were asked to identify themselves according to their customs and ancestry, the term ''pardo'' was excluded from the answers. The majority claimed to be moreno or White Venezuelan, white—51.6% and 43.6%, respectively. Practically half of the population claimed to be '':wikt:moreno, moreno'', a term used throughout Ibero-America that in this case means "dark-skinned" or "brown-skinned", as opposed to having a light skin, lighter skin (this term connotes Human skin colour, skin color or tone, rather than facial features or descent).
Ethnic minorities in Venezuela consist of groups that descend mainly from African or indigenous peoples; 2.8% identified themselves as "black" and 0.7% as ''afrodescendiente'' (Afro-descendant), 2.6% claimed to belong to indigenous peoples, and 1.2% answered "other races".
Among indigenous people, 58% were Wayúu, 7% Warao people, Warao, 5% Kariña, 4% Pemon, Pemón, 3% Piaroa, 3% Jivi, 3% Añu, 3% Cumanágoto, 2% Yukpa, 2% Chaima and 1% Yanomami; the remaining 9% consisted of other indigenous nations.
According to an autosomal DNA genetic study conducted in 2008 by the University of Brasília (UNB), the composition of Venezuela's population is 60.60% of European contribution, 23% of indigenous contribution, and 16.30% of African contribution.
During the colonial period and until after the Second World War, many of the European immigrants to Venezuela came from the Canary Islands and Spaniards in Venezuela, Spain with a relevant amount of Galicians and Asturians. These immigrants from Spain had a significant cultural impact on the cuisine and customs of Venezuela. These influences on Venezuela have led to the nation being called the 8th island of the Canaries. With the start of oil exploitation in the early 20th century, companies from the United States began establishing operations in Venezuela, bringing with them U.S. citizens. Later, during and after the war, new waves of immigrants from other parts of Europe, the Middle East, and China began; many were encouraged by government-established Immigration to Venezuela, immigration programs and lenient immigration policies. During the 20th century, Venezuela, along with the rest of Latin America, received millions of immigrants from Europe. This was especially true post-World War II, as a consequence of war-ridden Europe. During the 1970s, while experiencing an oil-export boom, Venezuela received millions of immigrants from Ecuador, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic. Due to the belief that this immigration influx depressed wages, some Venezuelans opposed European immigration. The Venezuelan government, however, were actively recruiting immigrants from Eastern Europe to fill a need for engineers. Millions of Colombians, as well as Middle Eastern and Haitian populations would continue immigrating to Venezuela into the early 21st century.
According to the ''World Refugee Survey 2008'', published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Venezuela hosted a population of refugee and asylum seekers from Colombia numbering 252,200 in 2007, and 10,600 new asylum seekers entered Venezuela in 2007. Between 500,000 and one million illegal immigrants are estimated to be living in the country.
The total indigenous population of the country is estimated at 500 thousand people (2.8% of the total), distributed among 40 indigenous peoples. There are three Uncontacted peoples, uncontacted tribes living in Venezuela. The Constitution recognizes the multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural, and multilingual character of the country and includes a chapter devoted to indigenous peoples' rights, which opened up spaces for their political inclusion at national and local level in 1999.
Most indigenous peoples are concentrated in eight states along Venezuela's borders with Brazil, Guyana, and Colombia, and the majority groups are the Wayuu people, Wayuu in the west, the Warao people, Warao in the east, the Yanomami installed in the south, and the Pemon which are mostly in the southeast of Venezuela.
Languages
Although most residents are monolingual Spanish speakers, many languages are spoken in Venezuela. In addition to Spanish, the Constitution recognizes more than thirty indigenous languages, including Wayuu language, Wayuu, Warao language, Warao, Pemon language, Pemón, and many others for the official use of the indigenous peoples, mostly with few speakers – less than 1% of the total population. Wayuu is the most spoken indigenous language, with 170,000 speakers.
Immigrants, in addition to Spanish, speak their own languages. Chinese (400,000), Portuguese language, Portuguese (254,000), and Italian (200,000) are the most-spoken languages in Venezuela after the official language of Spanish. Arabic is spoken by Lebanese and Syrian colonies on Margarita Island, Isla de Margarita, Maracaibo, Punto Fijo, Puerto la Cruz, El Tigre, Maracay, and Caracas. Portuguese is spoken not only by the Portuguese community in Santa Elena de Uairén but also by much of the population due to its proximity to Brazil. The German community speaks their native language, while the people of Colonia Tovar speak mostly an Alemannic German, Alemannic dialect of German called Colonia Tovar dialect, ''alemán coloniero''.
English is the most widely used foreign language in demand and is spoken by many professionals, academics, and members of the upper and middle classes as a result of the oil exploration by foreign companies, in addition to its acceptance as a lingua franca. Culturally, English is common in southern towns like El Callao Municipality, El Callao, and the native English-speaking influence is evident in folk and calypso songs from the region. English was brought to Venezuela by Trinidadian and other British West Indies immigrants. A variety of Antillean Creole is spoken by a small community in El Callao and Paria Peninsula, Paria. Italian language teaching is guaranteed by the presence of a consistent number of private Venezuelan schools and institutions, where Italian language courses and Italian literature are active. Other languages spoken by large communities in the country are Basque language, Basque and Galician language, Galician, among others.
Religion
According to a 2011 poll (GIS XXI), 88% of the population is Christian, primarily Roman Catholic (71%), and the remaining 17% Protestant, primarily Evangelicals (in Latin America Protestants are usually called ''"evangélicos"''). 8% of Venezuelans are irreligious (atheist 2% and agnostic and 6% indifferent). Almost 3% of the population follow another religion (1% of these people practice Santería).
There are small but influential Muslim, Druze,. Buddhist, and Jewish communities. The Muslim community of more than 100,000 is concentrated among persons of Lebanese people, Lebanese and Syrian people, Syrian descent living in Nueva Esparta state, Punto Fijo and the
Caracas
Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
area. Venezuela is home of the largest Druze communities outside the Middle East, the Druze community are estimated around 60,000, and concentrated among persons of Lebanese people, Lebanese and Syrian people, Syrian descent (a Tareck El Aissami, former Vice President of Venezuela, vice president is Druze, showing the small group's influence). Buddhism in Venezuela is practiced by over 52,000 people. The Buddhist community is made up mainly of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people. There are Buddhist centers in Caracas, Maracay, Mérida, Puerto Ordáz, San Felipe, and Valencia.
The Jewish community has shrunk in recent years due to rising economic pressures and antisemitism in Venezuela,Annual Report 2004: Venezuela. Stephen Roth Institute. Accessed 11 August 2006. with the population declining from 22,000 in 1999 to less than 7,000 in 2015.
Health
Venezuela has a national universal health care system. The current government has created a program to expand access to health care known as Mission Barrio Adentro, Misión Barrio Adentro, although its efficiency and work conditions have been criticized. It has been reported that many Misión Barrio Adentro clinics have been closed, and (as of December 2014) it is estimated that 80% of Barrio Adentro establishments in Venezuela are abandoned.
Infant mortality in Venezuela was 19 deaths per 1,000 births for 2014 which was lower than the South American average (To compare: The U.S. figure was 6 deaths per 1,000 births in 2013 and the Canadian figure was 4.5 deaths per 1,000 live births). Child
malnutrition
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...
(defined as stunting or wasting in children under the age of five) was 17%. Delta Amacuro and Amazonas (Venezuelan state), Amazonas had the nation's highest rates. According to the United Nations, 32% of Venezuelans lacked adequate sanitation, primarily those living in rural areas. Diseases ranging from diphtheria, Plague (disease), plague, malaria, typhoid fever, yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis D were present in the country.Venezuela Guardian. 25 October 2006. Retrieved 20 September 2006. Obesity was prevalent in approximately 30% of the adult population in Venezuela.
Venezuela had a total of 150 Water supply and sanitation in Venezuela, sewage treatment plants; however, 13% of the population lacked access to drinking water, but this number had been dropping.
During the economic crisis observed under President Maduro's presidency, medical professionals were forced to perform outdated treatments on patients.
Education
The literacy rate of the adult population was already at 91.1% by 1998. In 2008, 95.2% of the adult population was literate. The net primary school enrollment rate was at 91% and the net secondary school enrollment rate was at 63% in 2005. Venezuela has a number of universities, of which the most prestigious are the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) founded in
Caracas
Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
in 1721, the University of Zulia (LUZ) founded in 1891, the University of the Andes (Venezuela), University of the Andes (ULA) founded in Mérida (state), Mérida State in 1810, the Simón Bolívar University (Venezuela), Simón Bolívar University (USB) founded in Miranda (state), Miranda State in 1967, and the Universidad de Oriente, University of the East (UDO) founded in Sucre (state), Sucre State in 1958.
Currently, many Venezuelan graduates seek a future abroad because of the country's troubled economy and heavy crime rate. In a study titled "Venezolana Community Abroad: A New Method of Exile" by Thomas Páez, Mercedes Vivas, and Juan Rafael Pulido of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.35 million Venezuelan college graduates have left the country since the beginning of the
Bolivarian Revolution
The Bolivarian Revolution is a political process in Venezuela that was led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement and later the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The Bolivarian Revolution i ...
. It is believed that nearly 12% of Venezuelans live abroad, with Ireland becoming a popular destination for students. According to Claudio Bifano, president of the Venezuelan Academy of Physical, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, more than half of all medical graduates had left Venezuela in 2013.
By 2018, over half of all Venezuelan children had dropped out of school, with 58% of students quitting nationwide while areas near bordering countries saw more than 80% of their students leave. Nationwide, about 93% of schools do not meet the minimum requirements to operate and 77% do not have utilities such as food, water or electricity.
Culture
The culture of Venezuela is a melting pot made up of three main groups: The Indigenous Venezuelans, the Africans, and the Spanish. The first two cultures were in turn differentiated according to their tribes. Acculturation and assimilation, typical of a cultural syncretism, led to the Venezuelan culture of the present day, which is similar in many ways to the culture of the rest of Latin America, but still has its own unique characteristics.
The indigenous and African influence is limited to a few words, food names, and place names. However, the Africans also brought in many musical influences, especially introduction of the drum. The Spanish influence predominantes due to the colonization process and the socioeconomic structure it created, and in particular came from the regions of Andalusia and Extremadura (the places of origin of most of the settlers in the Caribbean during the colonial era). Spanish influences can be seen in the country's architecture, music, religion, and language.
Spanish influences can also be seen in the bullfights that take place in Venezuela, and in certain gastronomical features. Venezuela was also enriched by immigration streams of Indian and European origin in the 19th century, especially from France. Most recently, immigration from the United States, Spain, Italy, and Portugal has further enriched the already complex cultural mosaic (especially in large oil-producing cities).
Architecture
Carlos Raúl Villanueva was the most important Venezuelan architect of the modern era; he designed the Central University of Venezuela, (a World Heritage Site) and its Aula Magna. Other notable architectural works include the Capitolio, the Baralt Theatre, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex, and the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge.
Art
Venezuelan art was initially dominated by religious motifs. However, in the late 19th century, artists began emphasizing historical and heroic representations of the country's struggle for independence. This move was led by Martín Tovar y Tovar. Modernism took over in the 20th century. Notable List of Venezuelan artists, Venezuelan artists include Arturo Michelena, Cristóbal Rojas (artist), Cristóbal Rojas, Armando Reverón, Manuel Cabré; the kinetic artists Jesús-Rafael Soto, Jesús Soto, Gego and Carlos Cruz-Diez; and contemporary artists such as Marisol Escobar, Marisol and Yucef Merhi.
Literature
Venezuelan literature originated soon after the Spanish conquest of the mostly pre-literate indigenous societies. It was originally dominated by Culture of Spain, Spanish influences. Following the rise of political literature during the Venezuelan War of Independence, Venezuelan Romanticism, notably expounded by Juan Vicente González, emerged as the first important genre in the region. Although mainly focused on narrative writing, Venezuelan literature was advanced by poets such as Andrés Eloy Blanco and Fermín Toro.
Major writers and novelists include
Rómulo Gallegos
Rómulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 – 5 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of nine months during 1948, he governed as the first freely elected president in Venezuela's history. He was ...
, Teresa de la Parra, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Adriano González León, Miguel Otero Silva, and Mariano Picón Salas. The great poet and humanist Andrés Bello was also an educator and intellectual (He was also a childhood tutor and mentor of
Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios (24 July 1783 – 17 December 1830) was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and B ...
). Others, such as Laureano Vallenilla Lanz and José Gil Fortoul, contributed to Venezuelan Positivism.
Music
The indigenous musical styles of Venezuela are exemplified by groups like Un Sólo Pueblo and Serenata Guayanesa. The national musical instrument is the Cuatro (Venezuela), cuatro. Traditional musical styles and songs mainly emerged in and around the ''llanos'' region, including, "Alma llanera" (by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez and Rafael Bolívar Coronado), "Florentino y el diablo" (by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba), "Concierto en la llanura" by Juan Vicente Torrealba, and Caballo Viejo, "Caballo viejo" (by Simón Díaz).
The Gaita zuliana, Zulian gaita is also a very popular genre, generally performed during Christmas. The national dance is the joropo. Venezuela has always been a melting pot of cultures and this can be seen in the richness and variety of its musical styles and dances: Calypso music, calipso, bambuco, fulía, cantos de pilado de maíz, cantos de lavanderas, sebucán, and maremare. Teresa Carreño was a world-famous 19th century piano virtuoso. Recently, great classical music performances have come out of Venezuela. The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, under the leadership of its principal conductor Gustavo Dudamel and José Antonio Abreu, has hosted a number of excellent concerts in many European concert halls, most notably at the 2007 London The Proms, Proms, and has received several honors. The orchestra is the pinnacle of El Sistema, a publicly financed, voluntary music education program now being emulated in other countries.
In the early 21st century, a movement known as "Movida Acústica Urbana" featured musicians trying to save some national traditions, creating their own original songs but using traditional instruments. Some groups following this movement are Tambor Urbano, Los Sinverguenzas, C4Trío, and Orozco Jam.
Afro-Venezuelan musical traditions are most intimately related to the festivals of the "black folk saints" San Juan and Benedict the Moor, St. Benedict the Moor. Specific songs are related to the different stages of their festivals and processions, when the saints start their yearly "''paseo"'' – stroll – through the community to dance with their people.
Sport
The origins of baseball in Venezuela are unclear, although it is known that the sport was being played in the country by the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, North American immigrants who came to Venezuela to work in the nation's oil industry helped to popularize the sport in Venezuela. During the 1930s, baseball's popularity continued to rise in the country, leading to the foundation of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (LVBP) in 1945, and the sport would soon become the nation's most popular.
The immense popularity of baseball in the country makes Venezuela a rarity among its South American neighbors—association football is the dominant sport in the continent. However, football, as well as basketball, are among the more popular sports played in Venezuela. Venezuela hosted the 2012 FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament for Men, 2012 Basketball World Olympic Qualifying Tournament and the FIBA Americas Championship, 2013 FIBA Basketball Americas Championship, which took place in the Poliedro de Caracas.
Although not as popular in Venezuela as the rest of South America, football, spearheaded by the Venezuela national football team is gaining popularity as well. The sport is also noted for having an increased focus during the World Cup. According to the CONMEBOL alphabetical rotation policy established in 2011, Venezuela is scheduled to host the Copa América every 40 years.
Venezuela is also home to former Formula 1 driver, Pastor Maldonado. At the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, he claimed his first pole and victory, and became the first and only Venezuelan to have done so in Formula 1 history. Maldonado has increased the reception of Formula 1 in Venezuela, helping to popularize the sport in the country.
In the 2012 Summer Olympics, Venezuelan Rubén Limardo won a gold medal in Fencing at the 2012 Summer Olympics, fencing.
In the Winter Sports, Cesar Baena had represented the country since 2008 in Nordic Skiing, making history in the continent when been the first South American skier ever compete in a FIS Cross Country Ski World Cup on Düsseldorf 2009.
Cuisine
See also
* Index of Venezuela-related articles
* Outline of Venezuela
* Crime in Venezuela
* Operation Gideon (2020)
References
Bibliography
Articles
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Books
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* Carroll, Rory. ''Comandante: Hugo Chávez's Venezuela'' (Penguin Books, 2014).
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* Schincariol, Vitor Eduardo. ''Society and Economy in Venezuela: An Overview of the Bolivarian Period (1998-2018).'' (2020).
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* Straka, Tomás, Guillermo Guzmán Mirabal, and Alejandro E. Cáceres. ''Historical Dictionary of Venezuela'' (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
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* Wilpert, Gregory. ''Changing Venezuela by taking power: the history and policies of the Chavez government'' (2007 online *
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Talks and interviews
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Key Development Forecasts for Venezuela from International Futures
Venezuela and Tourism from immigrationtovenezuela.com.ve
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