Venezuela is a country in South America, bordered in the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, in the west by Colombia, in the east by Guyana and in the south by Brazil.
History
The discovery of wide oil deposits in 1918 in Venezuela was both a blessing and a curse for the country : it allowed the small agricultural country to prompt an economic boom, starting as early as the Great European War, develop its infrastructures and standards of living, allowing it to be among the wealthiest countries in Latin America ; on the other hand, it fueled inequalities and corruption to thrive, its effects being still widely felt today.
Venezuela had been under the control of military dictators for most of the preceding century, the last in line being General Juan Vicente Gomez, in charge of the country since the beginning of the 20th Century ; the President used oil money to secure the support of the United States and deflate the country’s debt, but also to enrich himself ; a sign of the changing times however were the 1928 student revolts, starting in Caracas and later spreading throughout the country, allowing General Roman Delgado Chalbaud, a former rival of Gomez, to topple the tyrant to enact a new Constitution and free elections the following year. The successful ushered a new era of greater democracy and societal development, led by the alumni of the “Generation of ‘28”, such as Romulo Betancourt (1941-1947, 1959-1960), Andrés Eloy Blanco (1947-1953) and Miguel Otero Silva (1960-1963). This era of prosperity and democracy in Venezuela was only shaken by the 1935 general strike, led by CWR sympathizers that wanted to force a Syndicalist revolution, resulting in the sending of an American fleet, a coup attempt in 1950 by Chalbaud’s son, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud and the storming of the United States embassy in 1958 by a mob opposed to the Havana Organization, resulting in the death of the ambassador.
Romulo Betancourt, two times President, the most prominent statesman of Venezuela and a clear contender for the presidency of the World Council, was assassinated by Hispaniolan operatives in 1960 ; the terrorist attack started a crisis in the Caribbean but also deprived Venezuela’s political class from a true leader, allowing Neo-Syndicalist opinion and popular resentment to bloom in the context of heightened inequalities. A coup attempt by Syndicalist navy officers in 1962 and the start of a leftist guerilla led to the proclamation of a state of emergency and a coup by General Marcos Pérez Jimenez in 1963, supported by the United States in order to pacify Venezuela.
Modifying the Constitution to his advantage, Pérez Jimenez remained in power until 1986 : his nationalist and populist policies allowed him to gain popular support. Troubles in Guyana allowed Venezuela to invade the country in 1978, annexing the long-claimed province of Esequibo and turn their eastern neighbour into a puppet, while the crisis in the Middle East allowed Venezuela to position itself as a major oil exporter and to support social programs. Nevertheless, this increase in the 1970s also increased further Venezuela’s Dutch disease while depleting Macaraibo’s oil deposits. The 1983 economic krach came as a death knell for the military regime, resulting in the aging general being replaced by a junta of younger officers led by Commandant Jaurés Sanchez Ramirez ; the repression, economic malaise and popular discontent led to the 1989 Venezuela Revolution, toppling the military regime in violence while allowing for a new Constitution and free elections.
The new democratic generation somehow managed to further the transition of Venezuela’s economy, still allowing the country to keep a high standard of living, but political violence remains high, with large groups of Integralists, mostly nostalgics of the military regime, and Marxists and Neo-Syndicalists, who point out the lack of social ascension in Venezuela along with the squalor of the poor leftovers of the neo-liberal regime. This terrible gap degenerated many times in military coup attempts and nationwide riots, leading the Havana Organization and the United States to directly meddle into Venezuelan politics in 2019 with the fear of a civil war, resulting in an early presidential election in 2020.
Political situation
Under the terms of the 1990 Constitution, enabled by the 1989 Revolution and modeled after the 1928 Constitution, Venezuela is a federal presidential republic, with the President serving as head of state and government, elected by universal suffrage for a six-year-term, forbidding him from serving consecutive terms. Since the 2020 presidential election, called early due to the riots that had lasted since 2015, the President of the Republic has been Freddy Guevara, a deputy from Miranda State hailing from the social-democratic Democratic Action, after winning against conservative Mayor of Caracas Leopoldo Lopez (Popular Will). The legal system is inspired by civil law.
Venezuela’s Congress, composed by the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, is one of the most divided in the world, with more than sixty parties represented in both chambers, as the 1990 Constitution adopted party-list proportional representation and D’Hondt Method ; ranging from Marxism-Doriotism (the far left being represented in the north) to Neo-Pyrism (far right is very prevalent in the east), the ideologies represented made that there is no majority in the Chamber of Deputies since the 2020 elections, forcing the Presidency to hold a loose coalition ranging from the liberal right to the neocommunists and forestalling any chance at reform. Such diversity grants friction, and it is a common sight to see Venezuelan deputies to take their seats with boxing gloves, brass knuckles or combat canes and that debates sometimes degenerate into massive fistfights on the floor of the chamber. It is an appropriate repercussion of the climate of political violence in Venezuela, where kidnapping, mugging and assassination of political figures or militants in common, where riots have been weekly in great cities from 2015 to 2020 and where each party disposes of its own paramilitary branch.
Population
One of the most urbanized countries in Latin America, mostly concentrated in the north around Caracas, heavily Mestizo, Venezuela stands as a developed country in demographic terms and, along with Cuba, Chile or Uruguay, is one of the few countries in Latin America that enjoys a positive net migration rate ; the economic reforms along with the needs of the oil industry have led to steady Chinese immigration to Venezuela, undertaking the exploitation of oil in Zulia and around the newly found Orinoco Belt deposit. This situation had led to increased xenophobia in these areas, as was evidenced by the lynchings during the Wuchang pneumonia pandemic. Even if Venezuela has enjoyed democracy for thirty years and that the social inequalities, that were widespread and increasing throughout the latter century, have somewhat reduced thanks to government reforms and allowed the emergence of a true middle class, Venezuelans are still weary over political violence, corruption, government ineffectiveness and unemployment.
Economy
The 1983 krach was among the main causes of the 1989 Revolution against the military regime, that had benefitted for years of the oil financial windfall, and served as a cautionary tale for the new democratic government : Venezuela, who had among the largest oil and natural gas reserves of the world, where the petroleum industry represented a third of GDP, around 80 % of export and more than half of government revenues, was in great danger of facing the Dutch disease and being unable to survive in the modern world. Elected in 1998 on a neoliberal program, President Irene Saez proposed the “Venezuela 2025 Plan” in cooperation with the University of Chicago and the Havana Organization (of which Venezuela is a founding member), that would see the exchange rate of the Venezuelan Bolivar and the prizes of Venezuelan oil guaranteed by the ICU to avoid massive inflation, an extensive program of privatizations, tax reductions for foreign investors in other fields than oil and developing other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, heavy industry, manufacturing, services and tourism, so the petroleum industry’s part in Venezuela exports would be reduced by half, leaving the country less dependant on oil and using the financial windfall to fund state services. As of 2020, if oil still represents more than 50 % of Venezuela’s exports and a third of a GDP, the manufacturing, services and education sectors are rapidly expanding, the bolivar remains a very strong currency in the Americas and social programs have helped to reduce the endemic inequalities of Venezuela’s society. Formed during the Saez presidency, Venezuela’s sovereign fund is becoming increasingly noticeable for its bigger investments, notably in Africa and the Indian sub-continent.
Military
Like in virtually all Latin America, the Venezuelan Army ruled until recent years, but it enjoys a paradoxical view : even if the Pérez Jimenez/Sanchez Ramirez regime was synonymous with oppression and suppression of civil liberties, it was also a time of stability and economic growth, along with prestige, due to the successful reclamation of the Esequibo State from Guyana in 1978 and the defused crisis with Colombia in 1987. The Army also lent support to the 1928 and 1989 Revolutions and in the troubled 2000s, the military seemed like a last resort for weary citizens ; General Hugo Carjaval’s attempted coup in 2018 enjoyed tremendous support from the population and the United States had to pressure Congress not to have the former putschist run for President in 2020, as his hypothetical victory left no doubt.
Culture
Like most of Latin America, Venezuela’s culture is defined by a mixture of Native, Spanish and African influences, but the country stands out by having baseball as its most popular sport, overstepping association football, a trend helped by the arrival of Americans in the oil industry in the early Twentieth Century and also for his fondness for beauty pageants, with many Venezuelans having won the Miss World competition, the most famous example being Irene Saez, both elected Miss World 1981 and President of Venezuela from 1998 to 2004. On the cultural side, Venezuela has been celebrated for his writers (the most famous of whom being Romulo Gallegos, a supporter of the 1928 Revolution who served as President from 1935 to 1941 and was the 1951 Nobel Prize for Literature), the quality of its cinema (represented by directors Jonathan Jakubowicz and Lorenzo Vigas and actor Edgar Ramirez) and the success of his popular music and telenovelas, that enjoys popularity throughout the continent and even in Europe ; Latin America’s biggest streaming service and producer of telenovelas, Hola, is based in Caracas.
