Venezuela (vĕnəzwā'lə, Span. vānāswā'lä) , officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, republic (2005 est. pop. 25,375,000), 352,143 sq mi (912,050 sq km), N South America. Venezuela has a coastline 1,750 mi (2,816 km) long on the Caribbean Sea in the north. It is bordered on the south by Brazil, on the west and southwest by Colombia, and on the east by Guyana. Dependencies include Margarita Island, Tortuga Island, and many smaller island groups in the Caribbean. The capital and largest city is Caracas.

Land and People

Geographically Venezuela is a land of vivid contrasts, with four major divisions: the Venezuelan highlands, the coastal lowlands, the basin of the Orinoco River, and the Guiana Highlands. An almost inaccessible and largely unexplored wilderness south of the Orinoco, the Guiana Highlands occupy more than half of the national territory and are noted for scenic wonders such as Angel Falls. Iron ore, gold, diamonds, and other minerals are found near Ciudad Bolívar and Ciudad Guayana. The dense forests of the region yield rubber, tropical hardwoods, and other forest products. The boundary with Brazil is mostly mountainous; its rain forests are home to thousands of indigenous inhabitants. The Orinoco, one of the great rivers of South America, has its source in this region. The Orinoco basin is a great pastoral area. North of the Orinoco and about the Apure River and its tributaries are the llanos, the vast, hot Orinoco plains, where there is a great cattle industry.
Oil is found north of the Orinoco in Anzoátequi and Guárico states, but it is thick and was not easily extracted and refined. Prior to the 1990s the most vital oil region economically was an area in the coastal plains, the lowlands around Lake Maracaibo. There, since 1918, foreign and, later, Venezuelan interests have developed astonishingly rich oil fields. The coastal lowlands are exceedingly hot, but coastal ranges rise abruptly from the Caribbean to cool altitudes of 6,000 to 7,000 ft (1,830–2,130 m). These ranges soon become a region of hills, intermontane basins, and plateaus known as the Venezuelan highlands and are a spur of the Andes. Further to the southwest, close to Barquisimeto, the mountains rise to their greatest height at Pico Bolívar (16,427 ft/5,007 m) in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida.
Densely populated, the highland region is the political and commercial hub of the nation. Coffee, the keystone of the economy before the oil boom, comes from the slopes and cocoa from the lower foothills. Valencia and Maracay are, next to Caracas, the chief cities of the mountain basins. Economically dominant in the 19th cent., they are still major urban centers, despite some loss of power because of the oil boom along the coast. Cattle from the llanos are fattened on the rich valley grasses near Lake Valencia. Field crops are intensively cultivated in the vicinity.
The politically and economically dominant landowning class is mainly of Spanish descent. About 65% of the population is mestizo, 20% white, 10% black, and 2% indigenous. Spanish is the official language. There is no established church, but nearly all Venezuelans are nominally Roman Catholic. There are 20 universities in the country.

Economy

Venezuela's mountains long impeded the nation's economic development because of the communications problems they presented. The country has developed a fine highway system, but goods are still carried primarily by ship. Oil accounts for about 80% of the export income, 50% of government earnings, and 25% of the gross domestic product. Venezuela is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States. Other exports are iron ore, bauxite, aluminum, coffee, cocoa, rice, and cotton. The main imports are manufactured goods—especially machinery, vehicles, and chemicals—and food. The main trading partners are the United States, Germany, and Japan. A large amount of oil is exported to the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba for refining. Maracaibo, Puerto Cabello, La Guaira, and Cumaná are the important ports.
The government has used oil revenues to stimulate manufacturing industries. Food processing and the manufacture of construction materials, textiles, chemicals, and automobiles have become well established. Heavy-metalworks have been built on the Orinoco near Ciudad Guayana. Also, Venezuela uses its rivers to great advantage as sources of hydroelectric power. Despite government reform programs, Venezuela's wealth remains in the hands of a small minority. A disproportionately high percentage of the population lives in poverty; after the end of the oil boom in the early 1980s, the percentage of poor Venezuelans has increased dramatically, from 28% to 68%. Many cities have squalid shanty towns, and in the countryside many people are still tenant farmers.
Under President Hugo Chávez, the government has held down the price of staples with price controls (since 2003), and has increased state control over and participation in the economy generally. The government has also emphasized the use of microloans to develop small businesses and the formation of cooperatives in an attempt to improve the lives of poorer Venezuelans, has seized factories, farmland, and other assets it has determined to be “unproductive,” and has forced multinational oil companies to cede a controlling stake in their Venezuelan ventures to the government. In late 2005, price pressures on wholesalers and other middlemen due to price controls led to reduce supplies of many staples, particularly coffee, in retail stores.

Government

Venezuela is governed under the 1999 constitution. The president is elected for a six-year term and may be elected to a second term. Members of the 165-seat unicameral National Assembly are elected for five-year terms. The major parties are the Political Pole coalition, the Democratic Action party and the Social Christian party (COPEI). Administratively, Venezuela consists of 23 states, a federal district, of which Caracas is a part, and a federal dependency, which includes 11 island groups.

History

Early History and the Colonial Era
The Arawaks and the Caribs were the earliest inhabitants of Venezuela, along with certain nomadic hunting and fishing tribes. Columbus discovered the mouths of the Orinoco in 1498. In 1499 the Venezuelan coast was explored by Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci. The latter, coming upon an island off the Paraguaná peninsula (probably Aruba), nicknamed it Venezuela (little Venice) because of native villages built above the water on stilts; the name held and was soon applied to the mainland. Spanish settlements were established on the coast at Cumaná (1520) and Santa Ana de Coro (1527).
The major task of the conquest was accomplished by German adventurers—Ambrosio de Alfinger, George de Speyer and especially Nikolaus Federmann—in the service of the Welsers, German bankers who had obtained rights in Venezuela from Emperor Charles V. During part of the colonial period the area was an adjunct of New Granada. Cocoa cultivation was the mainstay of the colonial economy. From the 16th to the 18th cent. the coastline was attacked by English buccaneers, and in the 18th cent. there was a brisk smuggling trade with the British islands of the West Indies.