When was oil discovered?
Petroleum and natural gas seeps, produced by fissures in the earth, dot the landscape in various regions of eastern and western Venezuela. The indigenous people labeled these occurrences menes, and they used the viscous substance to weatherproof structures,...
How did Chávez, a former coup leader, win the 1998 presidential election?
During the 1990s, the political landscape in Venezuela shifted as important segments of society, across the entire socioeconomic spectrum, lost faith in the traditional political parties and their ability to reform. Recurring...
What groups lived in Venezuela before the arrival of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century?
With its unpredictable weather patterns, fragmented topography, and impenetrable rainforest, Venezuela proved incapable of sustaining large complex and hierarchical structured indigenous societies similar to those found in Mexico, Central...
The first thing most people outside of Venezuela know about the country is its former president, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, one of the most charismatic and controversial leaders in the Western Hemisphere in the last one hundred years, whose death in 2013 traumatized the...
