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Bolivarian Republic of VenezuelaRepública Bolivariana de Venezuela
Flag Coat of Arms of Venezuela Coat of Arms
Motto: None
Anthem: Gloria al Bravo Pueblo ("Glory to the Brave People")
Capitaland largest city	Caracas
Official languages	Spanish
Government	Federal republic
• President	Hugo Chávez Frías
• Vice president	José Vicente Rangel
Independence
• From Spain	July 5, 1811
• From Gran Colombia	November 21, 1831
• Recognised	March 30, 1845
• Water (%)	0.3
Population
• July 2005 estimate	26,749,000 (43rd)
• 2001 census	23,054,210
GDP (PPP)	2005 estimate
• Total	$163.503 billion (51st)
• Per capita	$6,186 (95th)
HDI (2003)	0.772 high (75th)
Currency	Venezuelan bolívar (VEB)
Time zone	UTC-4 (AST)
• Summer (DST)	None
Calling code	58
ISO 3166 code	VE
Internet TLD	.ve
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been the full official title of the state since the adoption of the 1999 constitution, when the state was renamed in honour of Simón Bolívar. Historical: Dios y Federación (English: "God and Federation") The Constitution also recognizes all indigenous languages existing in the country.

Venezuela (IPA: ; Template:Lang-es, IPA: ) is a country on the northern coast of South America. Comprising a continental mainland and numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea, Venezuela borders Guyana to the east, Brazil to the south, and Colombia to the west. Trinidad and Tobago, Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba, and the Leeward Antilles lie just north of the Venezuelan coast.

A former Spanish colony, Venezuela is a federal republic. Historically, Venezuela has had territorial disputes with Guyana, largely concerning the Essequibo area, and with Colombia concerning the Gulf of Venezuela. Today, Venezuela is known widely for its petroleum industry, the environmental diversity of its territory, and its natural features. Christopher Columbus, upon seeing its eastern coast in 1498, referred to Venezuela as Tierra de Gracia (Land of Grace), which has become the country’s nickname.

Administrative divisions

Geography

At 916,445 km² (353,841 mi²), Venezuela is the world's 33rd-largest country (after Nigeria). It is comparable in size to Namibia, and is about half the size of the American state of Alaska. Mainland Venezuela rests on the South American Plate; its Caribbean islands were formed by subduction at the margins of the bordering Caribbean Plate. With 2,800 km of coastline, Venezuela is home to a wide variety of landscapes. The extreme northeastern extensions of the Andes reach into Venezuela's northwest and continue along the northern Caribbean coast. There, the nation's highest point, Pico Bolívar, is found.

The country's center is characterized by the llanos, extensive plains that stretch from the Colombian border in the far west to the delta of the Orinoco River in the east. To the south, the dissected Guiana Highlands is home to the northern edge of Amazonia and Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall. Venezuelan forests are being depleted at the rate of 200,000 ha per annum by logging and shifting cultivation.

The country can be further divided into nine geographical areas, some corresponding to the natural regions, one being the Andes Range. The Lake Maracaibo region comprises the lowlands near the Gulf of Venezuela. The Coro System, a mountainous block in the northwest, is home to several sierras and valleys. The Central Range runs parallel to the coast and includes the hills surrounding Caracas; the Eastern Range, separated from the Central Range by the Gulf of Cariaco, covers all of Sucre and northern Monagas. The Llanos region makes up a third of the country's area above the Orinoco River. Under it, is the South Orinoco Region (the Guianas, above described). The Insular Region is formed by Nueva Esparta and the Federal Dependencies. The last geographical region is the Deltaic System which forms a pantanous triangle, covering Delta Amacuro, with the Atlantic platform branching off the coast.

The Orinoco River is the largest and most important river of the country, originating in one of the biggest watersheds in Latin America. Other important rivers are the Caroní and the Apure.

The local climate is tropical and generally hot and humid, though moderate and cold in the highlands. The capital, Caracas is also the country's largest city. Other major cities include Maracaibo, Barquisimeto, Valencia, Maracay, and Ciudad Guayana.

Venezuela is one of the seventeen megadiverse countries, for the great number of animal and vegetable species that habitate there.

Economy

The petroleum sector dominates the Venezuela's mixed economy, accounting for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of export earnings, and more than half of government revenues. The oil sector operates through the government-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which among other things owns the US-based distributor CITGO and its more than 14,000 retail gasoline outlets. Despite the significant oil wealth, 50% of the population live in poverty, and thousands are unemployed.

Venezuela is also highly dependent on its agricultural sector. Sectors with major potential for export-led growth are production of both coffee and cocoa crops. At one time, Venezuela ranked close to Colombia in coffee production, but in the 1960s and 1970s, as petroleum temporarily turned Venezuela into the richest country in South America, coffee was relegated to the economic back burner. Today, Venezuela produces less than 1% of the world's coffee, most of it consumed by the domestic market. However, Venezuelan coffees are again entering the North American specialty markets. Venezuela's cocoa industry has decayed since the days of Spanish colonialism, when African slaves worked on cocoa estates. The focus of cocoa cultivation has long since moved to tropical West Africa. In recent years, there has been an attempt to resuscitate this industry, as its rare variety of cacao, known as Chuao, is considered the finest and most aromatic in the world and is used in certain single-origin chocolates. The largest Venezuelan fine chocolate producer is El Rey, though some companies such as Savoy (Nestlé) also manufacture chocolate from Venezuelan cacao and export it to Europe.

Venezuela is one of the five founding members of OPEC, the international oil cartel. The initiative of Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, OPEC was proposed in 1960 as a response to low domestic and international oil prices. Since 2005, Venezuela has been a member of Mercosur, joining Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay; it has yet to gain voting rights.

, List of Venezuelan Cooperatives

Public health

Infant mortality in Venezuela stands at 21.54 deaths per 1000 births, for comparison this rate is almost eight times higher than Sweden. Child malnutrition (for children under age five) stands at about 17 percent of the population classified as stunted or wasted, which are the official United Nations categories for malnutrition. Areas more affected by the stunting and wasting include some of the poorest populations: Amacuro Delta (30%) and Amazonas (24%).

According to the United Nations, the fraction of population without adequate sanitation is 32 percent, with a majority of people in many rural areas lacking in this basic commodity. Travellers to Venezuela are advised to obtain vaccinations for a variety of diseases including typhoid, yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and hepatitis D. In a cholera epidemic of contemporary times in the Orinoco Delta, Venezuela's political leaders were accused of racial profiling of their own indigeneous people to deflect blame from the country's institutions, thereby aggravating the epidemic.. Visitors to Venezuela are advised to drink only bottled water, due to the prevalence of cross contamination of drinking water with untreated sewage. In Venezuela only three percent of the sewage receives treatment, and none of the following major cities have any wastewater treatment: Caracas, Maracaibo and Valencia. There are approximately 5,000,000 people in Venezuela living without access to safe drinking water, resulting in a percentage of population ranking of Venezuela among the poorest in South America. As of the year 1999 there were an estimated 110,000 people in Venezuela living with HIV.

Military

Culture & heritage

Venezuela's heritage, art, and culture has been heavily influenced by the historical evolutions of its Latin American counterparts. These elements extend to its historic buildings, architecture, art, landscape, boundaries, and monuments. Venezuelan culture has been shaped by indigenous, Spanish, and African influences dating at early as the colonial period. Before this period, indigenous culture was expressed in art (petroglyphs), crafts, architecture (shabonos), and social organization. Aboriginal culture was subsequently assimilated by Spaniards; over the years, the hybrid culture had diversified by region.

Venezuelan art is gaining attention within and outside the country. First dominated by religious motives, in the late 19th century it changed to historical and heroic representations, led by Martín Tovar y Tovar. Modernism took over in the 20th century. Some remarkable Venezuelan artists include Arturo Michelena, Cristóbal Rojas, Armando Reverón, Manuel Cabré, Jesús-Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez (who both contributed greatly to kinetic art) and Yucef Merhi.

Venezuelan literature began developing soon after the Spanish conquest, and it was dominated by Spanish culture and thinking. Following the rise of political literature during the Independence War, then came Romanticism, the first important genre in the region, whose great exponent was Juan Vicente González. Although mainly focused on narrative, poets also figure with great importance, Andrés Eloy Blanco being the most famous of them, and also Fermín Toro. Major writers and novelists are Rómulo Gallegos, Teresa de la Parra, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Adriano González León, Miguel Otero Silva and Mariano Picón Salas. Another great poet and humanist was Andrés Bello, besides being an educator and an intellectual. Other philosophers and intellectuals, like Laureano Vallenilla Lanz and José Gil Fortoul, along with many other writers, sustained the theory of Venezuelan positivism.

The great architect of the Venezuelan modern era was Carlos Raúl Villanueva, who designed the Universidad Central de Venezuela, (a World Heritage Site) and its Aula Magna. Venezuelan architectural examples are the Capitol, the Baralt Theatre, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex, and the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge.

Indigenous musical styles are sort of a crucible of Venezuelan cultural inheritances, most exemplified by groups like Un Solo Pueblo and Serenata Guayanesa. The national musical instrument is the cuatro. The typical or representative musical styles are mainly from the llanos area and its surroundings, such as Alma Llanera (by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez and Rafael Bolivar Coronado), Florentino y el Diablo (by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba), Concierto en la llanura by Juan Vicente Torrealba, and Caballo Viejo (by Simón Díaz). The Gaita (music style) is also a popular style, played generally during Christmas, typical of the Zulian region. The national dance is the joropo. Teresa Carreño was a world famous piano virtuosa during the late 19th century.

Venezuela is also known for their world famous baseball players, such as Luis Aparicio, who is in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York (USA), David Concepción, Oswaldo Guillén, Andrés Galarraga, Omar Vizquel, Luis Sojo, Bobby Abreu, and Johan Santana, winner of the Cy Young Award in 2004 and 2006. Although baseball is tremendously popular (it's the national pastime), football (soccer) is also gaining popularity, due to the increasing performance of the Venezuela national football team.

Holidays

See also

Notes

2. ^ CIA Factbook.Venezuela. Accessed 20 November 2006.
3. FAO.org Venezuela. Accessed 20 September 2006.
4. Unicef. Venezuela. Accessed 20 September 2006.
5. Venezuela Guardian. Accessed 20 September 2006.
6. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0520230310-2
7. Appropriate Technology for Sewage Pollution Control in the Wider Caribbean Region, Caribbean Environment Programme Technical Report #40 1998 available online at http://www.cep.unep.org/pubs/Techreports/tr40en/chapter5.html
8. UNICEF. Safe Drinking Water. Accessed 20 September 2006.
9. http://www.indexmundi.com/venezuela/hiv_aids_people_living_with_hiv_aids.html
10. "Coro and its Port". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. 1993.
11. "Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. 2000.

References

• Child, Jack. "The Politics and Semiotics of the Smallest Icons of Popular Culture: Latin American Postage Stamps." Latin American Research Review, 40:1 (2005) 108-137.

External links

Government

• Template:Es icon Venezuelan Government Entry Portal
• Template:Es icon National Institute of Statistics
• Template:Es icon Ministry of Tourism

General references

• Template:En icon "Venezuela". The World Factbook (2025 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency.
• Template:En icon Venezuela at Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Template:En icon Venezuela from the Library of Congress Country Studies

Other

• Template:En icon Template:Wikitravel
• Template:En icon Satellite views of Venezuela from Google Maps
• Template:En icon WikiMapia has one or more wiki satellite maps of Venezuela.
• Template:En icon Template:Dmoz

Template:South America

• Venezuela
• South American countries
• Spanish-speaking countries
• G15 nations