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Venezuela SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Before the oil era began in the mid-1920s, about 70
percent
of the Venezuelan population was rural, illiterate, and
poor.
Over the next fifty years, the ratios were reversed so
that over
88 percent of the population became urban and literate. No
group
has escaped the impact of this modernization process. Even
the
most isolated peasants and tribal Indians felt some
effects of
this economic growth, which opened up access to the elite
stature, expanded opportunities for large numbers of
immigrants,
increased the size, power, and cohesiveness of the middle
class,
and created a sector of organized workers within the lower
class.
Data as of December 1990
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