Occupying an area of 352,140 square miles (912,050 sq. km), Venezuela is the sixth-largest country in South America, covering a greater area than either the US states of California, Oregon, and Washington, or, in European terms, Spain, Portugal, the UK, and Ireland, put together. It lies on the northern coast of South America, wedged between Colombia in the west, Guyana in the east, and Brazil in the south. To the north it faces the Caribbean and the Atlantic. It has the longest coastline in the Caribbean, and a number of offshore islands, including the tourist mecca of Margarita.
Located less than 1° north of the equator, Venezuela is a tropical country blessed with a number of very different geographical landscapes and microclimates, including Andean mountains, Amazonian rainforests, arid deserts, seasonally flooded plains, coral islands, the Orinoco River Delta, the ancient rock formations of the Guiana Shield, and the waterfall with the longest drop in the world—Salto Ángel (Angel Falls).
The south of the country is covered with hot, humid rain forests that are home to indigenous people, some of whom, such as the Yanomami, still live much as they did before the arrival of Columbus. Coursing through this heavily forested region is the Orinoco River, one of the longest rivers in South America. The Orinoco runs for 1,330 miles (2,140 km) from its source on the Cerro Delgado-Chalbaud in the Sierra Parima mountains on the Venezuela–Brazil border to the Delta Amacuro—home to Warao Indians living in houses on stilts—where it branches out into a hundred rivers and creeks before discharging its waters into the Atlantic Ocean. Another pristine river basin, which feeds into the massive Guri hydroelectric dam, is that of the Rio Caura, home to the Yekwana people.
In the Andean region of Mérida are high mountains and intermontane valleys known as páramos, where ruddy-faced farmers still use oxen to plow terraced fields. Overlooking the student city of Mérida are the country’s highest peaks—Pico Bolívar at 16,341 feet (4,981 m) and Pico Humboldt at 16,207 feet (4,940 m)—which are joined by a permanent, if shrinking, glacier. Popular with hikers and adventure sports enthusiasts, the Andes also attract wildlife watchers seeking the unusual cock of the rock and the rare spectacled bear.
The largest lake in South America, and the source of much of Venezuela’s oil wealth, the brackish Lake Maracaibo is fed by freshwater rivers, has an opening to the sea, and covers an area of 5,150 square miles (13,210 sq. km). Formed some thirty-six million years ago, it is one of the oldest lakes in the world. This is where Venezuela’s first significant oil finds were made, in 1914 and 1922, and the lake is still dotted with oil wells. To the west are the deserts of La Guajira, which straddle the border with Colombia and are the native territory of the Wayúu, Venezuela’s largest indigenous group.
The seasonally flooded wetlands of Los Llanos (the plains) cover nearly a quarter of the country, from the Orinoco River Basin west to Colombia. Here there are more cattle than people, and the hardy Llanero cowboys who live in this region make their living by rounding up zebu (also known as humped cattle) on huge, sprawling hatos (cattle ranches), and entertain themselves at night with traditional musica llanera played on the harp, maracas, and cuatro (a four-stringed guitar like a ukulele).
Known as the Serengeti of South America, Los Llanos is the best place to see wildlife in Venezuela, with howler monkeys, armadillos, and capybara—the world’s biggest rodents—on land, and rivers full of razor-toothed piranha, anacondas, and spectacled caimans. Bird lovers flock here to see hawks, waders, and around four hundred species of birds.
The Caribbean coast from Maracaibo in the west to Cumaná in the east contains more than 80 percent of the population. The country’s largest cities, including Maracay, Valencia, and Caracas, are located along this narrow strip.
Situated in a narrow valley at an altitude of 2,985 ft (910 m), Caracas has a relatively cool year-round climate—considering its tropical location just 10° north of the equator—and is known as “La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera” (“City of Eternal Spring”). It is separated from the coast by the lushly forested El Ávila mountain, a national park that rises to 9,071 feet (2,765 m) at Pico Naiguata, and has a cable car that takes ten minutes to climb to the iconic but long closed Humboldt Hotel, which overlooks the city.
The country’s top beaches can be found along this coast, including the islands off Mochima and the tiny cays of the Morrocoy National Park. Further out are the Robinson Crusoe islands of Los Roques Archipelago, another national park, and the large party island of Margarita, where you can visit a different beach every day.
In the far south of the country is the Gran Sabana, a region of flat, grassy plains punctuated by huge mesa mountains, or tepuis, which are some of the most ancient rock formations in the world. These sandstone mountains are part of the Guiana Shield, and have been eroded down from a vast plateau over the last two to three billion years, leaving unique endemic species on their lofty heights.
The most famous of the tepuis is Auyan-tepui (Devil Mountain, in the tongue of the native Pémon), from where the world’s highest waterfall, Salto Ángel, plummets 3,212 feet (979 m) to the river below.
The highest of the nearly one hundred tepuis that dot the Gran Sabana is Mount Roraima, at 9,219 feet (2,810 m). The triple point on the top of the mountain marks the intersection of the Brazilian, Guyanan, and Venezuelan borders, but the only route for hikers to the summit of the mountain is from Venezuela.
Venezuela’s tropical climate is divided into two seasons—rainy and dry—with variations in rainfall dependent on location and altitude. The dry season runs from December to May, and the rainy season from June to November, with lighter rains along the Caribbean coast at Coro and Cumaná, on the deserts of the Paraguana Peninsula, and on the Caribbean islands, and heavier rains in the jungles of the south.
Owing to the country’s position on the equator, sunrise takes place at about 6:00 a.m., and sunset at about 6:00 p.m., all year-round. April and August are the hottest months, but even in the rainy season there is significant sunshine between short downpours.
December and January are the coolest months, and at high altitudes in the Andes temperatures drop below freezing all year. In Caracas temperatures can fall quite low at night around Christmas time—a phenomenon named Pacheco, after a farmer living on El Ávila mountain who would come down to the city when the nights got too cold. The average daytime temperatures in Mérida are 57–66°F (14–19°C), in Caracas 64–75°F (18–24°C), and on Margarita Island 73–81°F (23–27°C).
On December 15, 1999, one of the worst human tragedies in recent Venezuelan history occurred when fourteen days of heavy rain brought devastating floods and huge mudslides down from El Ávila, wreaking havoc and destruction on the coastal towns and barrios of Vargas State. Houses, hotels, roads, a university complex, and whole families were buried under thousands of tons of mud.
Between 10,000 and 30,000 people died in the Vargas floods. Many thousands more were made homeless and spent months in temporary shelters, with families separated for long periods before they could be rehoused. For some the events of those dark days were so traumatic that they have never returned to their old neighborhoods. Although the government has made huge efforts to rebuild the infrastructure along the coast, and weekenders once again flock to the beaches, the tragedy will never be forgotten, and many hundreds of buildings will never be excavated from the concrete-like mud that now covers them.
Venezuela’s twenty-eight million people are a living embodiment of the country’s history, reflecting its time as a Spanish colony and the slave economy that sustained it. The Spanish conquistadors who arrived in the 1500s came to conquer and exploit this New World that Christopher Columbus had found, and brought few women with them from Spain. Thus the melting pot of races and cultures began from the time the first Spanish ships touched shore. After the arrival of slaves from Africa—brought to work in mines and on sugar, coffee, and cocoa plantations—another ingredient was added to the mix.
Colonial administrators had to create new terms to document the racial mixing taking place, so mulatto was used to describe people of mixed European and African ancestry, zambo for mixed African and Amerindian ancestry, and mestizo for mixed European and indigenous ancestry (although this term has come to cover all people of mixed-race ancestry). Today some 69 percent of the Venezuelan population are mestizo (a mixture of Amerindian, European, and African backgrounds), about 20 percent are white, 9 percent are black, and close to 2 percent are Amerindian.
The main Afro-Venezuelan communities are concentrated along the central coast in towns and villages like Chuao, Puerto Maya, and Chuspa, in the area known as Barlovento, and in towns such as Curiepe and Birongo, where drum dancing and festivals in honor of St. John the Baptist are linked to African beliefs and rituals. There are also important Afro-Venezuelan communities in the area south of Lake Maracaibo, where drum dancing takes place in honor of St. Benedict of Palermo.
After the population was decimated in the long wars of independence, many attempts were made to encourage European immigration, leading to a small group of Black Forest Germans settling in the high valleys of Colonia Tovar in 1843. However, apart from several waves of Canary Islanders and Basques settling in the country, it wasn’t until after the Second World War that immigration really picked up, with the arrival of more than 600,000 Spanish, Italians, North Americans, and Portuguese. This was a controlled process, overseen by the government to stimulate agriculture and bring new skills to the country, but it was also a racially motivated program of “blanquimiento” (whitening), in the belief that white Europeans would help the progress of the country. Black immigrants were actively excluded. Since then more than a million immigrants have entered the country from Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, generally to the cities. Skin color is still seen as an indicator of class, with the elite and upper-middle class generally lighter-skinned than the inhabitants of the shantytowns.
Venezuela has a small but significant Amerindian population made up of twenty-eight indigenous tribes, divided between Carib, Arawak, and independent language groups. Largely ignored for many years, Indian rights were formally recognized in the 1999 Constitution. Indigenous groups were given three seats in the National Assembly, and granted rights—in principle—to communally occupied land, although disputes continue over when this will happen and whether all indigenous land claims will be granted.
The largest indigenous group is the Arawak-speaking Wayúu (Guajiros) of Zulia State, who number about 300,000 in Venezuela, with another 150,000 across the border in Colombia. About 80,000 Wayúu live in and around Maracaibo, the capital of Zulia State, and Wayúu women wearing floor-length patterned dresses, known as mantas, are a typical sight in the city. The second-largest group is the Warao of the Orinoco River Delta. Some 36,000 Warao continue to live much as they did at the time of the Spanish conquest in palafito stilt houses, built over the river, with straw roofs and no walls.
Venezuela—What’s In a Name?
There is still some controversy over where the name Venezuela came from. Recent studies have tried to suggest that it was the name of a Carib tribe encountered by the early Spanish adventurers. However, the generally accepted version is that either the Italian banker and seafarer Amerigo Vespucci or the Spanish captain Alonso de Ojeda came up with the name on an expedition to the New World in 1499.
Vespucci wrote in a letter that arriving at the mouth of Lake Maracaibo they were impressed by a “great village” of indigenous houses known as palafitos built on stilts over the water. Reminded of the canals of Venice, they named the place Venezuela, or “Little Venice.” Finding little in the way of gold or jewels, the explorers obtained some women of “notable beauty and disposition” and continued on their way. The name “Lago de Venezuela” (Lake Venezuela), marking the position of Lake Maracaibo, first appeared on the Mappa Mundi made in 1500 by Juan de la Cosa, pilot of the expedition. It later became the name for the whole country.
In the Gran Sabana and the jungles of the south, some 28,000 Pémon practice an ancient culture that is intimately tied up with the high tepui mountains that characterize the area. Few Pémon live from hunting and gathering nowadays. Some work as police and park rangers, others in tourism, taking foreigners to the top of tepuis that their ancestors believed were the homes of the gods. In the far south Amazonas State, about 18,000 Yanomami and Sanema continue to live a traditional existence in the rain forest, despite encroachments on their remote communities by missionaries and wildcat miners. Other groups also continue to defend their cultural traditions, such as the Yekwana of the Rio Caura, the Panare of Caicara, the Piaroa of the Orinoco and Autana region, and the Kariña of the Mesa de Guanipa.
A rather confused Christopher Columbus arrived in Venezuela on his third voyage, in 1498, after dropping anchor off the coast of the present-day Paria Peninsula. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea had thought that on this voyage he would reach Japan—his goal being to find a sea route to the rich spices of the East—but the quantity of fresh water from the Orinoco River and the wildness of the surroundings as he entered the gulf between Venezuela and Trinidad made him think that he might have found a New World. He wrote in his journal: “I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown. I am greatly supported in this view by reason of this great river, and by this sea which is fresh.” However, after setting foot on land on August 7, he changed his mind and called the land “Isla de Gracia” (Island of Grace), describing the natives as “happy, amiable, and hospitable.”
A few days later, after detecting the bulge in the earth at the equator in his navigational calculations, he came up with an even stranger concept, suggesting that he was close to the Garden of Eden, whence Adam and Eve had been cast out, because, “If the water does not proceed from the earthly paradise, it seems to be a still greater wonder, for I do not believe that there is any river in the world so large and deep.” His answer to all the anomalies on his maps and charts was that the earth was shaped “like a woman’s breast” with the Garden of Eden on the nipple. With that odd thought marked down in his log, he sailed west along the coast to Isla Margarita, where he noted the fine pearls and took some samples away with him—a discovery that soon attracted the first Spanish settlers to Venezuela.
There is much controversy over the identity of the first inhabitants of Venezuela. For many years it was believed that a gap in the ice sheets 10,000 to 12,000 years ago allowed hunter-gatherers from Siberia to follow large mammals, such as bison, over the Bering Strait into the Americas, and that from there they went all the way to Tierra del Fuego. But in 1976 an ancient arrowhead found embedded in a mastodon pelvis at Taima Taima, in a desert region near the city of Coro, showed that indigenous people were hunting in that area as early as 13,000 years ago. Although none of the local indigenous groups rose to the heights of the Inca of Peru, or the Mayas and Aztecs of Mexico, there are many lithic and ceramic artifacts in the Andean region that suggest a high level of civilization, including terraced fields and stone structures.
More importantly, the Arawaks and Caribs migrated from the Orinoco region and island-hopped across the Caribbean to Cuba and Puerto Rico, displacing local tribes and imposing their culture. It is from the warlike Caribs that we get the word “cannibal,” owing to Spanish reports of Carib warriors feasting on captives.
The rich pearl beds discovered by Columbus around the small island of Cubagua proved a curse to the indigenous people of the coast, who were raided and enslaved by the Spaniards who came after him in the 1500s. Taken in chains to Cubagua, just off the coast of Isla Margarita, they were forced to dive for pearls and build the city of Nueva Cádiz; founded in 1515, it was known as the first Spanish city in South America, and quickly became one of the richest.
By 1539 the pearl beds were no longer producing, the city was abandoned, and the rush to open up the mainland had begun with the founding of Cumaná in 1521—despite heavy resistance by local tribes—and the city of Coro, in 1527, which became the capital of the province of Venezuela.
In 1528, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V leased the new province to a German banking family of the name of Welser. Instead of exploring and settling the country, however, the German-backed governors, Ambrosius Ehinger, Nikolaus Federmann, and Philipp von Hutten, spent their time searching in vain for the mythic city of gold, El Dorado, and decimating the indigenous tribes they encountered.
The Welser family also brought missionaries to spread the Catholic faith among the Indians of the interior, and the first African slaves to toil away in the copper mines and on cacao and sugar plantations, thus establishing the colonial system that was to persist until independence.
The first moves toward independence began with an unsuccessful slave revolt in Coro in 1795 by José Leonardo Chirino that was inspired by the revolution in Haiti (1791–1804) against France. That was followed in 1806 by an ill-fated invasion of the country by Francisco de Miranda with five hundred volunteers he had recruited in the USA.
Miranda was an extraordinary individual who had fought in the French Revolution, faced the guillotine under the Terror, and fled to Russia, where he had become the lover of Catherine the Great. A brave soldier, statesman, and free thinker, Miranda was a Byronic hero inspired with a passion to free his homeland, which he saw as groaning under the weight of onerous taxes and limitations on trade imposed from Madrid and where criollos (Spaniards born in South America) were barred from the top jobs, to which only peninsulares (those born in Spain) had access.
Miranda spent many years in London planning his return and trying to get the British government involved in a military venture, but the landing in 1806 was a complete failure because the local population were not prepared to join his uprising. In the end, sixty-three of the US volunteers were captured and the officers hanged, although Miranda himself was able to escape.
The key event that laid the groundwork for independence was Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Spain in 1808. Deposing the Spanish King Charles IV and his heir Ferdinand VII, Bonaparte placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne.
Venezuela, like many of the Spanish colonies, declared its independence of this usurper and in 1810 a young aristocrat called Simón Bolívar traveled to London to ask Miranda to lead the First Republic.
Back in Venezuela, Miranda had some military successes against the Spanish Royalists but after a serious setback he sued for peace, which Simón Bolívar and other young leaders saw as a betrayal. As Miranda waited to board a British ship to take him back to London he was seized and handed over to the Spanish, who sent him to Cádiz, where he died in La Carraca prison in 1816 at the age of sixty-six, his remains thrown unceremoniously into a mass grave. Today, Miranda is hailed as El Precursor (The Forerunner) and an empty tomb awaits him in the National Pantheon in Caracas.
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco was born into one of the richest families in the country. He went on to lead the wars of independence against Spain that liberated not only Venezuela but also present-day Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.
Despite his great achievements on the battlefield, Bolívar was unable to hold together his vision for a unified Gran Colombia of South American states and died in 1830 a broken and disillusioned man, stating, just before he died, “He who serves a revolution plows the sea.” In 1999 the country was renamed the República Bolivariana de Venezuela by President Chávez, whose political philosophy he calls “Bolivarianism” in honor of the great man.
This is nothing new. Venezuelan presidents have been lauding the achievements of Bolívar for more than a hundred years, and many have used his name to give weight to their political projects. He is known as El Libertador (the Liberator) and El Padre de la Patria (Father of the Nation). His remains are in a grand tomb in the Panteón Nacional in Caracas, alongside the tombs of other independence heroes, including his Irish aide-de-camp and biographer Daniel Florence O’Leary. Almost every city, town, and village in Venezuela has a central plaza with a statue of Bolívar, standing or on horseback, and the national currency, the Bolívar Fuerte, is named after him.
After taking control of the independence forces, Simón Bolívar declared a “war to the death” against the Spanish Royalists, and in 1818 formed a new government in Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar).
Joining up with the hardy horsemen of Los Llanos led by General José Antonio Páez, and bringing on board British and Irish fighters in the British Legion, Bolívar then marched his army over the Andes into Colombia in 1819—a surprise move that allowed him to take the whole province. Returning victorious to Venezuela, he led the decisive battle of Carabobo on June 24, 1821, which destroyed the main Spanish army.
Bolívar then led successful campaigns in Peru in 1824 to drive out the Spanish for good and form the Republic of Gran Colombia—covering present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, which is named after him.
In December 1830 Simón Bolívar died of tuberculosis in Santa Marta. He was on his way to London, unwanted in the lands he had liberated from Spain, his health wrecked by countless marches, defeats, and victories, his vast wealth spent, his dream of a unified bloc of South American states in tatters. In the same year José Antonio Páez, Centaur of the Llanos and hero of the independence wars, declared Venezuela a sovereign state and became its first president.
The Venezuelan flag was originally designed by the romantic and revolutionary Francisco de Miranda in 1806, during his first failed attempt at liberating the country from Spanish control. It consists of three equal horizontal bands. The yellow band at the top represents the gold or the wealth of the country, the blue band is the sea separating the Americas from Spain, and the red at the bottom is the blood that was spilled to gain independence.
The flag originally had seven white stars in an arc across the central band, representing the seven provinces at independence. In 2006, the government added an eighth star to represent the province of Guayana. The national seal, or coat of arms, that appears in the top left-hand corner contains the dates of the Declaration of Independence on April 19, 1810, and the start of the Federation War on February 20, 1859.
A sheaf of wheat represents the abundance of the earth and the union of the states, and two flags with swords symbolize the triumph of the Independence struggle. The galloping white horse on a blue background represents freedom and the march of progress. It was shown facing right and looking back to the left but in 2006 a change was made to show the horse galloping and facing left. This is the usual position for animals in heraldry, but the change was considered by some critics of the government as a political decision to symbolize the left-wing ideology of the Chavez government.
The next seventy years were marked by continuing wars and upheavals as a series of caudillos (strongmen) battled for control of the state. The Federal Wars from 1859 to 1863 between liberals and conservatives again decimated the small population of Venezuela, which at that time numbered no more than a million people.
A brief period of calm and progress came under the progressive rule of the Liberal leader Antonio Guzmán Blanco from 1870 to 1877 and again from 1879 to 1884. The “Illustrious American,” as he liked to be called, introduced compulsory free schooling and tried to transform the capital city into a mini-Paris with French-style theaters, salons, and the Capitol building as the seat of government. Many bronze statues of Simón Bolívar were erected under Guzmán Blanco, and the National Pantheon was built to house the remains of the main independence fighters.
Initially leading the army of another caudillo, Cipriano Castro, Juan Vicente Gómez was an illiterate cattle herder from Táchira. He took Caracas by force in 1899 for Castro, and in 1908 seized power for himself, ruling the country for the next twenty-seven years as if it were his own private cattle ranch. Cunning and cruel, he was an unrepentant lothario: he had fifteen children by his two mistresses and as many as eighty other illegitimate offspring.
Congress showered him with medals and dubbed him El Benemérito (the Meritorious One), while his opponents called him El Bagre (the Catfish), for his signature moustache and cold eyes. No opposition to his rule was allowed, and student activists had to operate clandestinely or spend time in prison. His vast wealth was initially focused on property, but the discovery of oil in Maracaibo in 1914 soon transformed the economy of Venezuela and by the time Gómez died in 1936 Venezuela was the number one oil exporter in the world—a position it would hold until the emergence of Saudi Arabia as a world petro-power.
The country’s first fully democratic elections—organized in 1947 by Rómulo Betancourt of the left-of-center Acción Democrática party—were won by the novelist Rómulo Gallegos. After attempts at reform he was toppled by a military junta led by the diminutive General Marcos Pérez Jiménez.
Pérez controlled the country for ten years. In that time he oversaw an ambitious program of public works, including great highways linking the main cities, public housing projects, and the cable-car systems on the mountain of El Ávila and in Mérida.
Eventually, his feared secret police were not enough to suppress public protests calling for democracy to be restored, and on January 23, 1958, he fled to the USA. There he remained until 1963, when he was extradited back and found guilty of embezzling 200 million US dollars.
When Rómulo Betancourt won the elections in 1959 the two main parties, Acción Democratica (AD) and the Social Christian Party (COPEI) agreed to alternate power under a deal known as the Punto Fijo Pact, which was to last thirty years.
Under Betancourt, Venezuela founded the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries with Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in 1960. This led to increased oil wealth in the country, especially in the boom years under President Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–79), who nationalized the oil industry, created PDVSA, the state oil company, and ushered in a period known as “Venezuela Saudita,” when newly rich Venezuelans flew to Miami to do their weekend shopping and became known as damedos (“give me two”).
The oil-profits party came to an end under President Luís Herrera Campins in 1983, when there was a massive devaluation of the currency and savings were wiped out. The event is still known as Black Friday, and it ushered in a massive economic hangover that continued into the second presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989–93).
The decision by Carlos Andrés Pérez to instigate an IMF-imposed austerity package, the end of subsidies on food, and a hike in gas prices at the pumps led to widespread unrest, and on February 27, 1989, the situation exploded into rioting and looting in the capital. These disturbances became known as “El Caracazo.” Dramatic scenes of looters carrying whole sides of beef back up to the barrios were shown on national TV, and the president declared martial law. Thousands of people died over the next few days in the military crackdown, most of them from the poorest barrios of the city.
It was the Caracazo that spurred on a young military officer, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, to lead a military coup on February 4, 1992. President Pérez narrowly escaped capture by the rebel soldiers, fleeing from the Miraflores presidential palace just as a tank tried to break down the doors. Chávez, seeing that continuing the fighting would only lead to more bloodshed, surrendered, but in a history-defining moment he asked to be allowed to speak to the TV reporters and tell his fellow rebels, who were still fighting, to lay down their arms. In his short speech he acknowledged defeat but finished with the words por ahora (for now), suggesting that all was not over. Chávez was immediately imprisoned but became an overnight sensation, a rallying point for all those sick of government corruption, particularly after President Pérez was impeached for embezzling state funds.
The first person to break the Punto Fijo Pact was not an outsider but the elderly President Caldera, a founder of COPEI, who had served as president between 1969 and 1974 but who ran in the 1994 election as an independent. It was Caldera who pardoned Chávez and handed over the presidential sash when the ex-soldier won a landslide victory to become president in 1999.
The wave of elation that greeted Chávez’s election victory gave the new president sufficient momentum to set up a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution. He also changed the country’s name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in honor of his idol Simón Bolívar. It became clear that things were going to change and that the changes would be on a scale unseen before.
Consequently, Chávez won an even bigger majority in the 2000 presidential election and it seemed that the corruption and cronyism of the Punto Fijo Pact years was being replaced by a fairer system, where the oil wealth would be shared more equally and poverty reduced. Not bad for a poor boy who had grown up in a mud hut in the dusty town of Sabaneta in Barinas State.
However, Chávez’s support of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, his antagonism toward the USA, and what he saw as its “meddling in Latin America,” added to his fiery rhetoric against “savage neoliberalism,” quickly won him enemies among the business elite and in private media outlets. There was a polarization in the country between those who supported Chávez unquestioningly—generally the poorest in society who had the most to gain—and those who would never warm to his homegrown brand of Bolivarian socialism—generally from the middle and upper classes who had the most to lose.
When Chávez came to power some 80 percent of Venezuelans lived in poverty, while a moneyed elite lived in luxury apartment complexes and played golf at the exclusive country club. He chose to bypass the crumbling public health and education systems in place and set up schemes that he called misiones (missions), aimed at tackling the problems of illiteracy, malnutrition, and poor health at the source, in the sprawling shantytowns.
Misión Robinson, named after Simón Bolívar’s teacher, provided basic literacy and numerical skills and was able to raise Venezuela’s literacy levels to 93 percent, while Misión Ribas offered a second chance at a high school education for those who had missed out.
To tackle malnutrition a system of subsidized food outlets and weekly markets was set up, known as Misión Mercal, which later provided a way to pressurize private food companies to bring down prices, but has not stopped shortages of some basic foodstuffs.
These moves were combined with an expropriation and redistribution program of “idle lands,” the renationalization of state companies that had been privatized under previous administrations, and the expropriation of private firms in key areas. Not surprisingly, the large family firms affected by these changes saw themselves under attack, and a backlash against the Chávez regime began.
Private newspapers and TV channels also began to criticize the government, leading to a media war with Chávez, who responded by pulling government advertisements from private media outlets, pumping money into state channels and newspapers, and starting his own Sunday TV and radio show called Aló, Presidente (Hello, President).
In the meantime, the president declared himself a twenty-first-century socialist, strengthened his alliance with Cuba, reached out to Iran, Russia, and China, and stepped up his attacks on the USA, and George W. Bush in particular. The result was a polarization of the country and several attempts to unseat him.
The most serious attempt took place on April 11, 2002, when nineteen people from both sides of the political divide were killed during an opposition march. Some top generals called for the president to resign, and he was whisked away to a tiny Caribbean island. The next day an interim government was sworn in, led by businessman Pedro Carmona, whose first act was to cancel constitutional guarantees and suspend the Supreme Court. But nobody had planned for the response of Chávez’s supporters, thousands of whom surrounded the presidential palace and demanded to see Chávez. It all ended when a group of soldiers took control of the palace and Chávez returned in triumph just forty-eight hours after he was ousted.
Since then there has been an unsuccessful oil strike to try to bring down the government, a referendum to try to have the president removed, which also failed, the 2006 presidential election that he won with 63 percent of the vote, and a 2009 referendum on allowing the president to run for office indefinitely, which Chávez also won.
As this book goes to press, President Chávez is battling cancer. This has put the president’s ability to fight the October 2012 election in doubt, even though polls put him ahead of the unified opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, aged thirty-nine, who is the best-placed candidate to defeat Chávez in thirteen years. With no other candidate in his socialist PSUV party having the same charisma as Chávez it seems likely he will contest the election himself, whatever his medical condition.
Venezuela is a Democratic Federal Republic with a president elected by universal suffrage every six years. The president is both chief of state and head of government, and has the power to appoint the vice president and a cabinet of ministers.
A referendum in 2009 removed the limits on how many times a president can run for election, allowing President Chávez to run for a third term in October 2012.
The legislative branch consists of a unicameral Asamblea Nacional (National Assembly) made up of 167 deputies who are elected every five years, including three seats reserved for representatives of Venezuela’s indigenous peoples.
In 2005 the opposition boycotted parliamentary elections, but in 2010 they participated under the umbrella organization Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) (Coalition for Democratic Unity), gaining sixty-four seats and nearly 50 percent of the total vote.
Venezuela is the oil giant of South America and a founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Ever since the big US oil firms set up shop in the country under the dictator Juan Vicente Gomez, the biggest business in Venezuela has been the oil business, making up over 90 percent of exports and 50 percent of government income.
The huge revenues generated from being the sixth-largest oil exporter in the world and the focus on large state-run heavy industries, such as steel and aluminum, have come at the expense of investment in other areas of the economy, such as agriculture and manufacturing. This has resulted in a situation where Venezuela relies heavily on imported food and goods.
The traditional dominance of US brands and investment by US multinationals in the country has been challenged by the government of President Hugo Chávez over the last thirteen years as he has sought to reduce the country’s reliance on the USA as a trading partner.
There has also been a policy of renationalization of key industries, including telephone, electricity, cement and steel firms, the renegotiation of oil, gas, and mining deals with multinationals on more advantageous terms, and the expropriation of private companies considered strategically important.
In a bid to increase Venezuela’s non-US trading ties, there has been a greater emphasis on trade with the South American trading bloc Mercosur, principally with Brazil and Argentina, and with political allies in Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
The most important change under President Chávez has been the increasing number of ambitious joint ventures with Russia, China, and Iran, particularly in the oil and gas sectors.
