Venezuela The Society and Its Environment
View of Angel Falls
THROUGHOUT MOST OF ITS HISTORY, Venezuela remained a poor
country
with a rigidly stratified, largely rural population. The
political system in the long era of caudillismo (rule by
local
strongmen, or caudillos) was one in which shifting
factions,
loosely organized around competing caudillos, vied for
dominance
over disenfranchised masses. A minuscule upper class of
wealthy
hacendados, whose income derived from cocoa abd coffee
plantations, controlled the economy. This group based
their
superior status on their light skin and on Hispanic
cultural and
social norms established during the colonial period.
Despite its
power, prestige, and wealth, however, the upper stratum
never
formed the sort of cohesive, entrenched oligarchy so
common
throughout most of the rest of the continent. Venezuela's
comparative poverty--its lack of gold or precious
stones--limited
the attention it received from Spain; fewer Spaniards
ventured to
Venezuela than to nearby Colombia or more distant Peru.
The
colonial period, therefore, did not produce an opulent
upper
class, either Spanish or native born.
Below this small, modestly rich, and fragmented upper
class
was a somewhat larger, but still limited, middle stratum.
This
group consisted of soldiers, artisans, craftsmen,
bureaucrats,
and small traders. Farther down the social ladder was the
vast
bulk of the population. Persons in this stratum, who were
considered and considered themselves lower class,
consisted
largely of peasants of mixed descent. They had different
values,
life-styles, family patterns, and religious practices from
those
of the upper class. These Venezuelans played only a
marginal role
in the country's affairs. They occupied a subordinate and
dependent position in the socioeconomic structure and
exercised
political influence only by joining the ranks of the local
caudillo's personal militia.
Independence effected few changes in the relative
position
and sizes of these three classes. Indeed, until the
discovery and
exploitation of large quantities of oil in the first two
decades
of the twentieth century, Venezuela's economy and society
exhibited a traditional agrarian pattern dominated by the
production of export crops, such as cocoa and coffee, and
some
cattle raising. The shift to oil and the subsequent
expansion of
manufacturing eradicated the old order. In less than a
generation, Venezuela became a far more modern,
urban-based
society. By 1960 some 60 percent of the population lived
in
cities of over 5,000 inhabitants, and the population of
metropolitan Caracas numbered over a million.
Middle-class Venezuelans became a highly mobile people,
moving regularly from place to place and job to job.
Traditional
values changed in ways that made the society more open and
class
boundaries more flexible. The ongoing process of value
modification contributed to changes that accelerated in
the 1970s
and 1980s, as more women entered the universities and the
labor
force and more citizens participated in the liberalized
political
system. In the 1990s, a Venezuelan society still exhibited
enormous differences between its upper and its lowest
strata. But
the social system had become more permeable, and the urban
middle
class had become probably the most effective group
involved in
the country's vigorous partisan politics. Many Venezuelans
therefore felt that the greatest challenge to their
sociopolitical system lay not in further involvement of
the
middle class, but in responding to the concerns of the
still
large group at the base of the societal pyramid.
Data as of December 1990
|