Venezuela

By Brittina Stevens

Venezuela, a Spanish colony for more than 300 years, means "little Venice" in Spanish because the lake dwellers built their huts on stilts and used waterways as streets.

The total coastline of Venezuela is about 2,800 kilometers long. The total area of the country is 912,050 square kilometers.

Even though the country had trouble in about everything they came across, music, poetry, and education were certainly not among the problems, because those areas were huge successes.

In fact, Venezuela was doing better than any other country in South America. Venezuelans totally excelled in architecture. Their architecture made news all over the world, and a museum was built to store the paintings, statues, sculptures, and everything else.

Novels sold better than much of the poetry, but everybody still loved every bit of it.

Padre Pedro Palacios Sojo was the father of Venezuelan music. He even brought musical scores and instruments from Europe and established an important academy of music in Caracas. He was born in 1739 and died in 1799.

Juan Jose Landaeta was a composer of religious and patriotic music. He also wrote Venezuela’s national anthem. He was born in 1780 and died in c.1813.

Teresa Carreno was a pianist who first drew the world’s attention to Venezuelan music. She was born in 1853 and died in 1917.

Cristobal Rojas was a painter who began with historical canvases and later switched to themes of everyday life.

In 1728, Venezuela got exclusive rights to the import trade. It became one of the first of Spain’s South American colonies to declare its freedom in the early 19th century. Later, Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar were outstanding among the leaders of independence movements.

During the 20th century, population and development were problems. The overall population now is 24,654,694, which gives them an overall population density of 27 persons per square kilometer. About 67 percent of the population is made up of mestizos. The society is 87 percent urban. Spanish is the official language of the country. The principal religion is Roman Catholicism. They are highly urbanized. They are divided into 22 states; federal dependencies, which comprise 72 islands in the Caribbean; and the federal district of Caracas, the national capital.

The country’s treasury received less than 10 percent in royalties on all the oil extracted between 1922 and 1936.

Economically as well as politically, they made significant progress during the 1960’s.

In December of 1902, Britain, Germany, and Italy was helping America by using the big stick diplomacy, which meant they were sending warships to blockade the coast of Venezuela to pressure them to pay long overdue debts. They even tried negotiating with the ruler of Venezuela, who was Cipriano Castro at the time, be he still refused to pay the debts. Then, the three European countries withdrew their warships and submitted their claims. German ships had shelled a Venezuelan fort and the American people reacted very angrily over it, which ended up being a brutal attack.

Then, the president of the United States in 1908 thought of this idea called dollar diplomacy, which all that means is the people could substitute dollars for bullets. The dollar diplomacy would invest the American profits and actually gain stability and peace with all the countries they were having problems with.

There was and still is many people in Venezuela without land, and many of those who have received land lack the skills to farm successfully. The serious and continuing efforts of the government to satisfy the land hunger of the present are reflected in a significant improvement in the social and political stability of the countryside.

They have four distinct geographic regions. They are the Maracaibo lowlands, the northern Venezuelan highlands, the Llanos (plains) of the north central region, and the Guiana highlands to the south.

Forests of varied species including palms, coral, mangoes, and brazilwood cover 56.1 percent of Venezuela. Plant life common to the Temperate Zone thrives above about 900 miles long. Long grass on the Llanos, and mangrove swamps, cover much of the Orinoco River delta. Among the animals of Venezuela are jaguars, monkeys, sloths, anteaters, ocelots, bears, deer, and armadillos. Birdlife is abundant and includes flamingos, herons, ibis, guacharos, and numerous other species. Reptiles, including crocodiles and large snakes, such as anacondas and boa constrictors, are also found in Venezuela.

However, petroleum dominates their economy and they are the seventh ranking producer in the world. Venezuela is rich in mineral resources, notably petroleum, natural gas, bauxite, gold, iron ore, copper, zinc, lead, and diamonds. Forests, too, are an important resource.

The country’s economy was dominated by agriculture until the discovery of vast quantities of petroleum in the early 1900’s. Government-run agencies have coordinated oil production since that time. Although the oil industry has generated great wealth, society remains sharply divided between rich and poor. An elite class of businessmen, oil company technicians, and large landowners control most of the country’s resources, while a large number of unskilled urban laborers and rural farm workers live in relative poverty.

Maracaibo developed into a modern city during the 20th century, largely because of its role as a major center of the petroleum industry. Valenzuela is one of the country’s main manufacturing centers.

A couple of things I have found pretty interesting about Venezuela is the part about it meaning "little Venice" in Spanish, and that the majority of them are known as mestizos – which are individuals of mixed European and Native American ancestry. There is also the fact that they have a lot of land, with many people to cover the land, and a huge coastline connected to the Atlantic Ocean.