Venezuela Historical Setting
Statue of Simón Bolívar Palacios in Caracas
THE TERRITORY THAT BECAME Venezuela lay outside the
geographical
boundaries of the great pre-Hispanic civilizations of
Central and
South America. And although it was the first locale in
which
Christopher Columbus set foot on the mainland of the New
World,
Venezuela was of only marginal consequence within the
Spanish
American empire during most of the next three centuries.
It was
not until the late eighteenth century that the colonial
region
that encompassed present-day Venezuela provoked, thanks to
growing agricultural and trading activity under the
auspices of
the Caracas Company, more than minor interest from the
Spanish
crown.
Venezuela's historical significance perhaps reached its
peak
during Spanish America's struggle for independence during
the
early nineteenth century. In 1810 it became the first
colony
formally to declare its independence. Venezuela also
provided
Latin America with its greatest hero of that era, and
perhaps of
all time, in Simón Bolívar Palacios. Bolívar, known as
"The
Liberator," played the leading role in expelling the
Spanish
colonial authorities not only from Venezuela, but also
from
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. He died in 1830,
tragically
broken after having seen his dream of Latin American unity
shattered by the realities of regional caudillismo (rule
by local
strongmen, or caudillos).
Venezuela remained marginal primarily because it lacked
deposits of gold, silver. or the precious stones that
constituted
Spain's fundamental interest in the New World. No useful
purpose
existed during colonial times for the petroleum--dubbed
"the
devil's excrement" by early Spanish explorers--that oozed
out of
the ground near Lago de Maracaibo. Venezuela's growing
prosperity
toward the end of the colonial era was based instead on
its
flourishing production and trade of cocoa. When the
ravages of
Venezuela's independence struggle combined with a collapse
in the
international market to put an end to Venezuela's cocoa
"boom,"
coffee became the nation's principal export. This second
phase in
Venezuela's agricultural export economy lasted nearly a
century,
until petroleum became king with the popularization of the
internal combustion engine in the early twentieth century.
The petroleum industry in Venezuela began under the
control
of foreign firms. Beginning in the 1930s, it gradually
came under
the government's authority. The nationalization of the
remaining
assets of the foreign oil firms in 1976 represented the
culmination of full government control. Nonetheless, the
government had little effect on the international price of
crude
oil, despite the efforts of the Organization of the
Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), of which Venezuela was a
founding
member. Fluctuations in the price of oil during the 1970s
and
1980s exercised a commanding impact on the political as
well as
the economic life of the nation.
In strictly political terms, Venezuela's republican
history
exhibits a seeming incongruity between the instability and
dictatorial rule of the period prior to 1935 and the
stability of
its post-1958 democracy. Scholars have posited a variety
of
explanations for this fortuitous transformation, most of
which
cite the usefulness of vastly increased petroleum revenues
in
allowing the state to address the demands of virtually
every
politically active sector of society. The marked decline
in
petroleum revenues during the 1980s therefore placed
significant
strains on this political system, which for over two
decades had
been the envy of the other nations of Latin America.
Data as of December 1990
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