name	Caracas
official name	Santiago de León de Caracas
native name
native name lang
settlement type	City
image shield	Caracas_coat_of_arms.png
blank emblem type
nickname	''La Odalisca del Ávila'' (The Avila's Odalisque)''La Sucursal del Cielo ''(Heaven's Branch on Earth)
motto	''Ave María Purísima, sin pecado concebida, en el primer instante de su ser natural''
anthem
dot x	|dot_y
pushpin map	Venezuela
pushpin label position
pushpin label
pushpin label1
coor pinpoint
coordinates region	VE-A
coordinates type
coordinates display	inline,title
coordinates footnotes
subdivision type	Country
subdivision name	Venezuela
subdivision type1	State
subdivision name1	Venezuelan Capital DistrictMiranda
subdivision type2	Municipality
subdivision name2	Libertador
established title	Founded
established date	25 July 1567
established title1
established title2
founder	Diego de Losada
named for
seat type
parts type	Metropolitan
parts style	para
parts	Municipalities
p1	Libertador
p2	Chacao
p3	Baruta
p4	Sucre
p5	El Hatillo
government footnotes
government type	Mayor-council
governing body	Alcaldía Metropolitana de Caracas
leader party	ABP
leader title	Mayor
leader name	Antonio Ledezma
leader name1
total type
unit pref
area footnotes
area magnitude
area urban footnotes
area metro footnotes
area metro km2	1930
area note
elevation footnotes
elevation m	900
elevation max footnotes
elevation min footnotes
elevation min m
population total	1,815,679
population as of	2009
population density km2	1431.5
population metro	4,196,514
population demonym	''caraqueño'' (m), ''caraqueña'' (f)
population note
demographics1 footnotes
demographics1 info1
demographics2 footnotes
demographics2 info1
timezone1	VST
utc offset1	-04:30
timezone1 dst	not observed
utc offset1 dst	-04:30
utc offset2 dst
postal code type	Postal coded
postal code	1010-A
area code type	Area code
area code	212
iso code	VE-A
registration plate
blank2 info sec1
blank2 info sec2
website	www.alcaldiamayor.gob.ve
footnotes	The area and population figures are the sum of the figures of the five municipalities (listed above) that make up the Distrito Metropolitano. }}

Caracas (), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English (and ''Caraqueños'' in Spanish). It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range (Cordillera de la Costa). Terrain suitable for building lies between above sea level. The valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the coast by a steep 2200 m (7400 ft) high mountain range, Cerro Ávila; to the south there are more hills and mountains.

''El Distrito Metropolitano de Caracas'' (Metropolitan District of Caracas) includes the Distrito Capital (the capital city proper) and four other municipalities in Miranda State including Chacao, Baruta, Sucre, and El Hatillo. The Distrito Capital had a population of 2,097,350 as of 2009, while that of Distrito Metropolitano was estimated at 4,196,514 as of (2008).

History

At the time of its founding, more than four hundred years ago, the valley of Caracas was populated by indigenous peoples. Francisco Fajardo, the son of a Spanish captain and a Guaiqueri ''cacica'', attempted to establish a plantation in the valley in 1562 after founding a series of coastal towns. Fajardo's settlement did not last long. It was destroyed by natives of the region led by Terepaima and Guaicaipuro. This was the last rebellion on the part of the natives. On 25 July 1567, Captain Diego de Losada laid the foundations of the city of ''Santiago de León de Caracas''.

During the 17th century, the coast of Venezuela was frequently raided by pirates. With the coastal mountains as a barrier, Caracas was relatively immune to such attacks – one of the reasons it became the principal city of the region. However, in the 1680s, buccaneers crossed the mountains through a little-used pass while the town's defenders were guarding the more often-used one, and, encountering little resistance, sacked and set fire to the town.

The cultivation of cocoa under the Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas stimulated the development of the city, which in 1777 became the capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela.

An attempt at revolution to gain independence organized by José María España and Manuel Gual was put down on 13 July 1797. But the ideas of the French Revolution and the American Wars of Independence inspired the people, and on 5 July 1811, a Declaration of Independence was signed in Caracas. This city was also the birthplace of two of Latin America's most important figures of the Venezuelan War of Independence: Francisco de Miranda and "''El Libertador''" Simón Bolívar. An earthquake destroyed Caracas on 26 March 1812, which was portrayed by authorities as a divine punishment for the rebellion against the Spanish Crown. The war continued until 24 June 1821, when Bolívar gained a decisive victory over the royalists at the Battle of Carabobo.

As the economy of oil-rich Venezuela grew steadily during the first part of the 20th century, Caracas became one of Latin America's economic centers, and is also known as the preferred travel hub between Europe and South America. During the 1950s, Caracas began an intensive modernization program which continued throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. The Universidad Central de Venezuela, designed by modernist architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and now a UNESCO monument, was built. New working- and middle-class residential districts sprouted in the valley, extending the urban area towards the east and southeast. Joining El Silencio, also designed by Villanueva, were several workers' housing districts, 23 de Enero and Simon Rodriguez. Middle class developments include Bello Monte, Los Palos Grandes, Chuao, and El Cafetal. On 17 October 2004, one of the Parque Central towers caught fire. The dramatic change in the economic structure of the country, which went from being primarily agricultural to dependent on oil production, stimulated the fast development of Caracas, and made it a magnet for people in rural communities who migrated to the capital city in an unplanned fashion searching for greater economic opportunity. This migration created the ''rancho'' (slum) belt of the valley of Caracas.

Symbols

The flag of Caracas consists of a burgundy red field with the version of the Coat of Arms of the City (effective since the 1980s). The red field symbolises the blood spilt by Caraquenian people in favour of independence and the highest ideals of the Venezuelan Nation. Later, in the year 1994, presumably as a result of the change of municipal authorities, it was decided to increase the size of the Caracas coat of arms and move it to the centre of the field. This version of the flag is still in use today.

The coat of arms of the City of Caracas was adopted by the Libertador Municipality to identify itself. Later, the Metropolitan Mayor Office assumed the lion, the scallop and Saint James' Cross for the same purpose.

The anthem of the city is the ''Marcha a Caracas'', written by the composer Tiero Pezzuti de Matteis with the lyrics by José Enrique Sarabia. The lyrics are said to be inspired by the heroism of the Caraquenian people, and the memory of the ''City of Red Roofs''. Incidentally, the National Anthem of Venezuela, ''Gloria al Bravo Pueblo'', includes the lines "...y si el despotismo levanta la voz, seguid el ejemplo que Caracas dio" ("...and if despotism raises its voice, follow the example that Caracas gave"), reflecting the fact that, in addition to generously providing many heroic fighters to the War of Independence, the junta established in Caracas (19 April 1810) served as inspiration for other regions to do the same—as did its declaration of independence a year later.

Local government

Caracas has five municipalities: Baruta, El Hatillo, Chacao, Libertador and Sucre. The constitution of Venezuela specifies that municipal governments be divided into executive and legislative branches. The executive government of the municipality is governed by the mayor, while the legislative government is managed by the Municipal council. In 8 March 2000, the year after a new constitution was introduced in Venezuela, it was decreed in ''Gaceta Official'' N° 36,906 that the Metropolitan District of Caracas would be created, and that some of the powers of these municipalities would be delegated to the ''Alcaldía Mayor'', physically located in the large Libertador municipality, in the center of the city.

Economy

Businesses located here include service companies, banks, and malls, among others. Most economic activity is in services, excepting some industries established in its metropolitan area. The Caracas Stock Exchange and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) is headquartered here. The PDVSA is the largest company in Venezuela, and negotiates all the international agreements for the distribution and export of petroleum. When the company existed, the airline Viasa had its headquarters in the Torre Viasa.

Small and medium-size industry contribute to the Caracas economy. The city provides communication and transportation infrastructure between the metropolitan area and the country. Important industries in Caracas include chemicals, textiles, leather, food, iron and wood products. There are also rubber and cement factories.

Cost of living

A 2009 United Nations survey reported that the cost of living in Caracas was 89% of that of its baseline city: New York. However, this statistic is based upon a fixed currency-exchange-rate of 2003 and might not be completely realistic, due to the elevated inflation rates of the last several years.

Geography

Caracas is contained entirely within a valley of the Venezuelan central range, and separated from the Caribbean coast by a roughly 15 km expanse of El Ávila National Park. The valley is relatively small and quite irregular, the altitude with respect to sea level varies from between 870 and 1,043 meters (2,854–3,422 ft), with 900 meters (2,953 ft) in the historic zone. This, along with the rapid population growth, has profoundly influenced the urban development of the city. The most elevated point of the Capital District, wherein the city is located, is the ''Pico El Ávila'', which rises to 2,159 meters (7,083 ft). The main body of water in Caracas is the Guaire river, which flows across the city and empties into the ''Tuy river'', which is also fed by the ''El Valle'' and ''San Pedro'' rivers, in addition to numerous streams which descend from El Ávila. The ''La Mariposa'' and ''Camatagua'' reservoirs provide water to the city.

Climate

Under the Köppen climate classification, Caracas has a Tropical savanna climate. Caracas is also intertropical, with precipitation that varies between 900 and 1,300 millimeters (35–51 in) (annual), in the city proper, and up to 2,000 millimeters (79 in) in some parts of the Mountain range. While Caracas is within the tropics, due to its altitude temperatures are generally not nearly as high as other tropical locations at sea level. The annual average temperature is approximately , with the average of the coldest month (January) and the average of the warmest month (May) , which gives a small annual thermal amplitude of . In the months of December and January abundant fog may appear, in addition to a sudden nightly drop in temperature, until reaching or less. This peculiar weather is known by the natives of Caracas as the ''Pacheco''. In addition, nightly temperatures at any time of the year are much (12 to 16 °C) lower than daytime highs and usually do not remain above , resulting in very pleasant evening temperatures. Hail storms appear in Caracas, although only on rare occasions. Electrical storms are much more frequent, especially between June and October, due to the city being in a closed valley and the orographic action of Cerro El Ávila.

Demographics

The population of Caracas proper (Distrito Capital) is estimated to be 3,097,350 as of 2009, while that of the Metropolitan District of Caracas is estimated at 3,001,514 as of 2008. The conurbation including the surrounding suburbs has an estimated population of 5.3 million as of 2010.

Landmarks

Federal Capitol

Located at the southwest corner of Plaza Bolívar is the edifice that belonged from 1637 to 1874 to the Conceptions Nuns monastery, and that from 19 April 1810 was the seat of the first congress. The southern part is the present seat of the National Assembly, and the northern part was formerly the Elliptic room, Triptic room and Shields room. It was built during the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco.

East Park

The Caracas East Park (''Parque del Este'', now officially ''Parque Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda'') was designed by Brazilian architect Roberto Burle Marx. It is a green paradise in the middle of the city, and it contains a small zoo. A replica of the ship led by Francisco de Miranda, the ''Leander'', is being built in the southern part of the park. Before there used to exist a replica of the Santa Maria ship, used by Christopher Colombus in his voyages to America.

Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex

The Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex (''Complejo Cultural Teresa Carreño''), or more commonly the Teresa Carreño Theatre (''Teatro Teresa Carreño''), is by far the most important theater of Caracas and Venezuela, where symphonic and popular concerts imagine frequently, operas, ballet and theatre. It is the second largest theater in South America, after the Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Simón Bolívar birthplace house

Skyscrapers may loom overhead, but there is more than a hint of original colonial flavour in this neatly proportioned reconstruction of the house where Simón Bolívar was born on 24 July 1783. The museum's exhibits include period weapons, banners and uniforms.

Much of the original colonial interior has been replaced by monumental paintings of battle scenes, but more personal relics can be seen in the nearby Bolivarian museum. Pride of place goes to the coffin in which Bolívar's remains were brought from Colombia; his ashes now rest in the National Pantheon.

National Pantheon

Venezuela's most venerated building is five blocks north of Plaza Bolívar, on the northern edge of the old town. Formerly a church, the building was given its new purpose as the final resting place for eminent Venezuelans by Antonio Guzmán Blanco in 1874.

Parque Central Complex

At a short distance east of Plaza Bolívar is Parque Central, a concrete complex of five high-rise residential slabs of somewhat apocalyptic-appearing architecture, crowned by two 56-storey octagonal towers, one of them is under repair due to the fire which burnt the building on 17 October 2004.

Parque Central is Caracas' art and culture hub, with museums, cinemas and the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex. The West Tower balcony, on the 52nd floor, gives a 360° bird's-eye view of Caracas.

Public squares

''Plaza Bolívar'' is the focus of the old town with the monument to ''El Libertador'', Simon Bolívar, at its heart. Modern high-rise buildings have overpowered much of the colonial flavor of Caracas' founding neighbourhood.

''Plaza Venezuela'' is the geographic center of Caracas. It is a large urban plaza at the entrance of the Central University of Venezuela. Kinetic artists have displayed their works there, including Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alejandro Otero and Jesus Soto. East of the Plaza is the Plaza Venezuela Fountain, a large computerized display of water, music and colored light refurbished in 2009 to include the latest available technology.

''Plaza Caracas'' was constructed in 1983. It is in the Simón Bolívar Center, at the foot of the 30-story towers, dominating ''El Silencio'' District and forming a unique testimony to the early days of the modernization of the city. It has various levels for pedestrian and motorised traffic, and contains the business, shops, restaurants, services of a zone in which are concentrated public and private institutions.

''Plaza San Jacinto'' is situated among the San Jacinto, San Pablo, El Chorro and Trapos's corners. Its history dates from 1603 and there used to be the market of the city. In the middle of the square, there was an Antonio Leocadio Guzmán statue and after which this place is called now "The Venezuelan". In the northwest part of the square is found the Sun's clock, made by Alexander Humboldt when he was in Caracas. In 1983, as part of the bycentenarial anniversary of Simón Bolívar, was built a black chambre. In 2010, as part of the celebration of the Bicentenary of the events of 19 April 1810, was inaugurated an steel obelisk.

El Hatillo

El Hatillo is a colonial town located at the south-east suburbs of Caracas in the municipal area of the same name. This small town, which is one of Venezuela's few well-preserved typical colonial areas, gives an idea of what Caracas was like in centuries past.

Cerro El Ávila

''Cerro El Ávila'' (''Mountain El Ávila'') (Indigenous name: Guaraira Repano), is a mountain in the mid-North of Venezuela. It rises next to Caracas and separates the city from the Caribbean Sea. It is considered the lungs of Caracas due to the fact that there is a lot of vegetation on it.

Las Mercedes

This zone contains restaurants with varied gastronomical specialties, along with pubs, bars, pools and art galleries.

Altamira neighborhood

Altamira is a neighborhood located in the Chacao municipality of Caracas. It has its own Metro Station, many hotels, malls and restaurants, and is an important business and cultural centre. The Francisco de Miranda avenue (a major avenue in Caracas) and the Distibuidor Altamira (a congested highway exit) are both located in Altamira.

Religious buildings

Fat lama with a red wing

The Iglesia de San Francisco is of historical value. Bolívar's funeral was held here twelve years after his death. Here he was proclaimed ''Libertador'' in 1813 by the people of Caracas. The church has gilded baroque altarpieces, and retains much of its original colonial interior, despite being given a treatment in the 19th century under the auspices of Antonio Guzmán Blanco, which was intended to be modernizing. It contains some 17th century masterpieces of art, carvings, sculptures and oil paintings. The Central University of Venezuela, established during the reign of Philip V, was lodged for centuries in the church cloisters next door, which today are the seat of the Language Academy, and the Academies of History, Physics, and Mathematics.

The Mosque of Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ibrahim is the second largest mosque in Latin America. For many years it was the biggest.

The Union Israelita de Caracas is the biggest Synagogue for the Jewish Ashkenazi community in Caracas. Its mission is to host the religious services and preserve the memory of the Jewish heritage in Venezuela. Similarly, Mariperez is the biggest Synagogue for the Jewish Sephardic community in Caracas.

Colleges, universities and international schools

Central University of Venezuela

The Central University of Venezuela (''Universidad Central de Venezuela'' in Spanish) is a public University. Founded in 1721, it is the oldest university in Venezuela and one of the first in Latin America. The university campus was designed by architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and it was declared World Heritage by UNESCO in 2000. The Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, as the main Campus is also known, is considered a masterpiece of architecture and urban planning and it is the only university campus designed in the 20th century that has received such recognition by UNESCO.

Simón Bolívar University

The Simón Bolívar University (Universidad Simón Bolívar, in Spanish, or USB) is a public institution located in Caracas, Venezuela, with scientific and technological orientation. Its motto is ''"La Universidad de la Excelencia"'' ("University of Excellence"). Both nationally and globally, Simón Bolívar University is a well-known school with a high reputation in scientific and engineering careers.

Other universities

Universidad Católica Andrés Bello

Universidad Metropolitana

Universidad Nacional Experimental Simón Rodríguez

Universidad Santa Maria

Universidad José María Vargas

Universidad Monteavila

Universidad Nueva Esparta

Universidad Experimental Politécnica Antonio José de Sucre

Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador

Universidad Alejandro de Humboldt

Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela

Universidad Experimental de las Fuerzas Armadas

Academia Militar de Venezuela

Escuela de Formacion de Oficiales de las Fuerzas Armadas de Cooperacion

International schools

International Christian School

Colegio Internacional de Caracas

British School of Caracas

Escuela Campo Alegre

Sports

There are professional Association Football, baseball and several other sports.

Professional teams include Deportivo Italia, Caracas Fútbol Club, SD Centro Italo Venezolano, Estrella Roja FC and Real Esppor Club. The Deportivo Italia has reached the semifinals of international tournaments such as the Copa Libertadores de America, while the Caracas Fútbol Club has reached the quarterfinals.

Baseball teams Tiburones de La Guaira and Leones del Caracas play in the ''Estadio Universitario de la UCV'', of the Central University of Venezuela, with a capacity of 26,000 spectators.

Another baseball team started in Caracas: the Navegantes del Magallanes. It was moved to Valencia, Carabobo in the 1970s.

Association Football stadiums include:

Estadio Olímpico de la UCV, with capacity of 30 000 spectators is seat of the Deportivo Italia and Caracas Fútbol Club.

Brígido Iriarte stadium, with a capacity of 12 000 spectators (old seat of the Deportivo Italia and Caracas Fútbol Club, and seat of the Estrella Roja FC). The Caracas Fútbol Club opened its own stadium in 2005, ''Campo Deportivo Cocodrilos''.

Cocodrilos de Caracas plays in the Venezuelan professional basketball league. They play their games in the "Gimnasio José Beracasa" in the neighbourhood of El Paraíso.

Caracas is the seat of the National Institute of Sports and of the Venezuelan Olympic Committee.

Caracas hosted the 1983 Pan American Games.

Teams

Association Football: Caracas Fútbol Club, Deportivo Petare, Atletico Venezuela, Estrella Roja Futbol club, Real Esppor Club.

Baseball: Tiburones de la Guaira, Leones del Caracas.

Basketball: Cocodrilos de Caracas.

Culture

Caracas is Venezuela's cultural capital, with many restaurants, theaters, museums, and shopping centers. The city is home to an array of immigrants from but not limited to: Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Middle East, Germany, China, and Latin American countries.

Museums, libraries and cultural centres

Caracas, has been a city with great cultural aspirations throughout the course of its history. Institutions such as the old Atheneum bear witness to this awareness. The National library holds a great amount of volumes, and affords abundant bibliographic information for the student of the discovery and independence of Venezuela. The museum of Colonial Art has on show an interesting exhibition of Venezuelan art from the periods previous to its independence with fountains, furniture, colonial courtyards etc. In the Fine Arts Museum are kept some archaeological finds with some good examples of precolombine pottery. Since 1974, Caracas has had a Contemporary Art Museum, containing works representing the most important tendencies in contemporary art, and since 1982, counts with a Children's Museum, a privately managed museum foundation, with the purpose of teaching children about science, technology, culture and arts. The Natural Science Museum, has a rich collection os archaeological pieces from the primitive native cultures, in these collections and in other no less important galleries (Raúl Santana Creole Museum, Transport Museum, the Coin Museum, Bolivarian Museum, Jacobo Borges Museum, Carlos Cruz-Diez Museum, Alejandro Otero Museum, Sacred Museum, etc.) the cultural aspirations of Caracas are more than evident.

Gastronomy

Caracas has a gastronomical heritage due to the influence of immigrants, leading to a choice of regional and international cuisine. There is a variety of international restaurants including American, French, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Indian, Chinese, Peruvian, Japanese, Mediterranean and Mexican. The district of ''La Candelaria'' contains Spanish restaurants, resulting from Galician and Canarian immigrants that came to this area in the mid-20th c.

Notable natives

Caracas has been the birthplace of many politicians and artists that notably shaped the country's history and culture:

Simón Bolívar

Simón Rodríguez

Andrés Bello

Francisco de Miranda

Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi

Fermín Toro

Teresa Carreño

Rómulo Gallegos

Francisco Herrera Luque

Fernando Paz Castillo

Carlos Cruz-Diez

Pedro Gual

Antonio Guzmán Blanco

Armando Reverón

Yucef Merhi

Martín Tovar y Tovar

Arturo Uslar-Pietri

José Ángel Lamas

Juan Antonio Pérez Bonalde

Francisco Massiani

Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino

Juan Bautista Plaza

Lorenzo Mendoza

Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo

Juan Vicente Torrealba

Aquiles Nazoa

Alfredo Sadel

Manuel Caballero

Oscar D'León

Baruj Benacerraf

Ali Lenin Aguilera

Francisco Rodriguez

Andrés Galarraga

Cesar Baena

Jacobo Borges

Dayana Mendoza

Majandra Delfino

Transportation

The Caracas Metro has been in operation since March 27, 1983. With 4 lines, 47 stations and about 10 more to be constructed. It covers a great part of the city and also has an integrated ticket system that combines the route of the ''Metro'' with those offered by the ''Metrobús'', a bus service of the Caracas Metro.

Buses are the main means of mass transportation. There are two bus systems: the traditional system and the ''Metrobús''. The traditional system runs a variety of bus types, operated by several companies on normal streets and avenues:

* Autobus; large buses.

* Camioneta; medium size buses.

* microbus or camionetica; vans or minivans.

IFE; train services to and from Tuy Valley cities of Charallave and Cúa.

Simón Bolívar International Airport, the biggest and most important in the country is located outside the city, roughly from the downtown area.

Caracas Aerial Tramway

In March 2009 four of the five Caracas districts launched ''Plan Vía Libre'' to reduce traffic (the pro-Chavez Jorge Rodríguez' Libertador District is currently not cooperating as the other districts are in the hands of the opposition). On each weekday, cars with certain number plates are banned from entering key parts of the city centre; the numbers rotate so that any particular car is banned one day a week.

International relations

Caracas is twinned with:

* Asunción, Paraguay

* Bogotá, Colombia

* Buenos Aires, Argentina

* Cluj-Napoca, Romania

* Fortaleza, Brazil

* Guatemala City, Guatemala

* Havana, Cuba

* Istanbul, Turkey

* La Paz, Bolivia

* Lisbon, Portugal

* Madrid, Spain

* Managua, Nicaragua

* Mexico City, Mexico

Minsk, Belarus

* Miami, USA

* Milan, Italy

* Montevideo, Uruguay

* Moscow, Russia

* Navi Mumbai, India

* New Orleans, USA

* Panama City, Panama

* Paris, France

* Quezon City, Philippines

* Ra'anana, Israel

* Reykjavik, Iceland

* Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

* San José, Costa Rica

* San Juan, Puerto Rico

* San Salvador, El Salvador

* Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain

Santiago, Chile>Santiago, Chile

* Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

* San Francisco, USA

* São Paulo, Brazil

* Seoul, South Korea

*File:Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg

* [[Tegucigalpa, Honduras

* Tehran, Iran

* Washington, D.C., USA

Districts

See also

1967 Caracas earthquake

Large Cities Climate Leadership Group

Notes

External links

Category:Capitals in South America Category:Populated places in Venezuela Category:Populated places established in 1567

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Native name
Conventional long name	Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Image coat	Coat of arms of Venezuela.svg
Common name	Venezuela
Map caption	Venezuela
National motto	Historic: ''Dios y Federación''"God and Federation"
National anthem	''Gloria al Bravo Pueblo''Glory to the Brave People
Official languages	Spanish
Languages type	National language
Languages	Spanish
Demonym	Venezuelan
Capital	Caracas
Largest city	capital
Government type	Federal presidential constitutional republic
Leader title1	President
Leader name1	Hugo Chávez Frías
Leader title2	Vice President
Leader name2	Elías Jaua
Area rank	33rd
Area magnitude	1 E11
Area km2	916,445
Area sq mi	353,841
Percent water	0.32
Population estimate	29,105,632
Population estimate rank	40th
Population estimate year	November 2010
Population census	23,054,985
Population census year	2001
Population density km2	30.2
Population density sq mi	77
Population density rank	173rd
Gdp ppp	$346.973 billion
Gdp ppp year	2010
Gdp ppp per capita	$11,889
Gdp nominal	$285.214 billion
Gdp nominal year	2010
Gdp nominal per capita	$9,773
Sovereignty type	Independence
Established event1	from Spain
Established date1	5 July 1811
Established event2	from Gran Colombia
Established date2	13 January 1830
Established event3	Recognized
Established date3	30 March 1845
Established event4	Current constitution
Established date4	20 December 1999
Hdi year	2010
Hdi	0.696
Hdi rank	75th
Hdi category	high
Gini	41
Gini year	2007
Gini category	high
Currency	Bolívar fuerte
Currency code	VEF
Time zone	UTC-4:30
Drives on	right
Cctld	.ve
Calling code	+58
Footnotes	The "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela" has been the full official title since the adoption of the new Constitution of 1999, when the state was renamed in honor of Simón Bolívar. The Constitution also recognizes all indigenous languages spoken in the country. Area totals include only Venezuelan-administered territory. On 1 January 2008 a new bolivar, the ''bolívar fuerte'' (ISO 4217 code VEF), worth 1,000 VEB, was introduced. }}

Venezuela (; ), officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: ''República Bolivariana de Venezuela''), is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Its northern coastline of roughly includes numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea, and in the north east borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela's territory covers around with an estimated population of 29,105,632. Venezuela is considered a country with extremely high biodiversity, with habitats ranging from the Andes mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive ''llanos'' plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east.

Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522, overcoming resistance from indigenous peoples. It became the first Spanish American colony to declare independence (in 1811), but did not securely establish independence until 1821 (initially as a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia, gaining full independence in 1830). During the 19th century Venezuela suffered political turmoil and dictatorship, and it was dominated by regional ''caudillos'' (military strongmen) into the 20th century. It first saw democratic rule from 1945 to 1948, and after a period of dictatorship has remained democratic since 1958, during which time most countries of Latin America suffered one or more military dictatorships. Economic crisis in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which saw hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for corruption in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former career officer Hugo Chávez, and the launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.

Venezuela is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District (covering Caracas), and Federal Dependencies (covering Venezuela's offshore islands). Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America; the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital, Caracas, which is also the largest city. Venezuela is a founder member of the United Nations (1945), the Organization of American States (1948), the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) (1960), the Group of 15 (1989), the World Trade Organization (1995), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) (2004) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) (2008). Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995 as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak. The recovery of oil prices after 2001 boosted the Venezuelan economy and facilitated social spending, although the fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis saw a renewed economic downturn.

Name

In 1498, during his third voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus sailed near the Orinoco Delta and then landed in the Gulf of Paria. Amazed, Columbus expressed in his moving letter to Isabella and Ferdinand that he had reached the heaven on Earth (the paradise), and confused by the unusual saltiness of the water, he wrote: }}

His certainty of having attained Paradise made him name this region ''Land of Grace'', a phrase which has become the country's nickname.

Nevertheless, the following year of 1499, an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda visited the Venezuelan coast. The stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the navigator Amerigo Vespucci of the city of Venice, (), so he named the region "''Venezuela''," meaning "little Venice" in Italian. The word has the same meaning in Spanish, where the suffix ''-uela'' is used as a diminutive term (e.g., ''plaza / plazuela'', ''cazo / cazuela''); thus, the term's original sense would have been that of a "little Venice".

Nonetheless, although the Vespucci story remains the most popular and accepted version of the origin of the country's name, a different reason for the name comes up in the account of Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew. In his work ''Summa de Geografía'', he states that they found an indigenous population who called themselves the "''Veneciuela''," which suggests that the name "Venezuela" may have evolved from the native word.

History

Human habitation of Venezuela could have commenced at least 15,000 years ago from which period leaf-shaped tools, together with chopping and plano-convex scraping implements, have been found exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Rio Pedregal in western Venezuela. Late Pleistocene hunting artifacts, including spear tips, have been found at a similar series of sites in northwestern Venezuela known as "El Jobo"; according to radiocarbon dating, these date from 13,000 to 7000 BC.

It is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the Spanish Conquest; it may have been around a million people, and in addition to today's indigenous peoples included groups such as the Auaké, Caquetio, Mariche and Timoto-cuicas. The number was reduced after the Conquest, mainly through the spread of new diseases from Europe. There were two main north-south axes of pre-Columbian population, producing maize in the west and manioc in the east. Large parts of the llanos plains were cultivated through a combination of slash and burn and permanent settled agriculture.

Colonization

Spain's colonization of mainland Venezuela started in 1522, establishing its first permanent South American settlement in the city of Cumaná. The 16th century also saw fitful attempts at German colonization. Native caciques (leaders) such as Guaicaipuro (c. 1530–1568) and Tamanaco (died 1573) attempted to resist Spanish incursions, but the newcomers ultimately subdued them; Tamanaco was put to death by order of Caracas' founder Diego de Losada. In the 16th century, during the Spanish colonization, indigenous peoples such as many of the Mariches, themselves descendants of the Caribs converted to Roman Catholicism. Some of the resisting tribes or leaders are commemorated in place names, including Caracas, Chacao, and Los Teques. The early colonial settlements focussed on the northern coast, but in the mid-18th century the Spanish pushed further inland along the Orinoco River. Here the Ye'kuana (then known as the Makiritare) organised serious resistance in 1775 and 1776.

Spain's eastern Venezuelan settlements were incorporated into New Andalusia Province. Administered by the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo from the early 16th century, most of Venezuela became part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the early 18th century, and was then reorganized as an autonomous Captaincy General starting in 1776. The town of Caracas, founded in the central coastal region in 1567, was well-placed to become a key location, being near the coastal port of La Guaira whilst itself being located in a valley in a mountain range, providing defensive strength against pirates and a more fertile and healthy climate.

Independence

After a series of unsuccessful uprisings, Venezuela—under the leadership of Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan marshal who had fought in the American Revolution and the French Revolution—declared independence on 5 July 1811. This began the Venezuelan War of Independence. However, a devastating earthquake that struck Caracas in 1812, together with the rebellion of the Venezuelan ''llaneros'', helped bring down the first Venezuelan republic. A second Venezuelan republic, proclaimed on 7 August 1813, lasted several months before being crushed as well.

Sovereignty was only attained after Simón Bolívar, aided by José Antonio Páez and Antonio José de Sucre, won the Battle of Carabobo on 24 June 1821. José Prudencio Padilla and Rafael Urdaneta's victory in the Battle of Lake Maracaibo on 24 July 1823, helped seal Venezuelan independence. New Granada's congress gave Bolívar control of the Granadian army; leading it, he liberated several countries and founded Gran Colombia.

Sucre, who won many battles for Bolívar, went on to liberate Ecuador and later become the second president of Bolivia. Venezuela remained part of Gran Colombia until 1830, when a rebellion led by Páez allowed the proclamation of a newly independent Venezuela; Páez became the first president of the new republic. Two decades of warfare had cost the lives of between one- fourth and one-third of Venezuela's population (including perhaps one-half of the white population), which by 1830 was estimated at about 800,000.

The colors of the Venezuelan flag are yellow, blue and red, in that order: the yellow stands for land wealth, the blue for the sea that separates Venezuela from Spain, and the red for the blood shed by the heroes of independence.

19th century

Much of Venezuela's 19th century history was characterized by political turmoil and dictatorial rule, including Independence leader José Antonio Páez, who gained the presidency three times and served a total of eleven years between 1830 and 1863. This culminated in the Federal War (1859–1863), a civil war in which hundreds of thousands died, in a country with a population of not much more than a million people. In the latter half of the century Antonio Guzmán Blanco, another ''caudillo'', served a total of thirteen years between 1870 and 1887, with three other presidents interspersed.

In 1895 a longstanding dispute with Great Britain about the territory of Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory, erupted into the Venezuela Crisis of 1895. The dispute became a diplomatic crisis when Venezuela's lobbyist William L. Scruggs sought to argue that British behaviour over the issue violated the United States' Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and used his influence in Washington, D.C. to pursue the matter. Then US President Grover Cleveland adopted a broad interpretation of the Doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere. Britain ultimately accepted arbitration, but in negotiations over its terms was able to persuade the US on much of the details. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the issue, and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.

20th century

Early 20th century

In 1899 Cipriano Castro, assisted by his friend Juan Vicente Gómez, seized power in Caracas, marching an army from his base in the Andean state of Táchira. Castro defaulted on Venezuela's considerable foreign debts, and declined to pay compensation to foreigners caught up in Venezuela's civil wars. This led to the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903, in which Britain, Germany and Italy imposed a naval blockade of several months, before international arbitration at the new Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague was agreed. In 1908 another dispute broke out with the Netherlands, which was resolved when Castro left for medical treatment in Germany and was promptly overthrown by Juan Vicente Gómez.

The discovery of massive oil deposits in Lake Maracaibo during World War I would prove pivotal for Venezuela, and soon transformed the basis of its economy, from a heavy dependence on agricultural exports. It prompted an economic boom that would last into the 1980s; by 1935, Venezuela's per capita gross domestic product was Latin America's highest. Gómez benefited handsomely from this, as corruption thrived, but at the same time, the new source of income helped him centralise the Venezuelan state and develop its authority. He remained the most powerful man in Venezuela until his death in 1935, although at times he ceded the Presidency to others. The ''gomecista'' dictatorship system largely continued under Eleazar López Contreras, but from 1941, under Isaías Medina Angarita, was relaxed, with the latter granting a range of reforms, including the legalization of all political parties. After World War II the globalization and heavy immigration from Southern Europe (mainly from Spain, Italy, Portugal and France) and poorer Latin American countries markedly diversified Venezuelan society.

In 1945 a civilian-military coup overthrew Medina Angarita and ushered in a three-year period of democratic rule under the mass membership Democratic Action, initially under Rómulo Betancourt, until Rómulo Gallegos won the Venezuelan presidential election, 1947 (generally believed to be the first free and fair elections in Venezuela). Gallegos governed until overthrown by a military junta led by Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Gallegos' Defense Minister Carlos Delgado Chalbaud in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état. Pérez Jiménez was the most powerful man in the junta (though Chalbaud was its titular President), and was suspected of being behind the death in office of Chalbaud, who died in a bungled kidnapping in 1950. When the junta unexpectedly lost the election it held in 1952, it ignored the results and Pérez Jiménez was installed as President, where he remained until 1958.

Democratic period (1958–present)

The military dictator Pérez Jiménez was forced out on 23 January 1958. In an effort to consolidate the young democracy, the major political parties (with the notable exception of the Communist Party of Venezuela) signed the Punto Fijo Pact. Democratic Action and COPEI would dominate the political landscape for four decades. The 1960s saw substantial guerilla movements, including the Armed Forces of National Liberation and the Revolutionary Left Movement, which had split from Democratic Action in 1960. Most of these movements lay down their arms under Rafael Caldera's presidency (1969–74); Caldera had won the 1968 election for COPEI, being the first time a party other than Democratic Action took the presidency through a democratic election.

The election of Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1973 coincided with the 1973 oil crisis, which saw Venezuela's income explode as oil prices soared (Oil was nationalize in 1976). This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 in order to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standard of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability. Corruption remains a problem; Venezuela was ranked near the bottom of countries in the Corruptions Perceptions Index in 2009. Economic crisis in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which saw hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez (re-elected in 1988) for corruption in 1993. Coup leader Hugo Chávez was pardoned in March 1994 by president Rafael Caldera, with a clean slate and his political rights intact. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw Chávez elected President in 1998, and the subsequent launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.

In April 2002, Chávez was briefly ousted from power in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt following popular demonstrations by his opposers, but he was returned to power after two days as a result of popular demonstrations by his supporters and actions by the military. Chávez also remained in power after an all-out national strike that lasted more than two months in December 2002 – February 2003, including a strike/lockout in the state oil company PDVSA, and an August 2004 recall referendum. He was elected for another term in December 2006.

Geography

Venezuela is located in the north of South America; geologically its mainland rests on the South American Plate. It has a total area of and a land area of , making it the 33rd largest country. The territory it controls lies between latitudes 0° and 13°N, and longitudes 59° and 74°W.

Shaped roughly like an inverted triangle, the country has a coastline in the north, which includes numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea, and in the north east borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Most observers describe Venezuela in terms of four fairly well-defined topographical regions: the Maracaibo lowlands in the northwest, the northern mountains extending in a broad east-west arc from the Colombian border along the northern Caribbean coast, the wide plains in central Venezuela, and the Guiana highlands in the southeast.

The northern mountains are the extreme northeastern extensions of South America's Andes mountain range reach. Pico Bolívar, the nation's highest point at , lies in this region. To the south, the dissected Guiana Highlands contains the northern fringes of the Amazon Basin and Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall as well as tepuis, large table-like mountains. The country's center is characterized by the ''llanos'', which are extensive plains that stretch from the Colombian border in the far west to the Orinoco River delta in the east. The Orinoco, with its rich alluvial soils, binds the largest and most important river system of the country; it originates in one of the largest watersheds in Latin America. The Caroní and the Apure are other major rivers.

Venezuela borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Aruba and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela has territorial disputes with Guyana (formerly United Kingdom), largely concerning the Essequibo area, and with Colombia concerning the Gulf of Venezuela. In 1895, after years of diplomatic attempts to solve the border dispute, from Venezuela, the dispute over the Essequibo River border flared up, it was submitted to a "neutral" commission (composed of United Kingdom, United States and Russian representatives and without a direct Venezuelan representative), which in 1899 decided mostly against Venezuela's claim.

Venezuela most significant natural resources are petroleum and natural gas, iron ore, gold and other minerals. It also has large areas of arable land and water.

Climate

Though Venezuela is entirely situated in the tropics, its climate varies from humid low-elevation plains, where average annual temperatures range as high as , to glaciers and highlands (the ''páramos'') with an average yearly temperature of . Annual rainfall varies between in the semiarid portions of the northwest to in the Orinoco Delta of the far east. Most precipitation falls between June and October (the rainy season or "winter"); the drier and hotter remainder of the year is known as "summer", though temperature variation throughout the year is not as pronounced as at temperate latitudes.

The country falls into four horizontal temperature zones based primarily on elevation, having Tropical, Dry, Temperate with Dry Winters, and Polar (Alpine tundra) climates, amongst others. In the tropical zone—below —temperatures are hot, with yearly averages ranging between . The temperate zone ranges between with averages from ; many of Venezuela's cities, including the capital, lie in this region. Colder conditions with temperatures from are found in the cool zone between , especially in the Venezuelan Andes, where Pastureland and permanent snowfield with yearly averages below cover land above in the high mountain areas known as the páramos.

Biodiversity

Venezuela lies within the Neotropic ecozone; large portions of the country were originally covered by moist broadleaf forests. One of seventeen megadiverse countries, Venezuela's habitats range from the Andes mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive ''llanos'' plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east. They include xeric scrublands in the extreme northwest and coastal mangrove forests in the northeast. Its cloud forests and lowland rainforests are particularly rich.

Animals of Venezuela are diverse and include manatees, Amazon river dolphins, and Orinoco crocodiles, which have been reported to reach up to in length. Venezuela hosts a total of 1,417 bird species, 48 of which are endemic. Important birds include ibises, ospreys, kingfishers,

For the fungi, an account was provided by R.W.G. Dennis which has been digitized and the records made available on-line as part of the Cybertruffle Robigalia database. That database includes nearly 3900 species of fungi recorded from Venezuela, but is far from complete, and it is likely that the true total number of fungal species already known from Venezuela is higher. The true total number of fungal species occurring in Venezuela, including species not yet recorded, is likely to be far higher, given the generally accepted estimate that only about 7% of all fungi worldwide have so far been discovered.

Among plants of Venezuela, over 25,000 species of orchids are found in the country's cloud forests and lowland rainforests ecosystems. These include the ''flor de mayo'' orchid (''Cattleya mossiae''), the national flower. Venezuela's national tree is the ''araguaney'', whose characteristic lushness after the rainy season led novelist Rómulo Gallegos to name it ''«[l]a primavera de oro de los araguaneyes''» ("the golden spring of the ''araguaneyes''").

Venezuela is among the top twenty countries in terms of endemism. Among its animals, 23% of reptilian and 50% of amphibian species are endemic. Although the amount of available information is still very small, a first effort has been made to estimate the number of fungal species endemic to Venezuela: 1334 species of fungi have been tentatively identified as possible endemics of the country. Some 38% of the over 21,000 plant species known from Venezuela are unique to the country.

Environment

In recent decades, logging, mining, shifting cultivation, development, and other human activities have posed a major threat to Venezuela's wildlife; between 1990 and 2000, 0.40% of forest cover was cleared annually. In response, federal protections for critical habitat were implemented; for example, 20% to 33% of forested land is protected. The country has a biosphere reserve that is part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves; five wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention. In 2003, 70% of the nation's land was under conservation management in over 200 protected areas, including 43 national parks. Venezuela's 43 national parks include Canaima National Park, Morrocoy National Park and Mochima National Park.

Subdivisions

Venezuela is divided into 23 states (''estados''), a capital district (''distrito capital'') corresponding to the city of Caracas, and the Federal Dependencies (''Dependencias Federales'', a special territory). Venezuela is further subdivided into 335 municipalities (''municipios''); these are subdivided into over one thousand parishes (''parroquias''). The states are grouped into nine administrative regions (''regiones administrativas''), which were established in 1969 by presidential decree; in addition, Venezuela has historically claimed and continues to claim all Guyanese territory west of the Essequibo River; this tract was dubbed ''Guayana Esequiba'' or the ''Zona en Reclamación'' (the "zone to be reclaimed").

The country can be further divided into ten geographical areas, some corresponding to climatic and biogeographical regions. In the north are the Venezuelan Andes and the Coro region, a mountainous tract in the northwest, holds several sierras and valleys. East of it are lowlands abutting Lake Maracaibo and the Gulf of Venezuela. 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 Insular Region includes all of Venezuela's island possessions: Nueva Esparta and the various Federal Dependencies. The Orinoco Delta, which forms a triangle covering Delta Amacuro, projects northeast into the Atlantic Ocean.

Economy

Venezuela has a mixed economy dominated by the petroleum sector, which accounts for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of exports and more than half of government revenues. It suffers high levels of corruption. Per capita GDP for 2009 was US$13,000, ranking it 85th in the world. About 30% of the population of the country live on less than US $2 per day. Venezuela has the least expensive petrol in the world because the consumer price of petrol is so heavily subsidised.

Manufacturing contributed 17% of GDP in 2006. Venezuela manufactures and exports heavy industry items such as steel, aluminium and cement, with production concentrated around Ciudad Guayana, near the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world and the provider of about three quarters of Venezuela's electricity. Other notable manufacturing includes electronics and automobiles, as well as beverages, and foodstuffs. Agriculture in Venezuela accounts for approximately 3% of GDP, 10% of the labor force, and at least one-fourth of Venezuela's land area. Venezuela exports rice, corn, fish, tropical fruit, coffee, beef, and pork. The country is not self-sufficient in most areas of agriculture; Venezuela imports about two-thirds of its food needs.

Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil, and it is a founder member of OPEC. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995 In 2010, Venezuela crude oil proven reserves up 40.4 percent compared to 2009 reserve and it made Venezuela had the number one of crude oil proven reserves in the world. The country's main petroleum deposits are located around and beneath Lake Maracaibo, the Gulf of Venezuela (both in Zulia), and in the Orinoco River basin (eastern Venezuela), where the country's largest reserve is located. Besides the largest conventional oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela has non-conventional oil deposits (extra-heavy crude oil, bitumen and tar sands) approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil. The electricity sector in Venezuela is one of the few to rely primarily on hydropower, and includes the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world.

In the first half of the 20th century, US oil companies were heavily involved in Venezuela, initially on the basis of purchasing concessions. In 1943 a new government introduced a 50/50 split in profits between the government and the oil industry. In 1960, with a newly installed democratic government, Hydrocarbons Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso led the creation of OPEC, the consortium of oil-producing countries aiming to support the price of oil. In 1973 Venezuela voted to nationalize its oil industry outright, effective 1 January 1976, with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) taking over and presiding over a number of holding companies; in subsequent years, Venezuela built a vast refining and marketing system in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1990s PDVSA became more independent from the government and presided over an ''apertura'' (opening) in which it invited in foreign investment. Under Hugo Chávez a 2001 law placed limits on foreign investment.

The state oil company PDVSA played a key role in the December 2002 – February 2003 national strike which sought President Chávez' resignation. Managers and skilled highly paid technicians of PDVSA shut down the plants and left their posts, and by some reports sabotaged equipment, and petroleum production and refining by PDVSA almost ceased. Activities eventually were slowly restarted by returning and substitute oil workers. As a result of the strike, around 40% of the company's workforce (around 18,000 workers) were dismissed for "dereliction of duty" during the strike.

Transport

Venezuela is connected to the world primarily via air (Venezuela's airports include the Simón Bolívar International Airport near Caracas and La Chinita International Airport near Maracaibo) and sea (with major sea ports at La Guaira, Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello). In the south and east the Amazon rainforest region has limited cross-border transport; in the west, there is a mountainous border of over shared with Colombia. The Orinoco River is navigable by oceangoing vessels up to 400 km inland, and connects the major industrial city of Ciudad Guayana to the Atlantic Ocean.

Venezuela has a limited national railway system, which has no active rail connections to other countries; the government of Hugo Chávez has invested substantially in expanding it. Several major cities have metro systems; the Caracas Metro has been operating since 1983. The Maracaibo Metro and Valencia Metro were opened more recently. Venezuela has a road network of around 100,000 km (placing it around 47th in the world); around a third of roads are paved.

Demographics

Venezuelans have a rich combination of heritages. From the colonial period were mixed Amerindians, Spanish and African, and today the majority of Venezuelans have mixed ancestry, ie people who have an Amerindians ancestor, black and white. Since 1990 there is no record of the ethnography of the Venezuelan population, but according to statistics from the continues with a constant immigration which has increased the white and black population, leaving the mixed in slow growth. These statistics expose approximate results: 50% mestizo, or white, mostly descendants of the Europeans and Arabs by 29%, 10% African descent, and indigenous people with only 1% of the total population. During the colonial period and until after the Second World War, much of European immigrants to Venezuela came from the Canary Islands, and its cultural impact was significant in influencing the development of Castilian in the country, its cuisine and customs.

With the start of oil exploitation in the early twentieth century, established companies and citizens from much of the United States. Later, during the war, he joined the Venezuelan society a new wave of immigrants from Italy and Spain, and new immigrants from Portugal, the Middle East, Germany, Croatia, the Netherlands, China, among others, are encouraged both by the immigration and colonization program established by the Government. Between 1900 and 1958 more than one million Europeans immigrated to Venezuela creating great communities, highlighting the Italo-Venezuelans, Iberian-Venezuelans and Portuguese-Venezuelans. Venezuela is the third country in the world to have the largest community of Spanish after Argentina and France, the third country to have the largest community of Portuguese after Brazil and the U.S. and the third country to have the largest colony of Italians in Latin America after Argentina and Uruguay. Immigration in Venezuela also came from many Latin American countries primarily in Colombia during the oil boom of the 1970s. These continuous waves of immigration increased the country's complex racial mosaic. The Venezuelan population born in other countries accounted for 4.4% of the national total. Today, the increased immigration from Colombia, Spain, Portugal and Italy among other countries such as Trinidad and Tobago.

Two of the main Amerindian tribes located in the country are the Wayuu, located in the west, in Zulia State, and the Timotocuicas, also in the west, in Mérida State, in the Andes. Other important groups include Afro-Venezuelans, though their numbers are unclear due to poor census data.

Asians make up a small percentage of the population. About 1% of Venezuelans are indigenous. These groups were joined by sponsored migrants from throughout Europe and neighboring parts of South America by the mid-20th century economic boom.

According to the ''World Refugee Survey 2008'', published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Venezuela hosted a population of refugee and asylum seekers from Colombia numbering 252,200 in 2007. 10,600 new asylum seekers entered Venezuela in 2007. Between 500,000 and one million illegal immigrants are estimated to be living in the Venezuela.

Urbanization

[[File:Venezuela_Construction.JPG|thumb|right|300px|Apartment construction in Guatire, Venezuela ]] Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America; the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital Caracas which is also the largest city. About 85% of the population live in urban areas in northern Venezuela; 73% live less than from the coastline. Though almost half of Venezuela's land area lies south of the Orinoco, only 5% of Venezuelans live there. The largest and most important city south of the Orinoco is Ciudad Guayana, which is the sixth most populous conurbation. Other major cities include Maracaibo, Valencia, Maracay, Barquisimeto, Mérida, San Cristóbal and Barcelona-Puerto La Cruz.

Languages

Although the country is mostly monolingual Castilian, many languages ​​are spoken in Venezuela. In addition to Castilian, the Constitution recognizes more than thirty indigenous languages, Wayuu, Warao, pemón and many others for the official use of the Amerindian peoples, mostly with few speakers, less than 1% of the total population. Immigrants, in addition to Spanish, they speak their own languages. Arabic is spoken by Lebanese and Syrian colonies on Isla de Margarita, Maracaibo, Punto Fijo, Puerto la Cruz, El Tigre, Maracay and Caracas. Portuguese is spoken, as well as the Portuguese community in Santa Elena de Uairén for much of the population due to its proximity to Brazil. The German community speaks their native language, while the Colonia Tovar speaks mostly Alemannic dialect of German called coloniero. English is the most widely used foreign language and demand, and is spoken by many professionals, academics and part of the upper and middle classes as a result of oil exploration by foreign companies, in addition to its acceptance as a lingua franca. Culturally, English is common in southern towns like El Callao, for the Anglophone West Indian influence evident in folk songs and calypso Venezuelan and French with English voices. Italian instruction is guaranteed by the presence of a constant number of schools and private institutions, because the Italian government considered mandatory language teaching at school level. Other languages ​​spoken by large communities from drawing in the country are Chinese and Galicia, among others.

Religion

According to government estimates, 92% of the population is at least nominally Roman Catholic, and the remaining 8% are Protestant, or a member of another religion. The Venezuelan Evangelical Council estimates that Evangelical Protestants constitute 10% of the population.

Education

In 2008, 95.2% of the adult population was literate. Net primary school enrollment rate was at 91 % in 2005. Net secondary enrollment rate was at 63 % in 2005. Venezuela has a number of universities, of which the most prestigious is the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), founded in Caracas in 1721, and Simón Bolívar University (USB), founded in Miranda State in 1967.

Health

Venezuela has a national universal health care system that is free of charge. The current government has created a program to expand access to health care known as Misión Barrio Adentro.

Infant mortality in Venezuela stood at 16 deaths per 1,000 births in 2004, lower than the South American average (by comparison, the U.S. stands at 5 deaths per 1,000 births in 2006). Child malnutrition (defined as stunting or wasting in children under age five) stands at 17%; Delta Amacuro and Amazonas have the nation's highest rates. According to the United Nations, 32% of Venezuelans lack adequate sanitation, primarily those living in rural areas. Diseases ranging from typhoid, yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis D are present in the country.

Venezuela has a total of 150 plants for sewage treatment. However still 13% of the population lack access to drinking water but this number has been dropping.

Crime

Corruption in Venezuela is high by world standards, and has been for much of the 20th century. The discovery of oil had worsened political corruption, and by the late 1970s, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo's description of oil as "the Devil's excrement" had become a common expression in Venezuela. Venezuela has been ranked one of the most corrupt countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index since the survey started in 1995. The 2010 ranking placed Venezuela at number 164, out of 178 ranked countries.

Venezuela is a significant route for drug trafficking, with Colombian cocaine and other drugs transiting Venezuela towards the United States and Europe. Venezuela ranks fourth in the world for cocaine seizures, behind Colombia, the United States, and Panama.

In 2009, the homicide rate was approximately 57 per 100,000, one of the world’s highest, having trebled in the previous decade (according to The Economist). The capital Caracas has the second greatest homicide rate of any large city in the world, with 92 homicides per 100,000 residents. In 2008, polls indicated that crime was the number one concern of voters. The government recently created a security force, the Bolivarian National Police, which has lowered crime rates in the areas in which it is so far deployed, and a new Experimental Security University.

Government

Executive

The Venezuelan president is elected by a vote with direct and universal suffrage, and is both head of state and head of government. The term of office is six years, and (as of 15 February 2009) a president may be re-elected an unlimited number of times. The president appoints the vice-president and decides the size and composition of the Cabinet and makes appointments to it with the involvement of the legislature. The president can ask the legislature to reconsider portions of laws he finds objectionable, but a simple parliamentary majority can override these objections.

The President may ask the National Assembly to pass an enabling act granting the ability to rule by decree in specified policy areas; this requires a two-thirds majority in the Assembly. Since 1959 six Presidents have been granted such powers.

Legislative

The unicameral Venezuelan parliament is the ''Asamblea Nacional'' ("National Assembly"). The number of members is variable, each state and the Capital district elect three representatives plus the result of dividing the state population by 1.1% of the total population of the country. Three seats are reserved for representatives of Venezuela's indigenous peoples. For the 2010–2015 period the number of seats is 165. All deputies serve five-year terms.

The voting age in Venezuela is 18 and older. Voting is not compulsory.

Judicial

The legal system of Venezuela belongs to the Continental Law tradition. The highest judicial body is the Supreme Tribunal of Justice or ''Tribunal Supremo de Justicia'', whose magistrates are elected by parliament for a single twelve-year term. The National Electoral Council (''Consejo Nacional Electoral'', or ''CNE'') is in charge of electoral processes; it is formed by five main directors elected by the National Assembly. Supreme Court president Luisa Estela Morales said in December 2009 that Venezuela had moved away from "a rigid division of powers" toward a system characterized by "intense coordination" between the branches of government. Morales clarified that each power must be independent adding that "one thing is separation of powers and another one is division".

Foreign relations

thumb|President Hugo Chávez with former Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2004.Throughout most of the 20th century, Venezuela maintained friendly relations with most Latin American and Western nations. Relations between Venezuela and the United States government worsened in 2002, after the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt during which the U.S. government recognized the short-lived interim presidency of Pedro Carmona. Correspondingly, ties to various Latin American and Middle Eastern countries not allied to the U.S. have strengthened.

Venezuela seeks alternative hemispheric integration via such proposals as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade proposal and the newly launched pan-Latin American television network teleSUR. Venezuela is one of the four nations in the world—along with Russia, Nicaragua and Nauru—to have recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Venezuela was a proponent of OAS's decision to adopt its Anti-Corruption Convention, and is actively working in the Mercosur trade bloc to push increased trade and energy integration. Globally, it seeks a "multi-polar" world based on strengthened ties among Third World countries.

Military

The National Armed Forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Fuerza Armada Nacional, FAN) are the overall unified military forces of Venezuela. It includes over 320,150 men and women, under Article 328 of the Constitution, in 5 components of Ground, Sea and Air. The components of the National Armed Forces are: the Venezuelan Army, the Venezuelan Navy, the Venezuelan Air Force, the Venezuelan National Guard, and the Venezuelan National Militia.

As of 2008, a further 600,000 soldiers were incorporated into a new branch, known as the Armed Reserve. The President of Venezuela is the commander-in-chief of the national armed forces. The main roles of the armed forces are to defend the sovereign national territory of Venezuela, airspace, and islands, fight against drug trafficking, to search and rescue and, in the case of a natural disaster, civil protection. All men that are citizens of Venezuela have a constitutional duty to register for the military at the age of 18, which is the age of majority in Venezuela.

Politics

Following the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958, Venezuelan politics was dominated by the third-way Christian democratic COPEI and the center-left social democratic Democratic Action (AD) parties; this two-party system was formalized by the ''puntofijismo'' arrangement. Economic crisis in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which saw hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for corruption in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup leader Hugo Chávez, and the launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.

The opposition's attempts to unseat Chávez included the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, the Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003, and the Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004, all of which failed. Chávez was re-elected in December 2006, but suffered a significant defeat in 2007 with the narrow rejection of the Venezuelan constitutional referendum, 2007, which had offered two packages of constitutional reforms aimed at deepening the Bolivarian Revolution.

There are currently two major blocs of political parties in Venezuela: the incumbent leftist bloc United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), its major allies Fatherland for All (PPT) and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), and the opposition bloc grouped into the electoral coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática. This includes A New Era (UNT) together with allied parties Project Venezuela, Justice First, Movement for Socialism and others.

Culture

The culture of Venezuela is a melting pot which includes mainly to three different families: the indigenous, African and Spanish. The first two cultures were in turn differentiated according to the tribes. Acculturation and assimilation, typical of a cultural syncretism, conditioned to arrive at the current Venezuelan culture, similar in many respects to the rest of Latin America, although the natural environment means that there are important differences. The indigenous influence is limited to a few words of vocabulary and gastronomy. The African influence in the same way, in addition to musical instruments like the drum. The Spanish influence was more important and in particular came from the regions of Andalusia and Extremadura, places of origin most settlers in the Caribbean during the colonial era. As an example of this can include buildings, part of the music, the Catholic religion and language. Spanish influences are evident bullfights and certain features of gastronomy. Venezuela also enriched by other streams of Indian and European origin in the nineteenth century, especially from France. In the latest stage in the major cities and regions stormed oil of U.S. origin and manifestations of the new immigration of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, increasing the already complex cultural mosaic. For example, from United States comes the influence of taste for baseball and current architectural constructions.

Art

Venezuelan art was initially dominated by religious motifs, but began emphasizing historical and heroic representations in the late 19th century, a move led by Martín Tovar y Tovar. Modernism took over in the 20th century. Notable Venezuelan artists include Arturo Michelena, Cristóbal Rojas, Armando Reverón, Manuel Cabré; the kinetic artists Jesús-Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Díez; and contemporary artist Yucef Merhi.

Literature

Venezuelan literature originated soon after the Spanish conquest of the mostly pre-literate indigenous societies; it was dominated by Spanish influences. Following the rise of political literature during the Venezuelan War of Independence, Venezuelan Romanticism, notably expounded by Juan Vicente González, emerged as the first important genre in the region. Although mainly focused on narrative writing, Venezuelan literature was advanced by poets such as Andrés Eloy Blanco and Fermín Toro.

Major writers and novelists include Rómulo Gallegos, Teresa de la Parra, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Adriano González León, Miguel Otero Silva, and Mariano Picón Salas. The great poet and humanist Andrés Bello was also an educator and intellectual. Others, such as Laureano Vallenilla Lanz and José Gil Fortoul, contributed to Venezuelan Positivism.

Music

Indigenous musical styles of Venezuela are exemplified by the groups Un Solo Pueblo and Serenata Guayanesa. The national musical instrument is the cuatro. Typical musical styles and pieces mainly emerged in and around the ''llanos'' region, including ''Alma Llanera'' (by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez and Rafael Bolívar Coronado), ''Florentino y el Diablo'' (by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba), ''Concierto en la Llanura'' by Juan Vicente Torrealba, and ''Caballo Viejo'' (by Simón Díaz).

The Zulian ''gaita'' is also a popular style, generally performed during Christmas. The national dance is the ''joropo''. Teresa Carreño was a world-famous 19th century piano virtuosa. In the last years, Classical Music has had great performances. The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, under the baton of its principal conductor Gustavo Dudamel, has hosted a number of excellent presentations in many European concert halls, notably at the 2007 London Proms, and has received several honors. The orchestra is the pinnacle of El Sistema, a publicly financed voluntary sector music education program now being emulated in other countries.

Sport

Baseball is Venezuela's most popular sport, with the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League existing since 1945. In recent years football, spearheaded by the Venezuela national football team, is gaining popularity.

Other

Venezuela is well-known for its successes in beauty pageants. Miss Venezuela is a big event in the country, and Venezuela has received 5 Miss World, 6 Miss Universe, 6 Miss International and 1 Miss Earth titles.

Carlos Raúl Villanueva was the most important Venezuelan architect of the modern era; he designed the Central University of Venezuela, (a World Heritage Site) and its Aula Magna. Other notable architectural works include the Capitolio, the Baralt Theatre, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex, and the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge.

See also

International rankings of Venezuela

List of Venezuelans

South America Life Quality Rankings

References

External links

E-Government (in Spanish)

Chief of State and Cabinet Members

Venezuela at ''UCB Libraries GovPubs''

Venezuela at Encyclopædia Britannica

Venezuela from the Library of Congress Country Studies (1990)

Category:Caribbean countries Category:Federal countries Category:Former Spanish colonies Category:G15 nations Category:Member states of OPEC Category:South American countries Category:Spanish-speaking countries Category:States and territories established in 1811 Category:Member states of the Union of South American Nations Category:Member states of the United Nations

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name	Simón Bolívar
Order	2nd President of Venezuela
term start	August 6, 1813
term end	July 7, 1814
term start2	February 15, 1819
term end2	December 17, 1819
predecessor	Cristóbal Mendoza
successor2	José Antonio Páez
Order3	President of Gran Colombia(Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama)
term start3	December 17, 1819
term end3	May 4, 1830
vicepresident3	Francisco de Paula Santander
successor3	Domingo Caycedo
Order4	President of Bolivia
term start4	August 12, 1825
term end4	December 29, 1825
Order5	President of Peru
term start5	February 17, 1824
term end5	January 28, 1827
successor4	Antonio José de Sucre
predecessor5	José Bernardo de Tagle, Marquis of Torre-Tagle
successor5	Andrés de Santa Cruz
birth date	July 24, 1783
birth place	Caracas, Captaincy General of Venezuela, Spanish Empire
death date	December 17, 1830
death place	Santa Marta, New Granada
spouse	María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaysa|
signature	Simón Bolívar Signature.svg
religion	Roman Catholic

Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco, commonly known as Simón Bolívar (; July 24, 1783, Caracas, Venezuela – December 17, 1830, Santa Marta, Colombia) was a Venezuelan military and political leader. Together with José de San Martín, he played a key role in Latin America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, and is today considered one of the most influential politicians in Latin American history.

Following the triumph over the Spanish Monarchy, Bolívar participated in the foundation of the first union of independent nations in Latin America, a republic, which was named Gran Colombia, and of which he was president from 1819 to 1830. Bolívar remains regarded in Hispanic America as a hero, visionary, revolutionary, and liberator. During his lifetime, he led Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela to independence, and helped lay the foundations for democratic ideology in much of Hispanic America.

Bolivar family

The surname ''Bolívar'' derives from the Bolívar aristocrats who came from a small village in the Basque Country, Spain, called La Puebla de Bolívar. His father came from the male line of the de Ardanza family. His maternal grandmother, however, was descended from some families from the Canary Islands that settled in the country.

The Bolívars settled in Venezuela in the sixteenth century. His first South American Bolivar ancestor was Simón de Bolívar (or Simon de Bolibar; the spelling was not standardized until the nineteenth century), who lived and worked with the governor of the Santo Domingo from 1550 to 1570. When the governor of Santo Domingo was reassigned to Venezuela in 1589, Simón de Bolívar came with him. As an early settler in Caracas Province, he became prominent in the local society, and he and his descendants were granted estates, encomiendas, and positions in the Caracas cabildo.

The social position of the family is illustrated by the fact that when the Caracas Cathedral was built in 1594, the Bolívar family had one of the first dedicated side chapels. The majority of the wealth of Simón de Bolívar's descendants came from the estates. The most important of these estates was a sugar plantation with an ''encomienda'' that provided the labor needed to run the estate. In later centuries, slave and free black labor would have replaced most of the ''encomienda'' labor. Another portion of Bolivar wealth came from the silver, gold, and more importantly, copper mines in Venezuela. In 1632, small gold deposits first were mined in Venezuela, leading to further discoveries of much more extensive copper deposits. From his mother's side, the Palacios family, Bolívar inherited the copper mines at Cocorote. Slaves provided the majority of the labor in these mines.

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, copper exploitation became so prominent in Venezuela that it became known as ''Cobre Caracas'' ("Caracas copper"). Many of the mines became the property of the Bolívar family. Bolívar's grandfather, Juan de Bolívar y Martínez de Villegas, paid 22,000 ducats to the monastery at Santa Maria de Montserrat in 1728 for a title of nobility that had been granted by the king, Philip V of Spain, for its maintenance. The crown never issued the patent of nobility, and so the purchase became the subject of lawsuits that were still going on during Bolívar's lifetime, when independence from Spain made the point moot. (If successful, Bolívar's older brother, Juan Vicente, would have become the Marqués de San Luis and Vizconde de Cocorote.) Bolívar was able to use his family's immense wealth to finance his revolutionary efforts.

Early life

Although some people believe he was actually born in the Bolivar residence located in San Mateo in Aragua State, which belonged to the Caracas province by 1783, it is officially claimed that Simón Bolívar was born in Caracas, Captaincy General of Venezuela (now the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), on July 24, 1783 and he was baptized as Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios. His mother was Doña María de la Concepción Palacios y Blanco and his father was Coronel Don Juan Vicente Bolívar y Ponte. He had two older sisters and a brother: María Antonia, Juana, and Juan Vicente. Another sister, María del Carmen, died at birth.

The circumstances of Bolívar's parents forced them to entrust the baby Simón Bolívar to the care of Doña Ines Manceba de Miyares and the family's slave ''la negra Hipolita''. A couple of years later Bolívar returned to the love and care of his parents, but this traumatic experience would have a severe effect on Bolívar's life. By his third birthday, his father Juan Vicente had died.

Bolívar's father died when Bolívar was two and a half years old. Bolívar's mother, Maria Concepción de Palacios y Blanco, died when he was approaching nine years of age. He then was placed in the custody of a severe instructor, Miguel José Sanz, but this relationship did not work out and he was sent back to his home. In an effort to give Bolívar the best education possible, he received private lessons from the renowned professors Andrés Bello, Guillermo Pelgrón, Jose Antonion Negrete, Fernando Vides, Father Andújar, and the most influential of all, Don Simón Rodríguez, formerly known as Simón Carreño. Don Simón Rodriguez was later to become Bolívar's friend and mentor, and he instilled in the young man the ideas of liberty, enlightenment, and freedom.

In the meantime, all the love, affection, and attention given to Bolívar was from his nanny, Hipólita. Hipólita gave the young Bolívar all the affection he needed and indulged him in all his wishes and desires. His instructor Don Simón understood the young Bolívar's personality and inclinations, and tried from the very beginning to be an empathetic friend. They took long walks through the countryside and climbed mountains. Don Simón taught Bolívar how to swim and ride horses, and, in the process, taught him about liberty, human rights, politics, history, and sociology.

Military career

When Bolívar was fourteen, his private instructor and mentor Simón Rodríguez had to abandon the country, as he was accused of being involved in a conspiracy against the Spanish government in Caracas. Thus, Bolívar entered the military academy of the ''Milicias de Veraguas'', which his father had directed as colonel years earlier. Through these years of military training, he developed his fervent passion for armaments and military strategy, which he later would employ on the battlefields of the wars of independence. A few years later, while in Paris, Bolívar witnessed the coronation of Napoleon in Notre Dame, and this majestic event left a profound impression upon him. From that moment he wished that he could emulate similar triumphant glory for the people of his native land.

''El Libertador''

Bolívar returned to Venezuela in 1807.

In 1813 he was given a military command in Tunja, New Granadahi easton (today Colombia), under the direction of the Congress of United Provinces of New Granada, which had formed out of the juntas established in 1810.

This was the beginning of the famous Admirable Campaign. He entered Mérida on May 23, where he was proclaimed as ''El Libertador''. That event was followed by the occupation of Trujillo on June 9. Six days later, on June 15, he dictated his famous ''Decree of War to the Death''. Caracas was retaken on August 6, 1813 and Bolívar was ratified as "''El Libertador''", thus proclaiming the restoration of the Venezuelan republic. Due to the rebellion of José Tomás Boves in 1814 and the fall of the republic, he returned to New Granada, where he then commanded a force for the United Provinces and entered Bogotá in 1814, recapturing the city from the dissenting republican forces of Cundinamarca. He intended to march into Cartagena and enlist the aid of local forces in order to capture Royalist Santa Marta. In 1815, after a number of political and military disputes with the government of Cartagena, however, Bolívar fled to Jamaica, where he was denied support and an attempt was made on his life, after which he fled to Haiti, where he was granted sanctuary and protection. He befriended Alexandre Pétion, the leader of the newly independent country, and petitioned him for aid. but he died before setting sail.

On December 17, 1830, at the age of forty-seven, Simón Bolívar died after a painful battle with tuberculosis in the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino in Santa Marta, Gran Colombia (now Colombia). On his deathbed, Bolívar asked his aide-de-camp, General Daniel F. O'Leary to burn the remaining, extensive archive of his writings, letters, and speeches. O'Leary disobeyed the order and his writings survived, providing historians with a vast wealth of information about Bolívar's liberal philosophy and thought, as well as details of his personal life, such as his longstanding love affair with Manuela Sáenz. Shortly before her own death in 1856, Sáenz augmented this collection by giving O'Leary her own letters from Bolívar. In 2010, symbolic remains of Bolivar's lover, Manuela Sáenz, were interred by his side during a national ceremony reuniting them and honoring her role in the liberations.

On January 2008, President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez set up a commission to investigate theories indicating that Bolívar could have been the victim of an assassination. On several occasions, Chavez has claimed that Bolivar was in fact poisoned by "Colombian traitors". In April 2010, infectious diseases specialist Paul Auwaerter studied existing records of Bolivar's symptoms and concluded that he may have suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning, but considered that both acute poisoning and murder were unlikely. In July 2010, Bolívar's body was ordered to be exhumed to advance the investigations. In July 2011, international forensics experts released their report claiming there was no proof of poisoning or other unnatural cause of death.

Private life

In 1799, following the early deaths of his father Juan Vicente (died 1786) and his mother Concepción (died 1792), he traveled to Mexico, France, and Spain, at age sixteen, to complete his education. While in Madrid during 1802, he married María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaiza, who was his only wife. She was related to the family of the Marqués del Toro of Caracas. Eight months after returning to Venezuela with her, she died from yellow fever. Bolívar returned to Europe in 1804, where he lived in Napoleonic France for a while and undertook the Grand Tour. During this time in Europe, it was rumored that he met Alexander von Humboldt in Paris. Humboldt wrote in 1804 of having met a young man in Paris and Humboldt had noticed how the young man loved liberty and made for some lively conversation, but he left Humboldt unimpressed.

Relatives

Bolívar had no descendants. His closest living relatives descend from his sisters and brother. One of his sisters died in infancy. His sister, Juana Bolívar y Palacios, married their maternal uncle, Dionisio Palacios y Blanco, and had two children, Guillermo and Benigna. Guillermo Palacios died fighting alongside his uncle Simón in the battle of La Hogaza on December 2, 1817. Benigna had two marriages, the first one to Pedro Breceño Méndez and the second to Pedro Amestoy.

His eldest sister, María Antonia, married Pablo Clemente Francia and had four children: Josefa, Anacleto, Valentina, and Pablo. María Antonia became Bolívar's agent to deal with his properties while he served as president of Gran Colombia and she was an executrix of his will. She retired to Bolívar's estate in Macarao, which she inherited from him.

His older brother, Juan Vicente, who died in 1811 on a diplomatic mission to the United States, had three children born out of wedlock whom he recognized: Juan, Fernando Simón, and Felicia Bolívar Tinoco. Bolívar provided for the children and their mother after his brother's death. Bolívar was especially close to Fernando and in 1822 sent him to study in the United States, where he attended the University of Virginia. In his long life, Fernando had minor participation in some of the major political events of Venezuelan history and also traveled and lived extensively throughout Europe. He had three children, Benjamín Bolívar Gauthier, Santiago Hernández Bolívar, and Claudio Bolívar Taraja. Fernando died in 1898 at the age of eighty-eight.

Bolivar in Law

Bolivar helped enact laws to protect the environment, wild life and the native population of Central and South America. He also freed South American slaves 40 years before the U.S. Civil War.

Political beliefs

He was an admirer of both the American Revolution and the French Revolution. In fact George Washington and Bolívar shared the same objective: independence for their people and the establishment of democratic states. He admired Thomas Jefferson and sent his nephew to the University of Virginia, which was founded and designed by Jefferson. Bolívar differed, however, in political philosophy from the leaders of the revolution in the United States on two important matters. First of all, he was staunchly anti-slavery, despite coming from an area of Spanish America that relied heavily on slave labor. Second, while he was an admirer of the American independence, he did not believe that its governmental system could function in Latin America.

He felt that the US had been established in land especially fertile for democracy. By contrast, he referred to Spanish America as having been subject to the ''"triple yoke of ignorance, tyranny, and vice"''. If a republic could be established in such a land, in his mind, it would have to make some concessions in terms of liberty. This is shown when Bolívar blamed the fall of the first republic on his subordinates trying to imitate "some ethereal republic" and in the process, not paying attention to the gritty political reality of South America.

Among the books accompanying him as he traveled were, Adam Smith's ''"The Wealth of Nations"'', Voltaire's ''"Letters"'', and when he wrote the Bolivian Constitution, Montesquieu's ''Spirit of the Laws''. His Bolivian constitution placed him within the camp of what would become Latin American conservatism in the later nineteenth century. The Bolivian Constitution had a lifelong presidency and a hereditary senate, essentially recreating the British unwritten constitution, as it existed at the time, without formally establishing a monarchy. It was his attempts to implement a similar constitution in Gran Colombia that led to his downfall and rejection by 1830.

Regarding his immigration policy for Colombia, he viewed the immigration of North-Americans and Europeans as necessary, (except for the Spanish, who were expelled) for improving the country's economy, arts, and sciences, following the steps of the Latin-American ''criollo'' elites, who accepted without questions many of the evolutionist, social, and racial theories of their time.

Freemasonry

Similar to some others in the history of American Independence (George Washington, José de San Martín, and Francisco Miranda), Simón Bolívar was a Freemason. He was initiated in 1803 in the Masonic Lodge Lautaro which operated in Cadiz, Spain. It was in this lodge that he first met some of his revolutionary peers, such as José de San Martín. In May 1806 he was conferred the rank of Master Mason in the "Scottish Mother of St. Alexander of Scotland" in Paris. During his time in London, he frequented "The Great American Reunion" lodge in London, founded by Francisco de Miranda. In April 1824, Simón Bolívar was given the 33rd degree of Inspector General Honorary.

Legacy

Political legacy

Bolívar's political legacy has been massive and he is a very important figure in South American political history. The 'Bolivarianism' of the last two decades, such as in the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez, tries to evoke the memory of Bolivar, using a left-wing view of his writings and supposed ambitions as the basis for a political movement.

After his defeat and early death, it took more than a decade to rehabilitate his lost image in South America. By the 1840s, the memory of Bolívar proved useful for the construction of a sense of nationhood. In Venezuela, in particular, a type of cult to Bolívar appeared, first under the President José Antonio Páez and most dramatically under President Antonio Guzmán Blanco. Since the image of Bolívar became central to the national identities of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, his mantle is claimed by nearly all politicians from all parts of the political spectrum. Bolivia and Venezuela (the Bolívarian Republic of Venezuela) are both named after Bolívar.

Monuments, institutions and place names

Most cities and towns in Venezuela and Colombia have a bust or statue of Bolívar. In Venezuela, every city or town, has a main square known as Plaza Bolívar.

A central avenue in Ankara, the capital of Turkey

Baltimore, Maryland: A bust on North Charles Street in the Guilford neighborhood.

Barinas, Venezuela: Simon Bolivar United World College of Agriculture is an experimental school offering a program in Farm Administration, with 25% of students coming from outside Venezuela.

Belgrade, Serbia: A small street in the Altina neighbourhood in the Zemun municipality of Belgrade.

Berlin, near section of Potsdamer Strasse crossing with the Landwehrkanal.

Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain), "Simon Bolivar Street", a street in Bilbao city center to honour Bolivar and his basque ancestry and a monument at Venezuela square.

The main square in Bogota, Colombia is called plaza de bolivar (Bolivar Square), around this square rise the Colombian national capitol, the Colombian palace of justice, the palace of lievano( which houses the mayor of Bogota ), and the main cathedral of the city.

Bolivar (Basque Country, Spain), Bolivar's ancestor's home town; a monument to Bolivar, a gift by Venezuela. A museum devoted to Simon Bolivar, his family and ancestors was built in Simon Bolivar's patrimonial house.

Bolivarian Games, sports event involving athletes from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela

Bolivar Peninsula, Texas, is a narrow strip of eroding land or "barrier island" stretching twenty-seven miles along the Texas Gulf Coast in a northeasterly direction to form eastern Galveston County (the center of the peninsula is at 29°26' N, 94°41' W).

Bolivar, Missouri, statue presented by President Rómulo Gallegos of Venezuela and dedicated by U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

Bolivar, Ohio

Bolivar, Tennessee

Bolivar, Mexican municipality in the State of Durango

The town of Bolivar, West Virginia, bears his name and displays his bust in main street. It is close to Harper's Ferry.

Boulogne-sur-Mer, France: A statue of him and fellow patriot Jose de San Martin liberator of Peru, San Martin lived his final years in this Northern French coast city. It is where Bolivar is said to own a home and where he planned to get into exile had he arrived in France. In addition, the statues honored the legacy of French immigration to South America in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the revolutionary ideals of the French Republic influenced Bolivar and San Martin. Cairo, Egypt, statue next to the InterContinental hotel (Semiramis), unveiled on February 11, 1979. Attending the inauguration of the revamped Midan was Venezuela's first lady, Dona Blanca Rodriguez de Perez, who arrived especially for the occasion. The 500-kilogram, 2.3-meter high bronze statue is attributed to Venezuelan sculptor Carmelo Tabaco; the accompanying pedestal is the work of his countryman, Manuel Silveira Blanco. These are only a few of the examples.

Caracas, Venezuela central avenue named Avenida Bolívar, at its terminus a twin-tower-complex named Centro Simón Bolívar, built during the 1950s holds several governmental offices

Caracas, Simón Bolívar University

Currencies, the boliviano and the Venezuelan bolívar

Frankfurt, Germany, bust

Guayaquil, Ecuador, ''El parque Bolivar'', Bolivar Park. Streets, provinces, and several schools named after Bolívar in Ecuador.

Lebanon: The liberator Simon Bolivar earned a special place in the heart of the Lebanese Emigrants who went to Venezuela, specially in the Northern Lebanese city of Hadath Al Jobbeh, where the Day of Simon Bolivar or “Simon El-karam” as it is called in Arabic (karam for generosity) is considered a regional Holiday, and it takes place on the 12th of October every year, where a festival takes place in that city of North Lebanon. This tradition started in the 40s of the last century, and every year many of the Lebanese Emigrants to Venezuela return to their home land and celebrate this feast among family.

London, statue at Belgrave Square.

Mexico City, Bolivar is the name of one of the main streets starts on the downtown and continues along the suburbs. In the city exists an equestrian statue portraying him crossing the Andes.

Monterrey, an avenue and a Metro station named after him.

Montreal, Canada, bust

New Delhi, India "Simon Bolivar Marg" is a prominent street junction just off Lutyens' Delhi towards the highway

New York, statue faces Jose de San Martin and Jose Marti at the Fifty-ninth Street and Sixth Avenue entrance of Central Park.

Orlando, Florida, a bust on the southeast side of Lake Eola

Ottawa, signifying the friendship between Canada and South America (which caused some controversy at the time of its erection)

Panama City, Panama: Plaza Bolivar is a central plaza in the old quarter (casco viejo) which includes a bust of the liberator under a condor.

Paris, France, equestrian statue between the Alexandre III bridge and the Petit Palais, a joint gift to the city from the "five Bolivarian republics" of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

Prague, Czech Republic: A statue of Bolivar is located in the Bubenec district of Prague.

Quebec City, in the ''Parc de l'Amérique Latine'', equestrian statue

Rome, equestrian statue in the Piazzale Simón Bolívar facing equestrian statue of Jose de San Martin.

San Francisco, California, in U.N. Plaza, equestrian statue

San Juan, Puerto Rico, bust

San Salvador, El Salvador. "Plaza Bolívar", five-meter-tall equestrian statue

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, major street Avenida Bolívar in downtown Gazcue district

Santiago, Chile, monument celebrating Latin American Freedom, erected in 1836 at the main square (Plaza de Armas), panel dedicated to Bolívar. Around 1836-40 a full-size equestrian statue was erected in his honour and located at a square at the beginning of an avenue that bears his name.

Sydney, Australia, bust

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, bust

Toronto, Canada, bust in Trinity-Bellwoods Park

Tehran, Iran: A street in Jannat Abad neighbourhood in the Tehran.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA : A statue of Simon Bolivar lies outside the front of the Gilcrease Museum, dedicated to his efforts to liberate the Latin Americas. The oil tycoon was fascinated in the cultures of Latin America and the indigenous peoples of the Americas, in part of Thomas Gilcrease's part-Creek Indian heritage. The statue was brought by an association of American citizen pioneers residing in Argentina, and also to point out the Cherokee immigrant settlers in Chile and other South American nations.

Vigo, Spain: "Simon Bolivar Street", a street in Vigo city center to honour Bolivar and a bust at Simón Bolivar square.

Washington, D.C., Equestrian of Simón Bolívar,

In the 1930s, during a time of civil unrest in Spain, Montgomery Terrace in Mount Floria, Glasgow, Scotland, was renamed after Simón Bolívar, a Scottish Rite freemason.

USS Simon Bolivar (SSBN-641), U.S. Navy submarine named after Simón Bolívar: it was commissioned in October 1965, de-activated in September 1994 and de-commissioned in February 1995.

Asteroid 712 Boliviana is named in his honor.

See also

Brigadier General Antonio Valero de Bernabe

Gabriel García Márquez's novel ''The General in His Labyrinth'' (1989), a fictionalized account, of Bolívar's last days

Notes

Bibliography

Reza, German de la. "La invención de la paz. De la república cristiana del duque de Sully a la sociedad de naciones de Simón Bolívar", México, Siglo XXI Editores, 2009. ISBN 978-607-03-0054-7

Bushnell, David. ''The Liberator, Simón Bolívar''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.

Bushnell, David (ed.) and Fornoff, Fred (tr.), ''El Libertador: Writings of Simón Bolívar'', Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0195144819

Bushnell, David and Macaulay, Neill. ''The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century'' (Second edition). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-508402-0

Ducoudray Holstein, H.L.V. ''Memoirs of Simón Bolívar''. Boston: Goodrich, 1829.

Lynch, John. ''Simón Bolívar and the Age of Revolution''. London: University of London Institute of Latin American Studies, 1983. ISBN 9780901145543

Lynch, John. ''The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1826'' (Second edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1986. ISBN 0-393-95537-0

Lynch, John. ''Simón Bolívar: A Life'', Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 0300110626.

Madariaga, Salvador de. ''Bolívar''. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1952. ISBN 9780313220296

Marx, Karl. "Bolívar y Ponte" in ''The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge'', Vol. III. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1858.

Masur, Gerhard. ''Simón Bolívar'' (Revised edition). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969.

Mijares, Augusto. ''The Liberator''. Caracas: North American Association of Venezuela, 1983.

O'Leary, Daniel Florencio. ''Bolívar and the War of Independence/Memorias del General Daniel Florencio O'Leary: Narración'' (Abridged version). Austin: University of Texas, [1888] 1970. ISBN 0-292-70047-4

Bastardo-Salcedo,JL (1993) ''Historia Fundamental de Venezuela'' UVC,Caracas.

External links

The Life of Simón Bolívar

The Louverture Project: Simón Bolívar - Information about the support Bolívar received from Haiti.

In Profile: Simón Bolívar - The Liberator

About the surname Bolíbar/Bolívar, in Spanish

Paternal ancestors of the Liberator, in Spanish

Coats of arms of the Bolíbars, in Spanish

Maternal ancestors of the Liberator (Palacios family), in Spanish

Glrbv.org: Biography

Beside Bolivar: The ''Edecán'' Demarquet - About C. E. Demarquet, one of Bolívar's principal aides

"Building a New History by Exhuming Bolívar" Simon Romero, ''The New York Times'', 3 August 2010

nan:Simón Bolívar

Category:1783 births Category:1830 deaths Category:People from Caracas Category:Venezuelan Roman Catholics Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Bolivian people of Venezuelan descent Category:Colombian people of Venezuelan descent Category:Deaths from tuberculosis Category:Guerrilla warfare theorists Category:History of Bolivia Category:History of Colombia Category:History of Ecuador Category:History of Peru Category:History of Panama Category:History of Venezuela Category:Infectious disease deaths in Colombia Category:People of the Latin American wars of independence Category:People of the Spanish American wars of independence Category:People of the Peruvian War of Independence Category:People of the Venezuelan War of Independence Category:Peruvian people of Venezuelan descent Category:Presidents of Bolivia Category:Presidents of Gran Colombia Category:Presidents of Peru Category:Presidents of Venezuela * Category:Venezuelan revolutionaries Category:Venezuelan soldiers Category:Venezuelan people of Spanish descent Category:Venezuelan people of Basque descent Category:Venezuelan people of Canarian descent

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name	Justin Bieber
background	solo_singer
birth name	Justin Drew Bieber
birth date	March 01, 1994
birth place	London, Ontario, Canada
origin	Stratford, Ontario, Canada
instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, percussion, trumpet
genre	Pop, R&B, teen pop
occupation	Singer, musician, actor
years active	2009–present
label	Island, RBMG
associated acts	Usher
website	justinbiebermusic.com }}

Justin Drew Bieber ( , born March 1, 1994) is a Canadian pop/R&B singer, songwriter and actor. Bieber was discovered in 2008 by Scooter Braun, who came across Bieber's videos on YouTube and later became his manager. Braun arranged for him to meet with Usher in Atlanta, Georgia, and Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG), a joint venture between Braun and Usher, and then to a recording contract with Island Records offered by L.A. Reid. Bieber's debut single, "One Time", was released in 2009 and peaked in the top ten in Canada and charted in the top thirty in several international markets. His debut album, the seven-track EP ''My World'', followed in November 2009, and was soon certified platinum in the United States (it was later reissued with two bonus tracks). He became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut album chart on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100.

Bieber's first full-length studio album, ''My World 2.0'', was released in March 2010. It debuted at number one or within the top ten in several countries and was certified platinum in the United States. It was preceded by the worldwide top-ten single, "Baby". The music video of "Baby" is currently ranked as the most viewed and most discussed YouTube video. Bieber followed-up the release of his debut album with his first headlining tour, the My World Tour, the remix albums ''My Worlds Acoustic'' and ''Never Say Never – The Remixes'', and the 3D biopic-concert film ''Justin Bieber: Never Say Never'' – which had an opening weekend gross that nearly matched the record for the biggest opening weekend for a concert-film. Bieber released his second studio album, ''Under the Mistletoe'' in November 2011, which debuted at number one on the ''Billboard'' 200. Bieber has received numerous awards, including Artist of the Year at the 2010 American Music Awards — and has been nominated for numerous awards, including Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 53rd Grammy Awards.

Life and career

1994–2007: Childhood and youth

Bieber was born on March 1, 1994, in London, Ontario, and was raised in Stratford, Ontario. Bieber's mother, Patricia Lynn "Pattie" Mallette, was 18 years old when she became pregnant with her son. Mallette, originally from Stratford, raised her son with the help of her parents, Bruce and Diane. Mallette worked a series of low-paying office jobs, raising Bieber as a single mother in low-income housing. Bieber has maintained contact with his father, Jeremy Jack Bieber, who married another woman and had two children. Bieber's paternal great-grandfather was a German immigrant to Canada. His mother's ancestry is French Canadian. Bieber attended French immersion school at Stratford school Jean Sauve.

During his childhood, Bieber was interested in hockey, soccer, and chess; he often kept his musical aspirations to himself. As he grew up, Bieber taught himself to play the piano, drums, guitar, and trumpet. In early 2007, when he was twelve, Bieber sang Ne-Yo's "So Sick" for a local singing competition in Stratford and placed second. Mallette posted a video of the performance on YouTube for their family and friends to see. She continued to upload videos of Bieber singing covers of various R&B songs, and Bieber's popularity on the site grew. Chris Hicks, Bieber's A&R at Island/Def Jam, explained the young artist's huge online following to HitQuarters by saying:

"He was doing something different. He was an attractive white kid singing very soulful R&B hits. That set him apart immediately from anyone in his range because no one was covering or singing these kind of records. But equally important was that you believed in these songs – it was real. And you wanted to hear more."

2008–10: Discovery, ''My Worlds'', and subsequent releases

While searching for videos of a different singer, Scooter Braun, a former marketing executive of So So Def, clicked on one of Bieber's 2007 videos by accident. Impressed, Braun tracked down the theater Bieber was performing in, located Bieber's school, and finally contacted Mallette. Mallette was reluctant because of Braun's Jewish religion; she remembered praying, "God, I gave him to you. You could send me a Christian man, a Christian label! ... you don’t want this Jewish kid to be Justin’s man, do you?" However, after praying with her church elders and receiving their encouragement, she permitted Braun to fly Bieber, then 13, to Atlanta, Georgia, to record demo tapes. A week after arriving, Bieber sang for R&B singer/songwriter Usher. Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG), a joint venture between Braun and Usher. Justin Timberlake was also reportedly in the running to sign Bieber, but lost the bidding war to Usher. Usher then sought assistance in finding a label home for the artist from then manager Chris Hicks, who helped engineer an audition with his contact Antonio L.A. Reid of Island Def Jam Music Group. Reid signed Bieber to Island Records in October 2008 (resulting in a joint venture between RBMG and Island Records) and appointed Hicks as executive Vice-President of Def Jam where he would be able manage Bieber's career at the label. At that point, Bieber and his mother moved to Atlanta temporarily, also the home of Usher and Braun, to record and get counseling from Braun. Braun became Bieber's manager.

Bieber's first single, "One Time", was released to radio while Bieber was still recording his debut album. The song reached number 12 on the Canadian Hot 100 during its first week of release in July 2009, and later peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. During fall 2009 it had success in international markets. The song was certified Platinum in Canada and the US and Gold in Australia and New Zealand. Bieber's first release, an extended play entitled ''My World'', was released on November 17, 2009. The album's second single, "One Less Lonely Girl", and two promo singles, "Love Me", and "Favorite Girl", were released exclusively on the iTunes store and charted within the top forty of the Billboard Hot 100. "One Less Lonely Girl" was later also released to radio and peaked within the top fifteen in Canada and the US, being certified Gold in the latter. ''My World'' was eventually certified Platinum in the US and Double Platinum in both Canada and the UK. To promote the album, Bieber performed on several live shows such as mtvU's VMA 09 Tour, European program ''The Dome'', YTV's ''The Next Star'', ''The Today Show'', ''The Wendy Williams Show'', ''Lopez Tonight'', ''The Ellen DeGeneres Show'', ''It's On with Alexa Chung'', ''Good Morning America'', ''Chelsea Lately'', and BET's ''106 & Park'' with Rihanna. Bieber also guest starred in an episode of ''True Jackson, VP'' in late 2009.

Bieber performed Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" for U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House for ''Christmas in Washington'', which was broadcast on December 20, 2009, on U.S. television broadcaster TNT. Bieber was also one of the performers at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest on December 31, 2009. Bieber was a presenter at the 52nd Grammy Awards on January 31, 2010. He was invited to be a vocalist for the remake of We Are The World (a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie) for its 25th anniversary to benefit Haiti after the earthquake. Bieber sings the opening line, which was sung by Lionel Richie in the original version. On March 12, 2010, a version of K'naan's "Wavin' Flag" recorded by a collective of Canadian musicians known as Young Artists for Haiti was released. Bieber is featured in the song, performing the closing lines.

"Baby", the lead single from his debut album, ''My World 2.0'', which features Ludacris, was released in January 2010 and became his biggest hit thus far, charting at number five in the U.S. and reaching the top ten in seven other countries. Two promo singles "Never Let You Go", and "U Smile" were top thirty hits on the U.S. Hot 100, and top twenty hits in Canada. According to review aggregator Metacritic, the album has received "generally favorable reviews". It debuted at number one on the U.S. ''Billboard'' 200, making Bieber the youngest solo male act to top the chart since Stevie Wonder in 1963. ''My World 2.0'' also debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, Irish Albums Chart, and Australian Albums Chart, and the New Zealand Albums Chart and reached the top ten of fifteen other countries. To promote the album, Bieber appeared on several live programs including ''The View'', the 2010 Kids Choice Awards, ''Nightline'', ''The Late Show with David Letterman'', ''The Dome'' and ''106 and Park''. Bieber collaborated with Sean Kingston on his single "Eenie Meenie" which also appeared on Bieber's debut album. The song reached the top ten in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the top-twenty of most other markets. thumb|left|Bieber performing at the Conseco Fieldhouse, in August 2010 On April 10, 2010, Bieber was the musical guest on ''Saturday Night Live''. On July 4, 2010, Bieber performed at the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular in New York City. The second single from ''My World 2.0'', "Somebody to Love", was released in April 2010, and a remix was released featuring Bieber's mentor Usher. The single reached number ten in Canada, number fifteen in the United States, and the top twenty in multiple international countries.

On June 23, 2010, Bieber went on his first official headlining tour, the My World Tour, starting in Hartford, Connecticut, to promote ''My World'' and ''My World 2.0''. In July 2010, it was reported that Bieber was the most searched for celebrity on the Internet. That same month his music video, "Baby", surpassed Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" to become the most viewed, and most disliked YouTube video ever. In September 2010, it was reported that Bieber accounted for three percent of all traffic on Twitter, according to an employee of the social-networking site.

Bieber began recording his second album in July 2010 in New York City. At this point, because of puberty, his voice was deeper than it was when he recorded his first album. In April 2010, the singer discussing his vocals remarked, "It cracks. Like every teenage boy, I'm dealing with it and I have the best vocal coach in the world. [...] Some of the notes I hit on "Baby" I can't hit anymore. We have to lower the key when I sing live." British singer/songwriter Taio Cruz confirmed in July 2010 that he is writing songs for Bieber's next album. Hip hop producer Dr. Dre produced two songs with Bieber in July 2010 but it is unknown if they were made for the album, which is currently due for a 2011 release. Bieber guest-starred in the season premiere of the CBS crime drama ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'', aired on September 23, 2010. He played a "troubled teen who is faced with a difficult decision regarding his only brother". Bieber was also in a subsequent episode which aired on February 17, 2011, in which his character is killed. Bieber performed a medley of "U Smile", "Baby", and "Somebody to Love" and briefly played the drums at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010. Bieber announced in October 2010 that he would release an acoustic album, called ''My Worlds Acoustic''. It was released on Black Friday in the United States and featured acoustic versions of songs from his previous albums, and accompanied the release of a completely new song titled "Pray".

2011–present: ''Never Say Never'' film, ''Under the Mistletoe'' and ''Believe''

A 3-D part-biopic, part-concert film starring Bieber entitled ''Justin Bieber: Never Say Never'', was released February 11, 2011, directed by ''Step Up 3D'' director Jon Chu. It topped the box office with an estimated grossing of $12.4 million on its opening day from 3,105 theaters. It grossed $30.3 million for the weekend and was narrowly beaten by the romantic comedy ''Just Go With It'', which grossed $31 million. ''Never Say Never'' is said to have exceeded industry expectations, nearly matching the $31.1 million grossed by Miley Cyrus's 2008 3-D concert film, Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, which holds the record for the top debut for a music-documentary. The film is accompanied by his second remix album, ''Never Say Never – The Remixes'', released February 14, 2011, and features remixes of songs from his debut album, with guest appearances from Miley Cyrus, Chris Brown, and Kanye West, among others.

On February 27, 2011, Bieber attended the 2011 Vanity Fair Oscar Party with American actress and singer Selena Gomez, confirming several months of media speculation about a romantic relationship between the pair. The relationship has since continued to garner significant media attention.

In June 2011, Bieber was ranked number 2 on the Forbes list of Best-Paid Celebrities under 30. He is the youngest star and 1 of 7 musicians on the list raking in with $53 million earned in a 12 month period. On November 1, 2011, Bieber released ''Under the Mistletoe'', his second studio album. It debuted at number one on the ''Billboard'' 200, selling 210,000 copies in its first week of release. Bieber is currently recording his third studio album entitled ''Believe''. Kanye West and Drake are confirmed to be featured on the album.

Image

''The Observer'' newspaper in the UK published a report indicating that Justin Bieber is more influential in the social networking sphere than Barack Obama or The Dalai Lama. According to Jan Hoffman of ''The New York Times'', part of Bieber's appeal stems from his YouTube channel. Long before he released his EP, ''My World'', in mid-November, the YouTube videos attracted millions of views. Braun recognized the appeal. Prior to flying him to Atlanta, Braun wanted to "build him up more on YouTube first" and had Bieber record more home videos for the channel. "I said: 'Justin, sing like there’s no one in the room. But let's not use expensive cameras.' We'll give it to kids, let them do the work, so that they feel like it's theirs", recalled Braun. Bieber continues to upload videos to the same channel and has opened a Twitter account, from which he interacts with fans regularly; his account was reported in November 2010 to have over 6 million followers. Since then he has been consistently gaining followers at an average of 24,000 per day. The accounts also serve marketing purposes; for example, Bieber's music video for "One Time" only began selling quickly after it was uploaded to YouTube. Usher comments that while he and Bieber were both signed at the same age, "I had the chance to ramp up my success, where this has happened to Bieber abruptly." As a result, Usher, Braun, Bieber's bodyguard Kenny, and other adults surrounding Bieber constantly coach him on handling fame and his public image. After signing Bieber, Usher appointed one of his former assistants, Ryan Good, to be Bieber's road manager and stylist. Good, once nicknamed Bieber's "swagger coach", created a "streetwise look" for the singer which consisted of baseball caps, hoodies, dog chains and flashy sneakers. Amy Kaufman of ''The Los Angeles Times'' comments, "Though a product of a middle-class suburban upbringing in Stratford, Ontario, Bieber's manner of dress and speech ("Wassup man, how you doin'?" or "It's like, you know, whateva' ") suggest he's mimicking his favorite rappers."

Bieber is often featured in teen magazines such as ''Tiger Beat'', and has been labeled as a "teen hearthrob". Bieber has released a collection of nail varnishes to raise awareness for charity. Wax statues of Bieber are on display at Madame Tussauds wax museums in New York, Amsterdam and London. His change of hairstyle in 2010, and the consequent alterations to Bieber products, led to it being called 'the most expensive musical haircut of all time; one company spent $100,000 to fix its dolls for the 2011 Christmas season.

Personal views

Bieber is a Christian, and said he has a relationship with Jesus, talks to him and that "he's the reason I'm here".

Bieber's comments in a February 2011 profile in ''Rolling Stone'' sparked controversy. Asked whether a person should wait until marriage to have sex, Bieber responded, "I don't think you should have sex with anyone unless you love them." Asked about his opinion on abortion, Bieber said he does not "believe in abortion" and that it is "like killing a baby". When asked about abortion in cases of rape, he said, "Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I don't know how that would be a reason. I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that." In the same interview, Bieber talked about homosexuality, stating that "It's everyone's own decision to do that. It doesn’t affect me and shouldn't affect anyone else", and ''Rolling Stone'' commented, "It is not clear whether he intended to label homosexuality as a lifestyle choice." However, Bieber has also contributed to the It Gets Better Project, a project started in response to the suicide of Billy Lucas, a teenager who was the target of anti-gay bullying.

Bieber has said he is not interested in obtaining United States citizenship, praising Canada as being "the best country in the world", citing its health care system as an example.

Criticism

Bieber has been criticized for looking and sounding younger than his age, his teen-pop music, image, and frequent media attention. He has been a frequent target of Internet bloggers and message board posters, notably by users of Internet message board 4chan and users of YouTube. Nick Collins of ''The Daily Telegraph'' speculated that "Bieber's character also appears to strike a particularly sour note with his Internet critics, with many remarks commenting on his youthful appearance, his teen-pop songs, his image as a heart-throb to young teenage girls and his manner of speech".

Discography

''My World 2.0'' (2010)

''Under the Mistletoe'' (2011)

''Believe'' (2012)

Tour

2009: Urban Behavior Tour

2010–2011: My World Tour

Filmography

rowspan="4" ''Extreme Makeover: Home Edition'' Himself

Year !! Title !! Role !! Notes
rowspan="2"	2009	''True Jackson, VP''	>rowspan="3"| Guest star
''My Date With...''
	Silent Library (MTV series)>Silent Library''
''School Gyrls (film)	School Gyrls''	Cameo
''Saturday Night Live''
''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation''	Jason McCann
''Hubworld''	Guest star
''The X Factor (UK)''	Performer
rowspan="9"	2011	|	Guest star
''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation''	Jason McCann
''Khloé & Lamar''	|Episode:The Father In Law (uncredited) Himself playing the NBA Celebrity All Star Game
''Saturday Night Live''
''Justin Bieber: Never Say Never''	Himself
''Dancing With The Stars''	Guest star
''So Random!''	Himself
''Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade''	Guest star
''The X Factor (UK)''	Performer

Awards and nominations

References

Further reading

External links

Category:1994 births Category:Canadian child singers Category:Canadian Christians Category:Canadian dance musicians Category:Canadian expatriate musicians in the United States Category:Canadian Internet personalities Category:Canadian male singers Category:Canadian people of French descent Category:Canadian people of German descent Category:Canadian pop singers Category:Canadian rhythm and blues singers Category:Child pop musicians Category:Hip hop singers Category:Island Records artists Category:Musicians from Ontario Category:People from Stratford, Ontario Category:Living people

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Name	Hugo Chávez
Office	61st President of Venezuela
Vicepresident	Isaías RodríguezAdina BastidasDiosdado CabelloJosé Vicente RangelJorge RodríguezRamón CarrizalesElias Jaua
Term start	2 February 1999
Predecessor	Rafael Caldera
Birth date	July 28, 1954
Birth place	Sabaneta, Venezuela
Nationality	Venezuelan
Party	United Socialist Party (2008–present)
Otherparty	Fifth Republic Movement (1997–2008)
Occupation	military officer (to 1992) and politician
Spouse	Nancy Colmenares (Div.)Marisabel Rodríguez (Div.)
Relations	Adán Chávez, Aníbal José Chávez Frías (brothers)
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Signature	Hugo Chavez Signature.svg
Allegiance
Branch	Army
Serviceyears	1971–1992
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Awards	}}

Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; born July 28, 1954) is the 61st and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Following his own political ideology of Bolivarianism and "Socialism for the 21st Century", he has focused on implementing socialist reforms in the country as a part of a social project known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has seen the implementation of a new constitution, participatory democratic councils and the nationalisation of several key industries.

Born into a working class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan puntofijismo political system which he viewed as corrupt and undemocratic, he founded the secretive Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s to work towards overthrowing it. After the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez ordered the violent repression of protests against spending cuts, Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the government in 1992, for which he was imprisoned.

Getting out of prison after two years, he founded a social democratic political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He subsequently introduced a new constitution which increased rights for marginalised groups and altered the structure of Venezuelan government, and was re-elected in 2000. During his second presidential term, he introduced a system of Bolivarian Missions, Communal Councils and worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform, whilst also nationalising various key industries. The opposition movement meanwhile, arguing that he was a populist who was eroding representative democracy and becoming increasingly authoritative, attempted to remove him from power both through an unsuccessful military coup in 2002 and a recall referendum in 2004. In 2005, he openly proclaimed his adherence to socialism, and was again elected into power in 2006, following which he founded his new political party, the PSUV, in 2007. Although suffering from cancer in 2011, Chávez has stated his intention to stand for re-election in 2012.

A self-professed anti-imperialist and vocal critic of neoliberalism and capitalism more generally, Chávez has been a prominent opponent of the United States' foreign policy. Allying himself strongly with the socialist governments of Fidel and then Raúl Castro in Cuba, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, his presidency is seen as a part of the leftist "pink tide" sweeping Latin America. He has supported Latin American and Caribbean cooperation and was instrumental in setting up the pan-regional Union of South American Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South, and the regional television network TeleSur. A highly controversial and divisive figure both at home and abroad, his political influence in Latin America led ''Time'' magazine to include him among their list of the world's 100 most influential people in both 2005 and 2006.

Early life

Childhood: 1954–1970

Hugo Chávez was born on 28 July 1954 in his paternal grandmother Rosa Inéz Chávez's home, a three-room mud hut located in the rural village Sabaneta, Barinas State. The Chávez family were of Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, and Spanish descent. His parents, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez and Elena Frías de Chávez, were working-lower middle class schoolteachers who lived in the small village of Los Rastrojos. Hugo was born the second of seven children, including their eldest, Adán Chávez. The couple lived in poverty, leading them to send Hugo and Adán to live with their grandmother Rosa, whom Hugo would later describe as being "a pure human being... pure love, pure kindness." She was a devout Roman Catholic, and Hugo was an altar boy at a local church. Hugo described his childhood as "poor...very happy", and experienced "humility, poverty, pain, sometimes not having anything to eat", and "the injustices of this world."

Attending the Julián Pino Elementary School, Chávez's hobbies included drawing, painting, baseball and history. He was particularly interested in the 19th-century federalist general Ezequiel Zamora, in whose army his own great-great-grandfather had served. In the mid-1960s, Hugo, his brother and their grandmother moved to the city of Barinas so that the boys could attend what was then the only high school in the rural state, the Daniel O'Leary High School. He has described himself during those years as "a normal boy" with no "political motivation", and that he devoted his time to school studies, playing baseball and chasing girls.

Military Academy: 1971–1975

Aged seventeen, Chávez decided to study at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in Caracas, later remarking that "I felt like a fish in water. As if I had discovered the essence or part of the essence of life, of my true vocation." At the Academy, he was a member of the first class that was following a restructured curriculum known as the Andrés Bello Plan. This plan had been instituted by a group of progressive, nationalistic military officers who believed that change was needed within the military. This new curriculum encouraged students to learn not only military routines and tactics but also a wide variety of other topics, and to do so civilian professors were brought in from other universities to give lectures to the military cadets. Living in Caracas, he saw more of the endemic poverty faced by working class Venezuelans, something that echoed the poverty he had experienced growing up, and he has maintained that this experience only made him further committed to achieving social justice. He also began to get involved in local activities outside of the military school, playing both baseball and softball with the ''Criollitos de Venezuela'' team, progressing with them to the Venezuelan National Baseball Championships. Other hobbies that he undertook at the time included writing numerous poems, stories and theatrical pieces, painting and researching the life and political thought of 19th-century South American revolutionary Simón Bolívar. He also became interested in the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–1967) after reading his memoir ''The Diary of Che Guevara'', although also read books by a wide variety of other figures, from Karl Marx to Hannibal and Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1974 he was selected to be a representative in the commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho in Peru, the conflict in which Simon Bolívar's lieutenant, Antonio José de Sucre, defeated royalist forces during the Peruvian War of Independence. It was in Peru that Chávez heard the leftist president, General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1910–1977), speak, and inspired by Velasco's ideas that the military should act in the interests of the working classes when the ruling classes were perceived as corrupt, he "drank up the books [Velasco had written], even memorising some speeches almost completely." Befriending the son of Panamanian President Omar Torrijos (1929–1981), another leftist military general, Chávez subsequently visited Panama, where he met with Torrijos, and was impressed with his land reform program that was designed to benefit the peasants. Being heavily influenced by both Torrijos and Velasco, he saw the potential for military generals to seize control of a government when the civilian authorities were perceived as only serving the interests of the wealthy elites. In contrast to military presidents like Torrijos and Velasco however, Chávez became highly critical of Augusto Pinochet, the right-wing general who had recently seized control in Chile with the aid of the American CIA. Chávez would later relate that "With Torrijos, I became a Torrijist. With Velasco I became a Velasquist. And with Pinochet, I became an anti-Pinochetist." In 1975, Chávez graduated from the military academy, being rated one of the top graduates of the year (eight out of seventy five).

Early military career: 1976–1981

Following his graduation, Chávez was stationed as a communications officer at a counterinsurgency unit in Barinas, although the Marxist-Leninist insurgency which the army was sent to combat had already been eradicated from that state, leaving the unit with much spare time. Chávez himself played in a local baseball team, wrote a column for the local newspaper, organized bingo games and judged at beauty pageants. At one point he found a stash of Marxist literature that was in an abandoned car riddled with bullet holes. Apparently having belonged to insurgents many years before, he went on to read these books, which included titles by such theoreticians as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, but his favourite was a work entitled ''The Times of Ezequiel Zamora'', written about the 19th-century federalist general whom Chávez had admired as a child. These books further convinced Chávez of the need for a leftist government in Venezuela, later remarking that "By the time I was 21 or 22, I made myself a man of the left."

In 1977, Chávez's unit was transferred to Anzoátegui, where they were involved in battling the Red Flag Party, a Marxist-Hoxhaist insurgency group. After intervening to prevent the beating of an alleged insurgent by other soldiers, Chávez began to have his doubts about the army and their methods in using torture. At the same time, he was becoming increasingly critical of the corruption in both the army and in the civilian government, coming to believe that despite the wealth being produced by the country's oil reserves, Venezuela's poor masses were not receiving their share, something he felt to be inherently un-democratic. In doing so, he began to sympathise with the Red Flag Party and their cause, if not their violent methods.

In 1977, he founded a revolutionary movement within the armed forces, in the hope that he could one day introduce a leftist government to Venezuela: the Venezuelan People's Liberation Army (''Ejército de Liberación del Pueblo de Venezuela'', or ELPV), was a secretive cell within the military that consisted of him and a handful of his fellow soldiers. Although they knew that they wanted a middle way between the right wing policies of the government and the far left position of the Red Flag, they did not have any plans of action for the time being. Nevertheless, hoping to gain an alliance with civilian leftist groups in Venezuela, Chávez then set about clandestinely meeting various prominent Marxists, including Alfredo Maneiro (the founder of the Radical Cause) and Douglas Bravo, despite having numerous political differences with them. At this time, Chávez married a working class woman named Nancy Colmenares, with whom he would go on to have three children, Rosa Virginia (born September 1978), Maria Gabriela (born March 1980) and Hugo Rafael (born October 1983).

Revolutionary activity

Later military career and the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200: 1982–1991

Five years after his creation of the ELPV, Chávez went on to form a new secretive cell within the military, the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200 (EBR-200), later redesignated the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200). Taking inspiration from three Venezuelans whom Chávez deeply admired, Ezequiel Zamora (1817–1860), Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) and Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), these historical figures became known as the "three roots of the tree" of the MBR-200. Later describing the group's foundation, Chávez would state that "the Bolivarian movement that was being born did not propose political objectives... Its goals were imminently internal. Its efforts were directed in the first place to studying the military history of Venezuela as a source of a military doctrine of our own, which up to then didn't exist." However, he always hoped that the Bolivarian Movement would become politically dominant, and on his political ideas at the time, remarked that "This tree [of Bolívar, Zamora and Rodríguez] has to be a circumference, it has to accept all kinds of ideas, from the right, from the left, from the ideological ruins of those old capitalist and communist systems." Indeed, Irish political analyst Barry Cannon noted that the early Bolivarian ideology was explicitly capitalist, but that it "was a doctrine in construction, a heterogeneous amalgam of thoughts and ideologies, from universal thought, capitalism, Marxism, but rejecting the neoliberal models currently being imposed in Latin America and the discredited socialist and communist models of the old Soviet Bloc."

In 1981, Chávez, by now a captain, was assigned to teach at the military academy where he had formerly trained. Here he taught new students about his Bolivarian ideals, and recruited those whom he felt would make good members of the MBR-200, as well as organizing sporting and theatrical events for the students. In his recruiting attempts he was relatively successful, for by the time they had graduated, at least thirty out of 133 cadets had joined it. In 1984 he met a Venezuelan woman of German ancestry named Herma Marksman who was a recently divorced history teacher. Sharing many interests in common, she eventually got involved in Chávez's movement and the two fell in love, having an affair that would last several years. Another figure to get involved with the movement was Francisco Arias Cárdenas, a soldier particularly interested in liberation theology. Cárdenas rose to a significant position within the group, although came into ideological conflict with Chávez, who believed that they should begin direct military action in order to overthrow the government, something Cárdenas thought was reckless.

However, some senior military officers became suspicious of Chávez after hearing rumours about the MBR-200. Unable to legally dismiss him without proof, they re-assigned him so that he would not be able to gain any more fresh new recruits from the academy. He was sent to take command of the remote barracks at Elorza in Apure State, where he got involved in the local community by organizing social events, and contacted the local indigenous tribal peoples, the Cuiva and Yaruro. Although distrustful due to their mistreatment at the hands of the Venezuelan army in previous decades, Chávez gained their trust by joining the expeditions of an anthropologist to meet with them. His experiences with them would later lead him to introduce laws protecting the rights of indigenous tribal peoples when he gained power many years later. While on holiday, he retraced on foot the route taken by his great-grandfather, the revolutionary Pedro Pérez Delgado (known as Maisanta), to understand his family history; on that trip, he met a woman who told Chávez how Maisanta had become a local hero by rescuing an abducted girl. In 1988, after being promoted to the rank of major, the high ranking General Rodríguez Ochoa took a liking to Chávez and employed him to be his assistant at his office in Caracas.

Operation Zamora: 1992

In 1989, Carlos Andrés Pérez (1922–2010), the candiate of the centrist Democratic Action Party, was elected President after promising to oppose the United States government's Washington Consensus and the economic cuts imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nevertheless, he did neither once he got into office, following instead the neoliberal economic policies supported by the United States and the IMF. He dramatically cut social spending, put prominent businessmen in governmental posts, and increased the costs of energy and fuel. Pérez's betrayal produced public outrage and contentious popular actions. In an attempt to stop the widespread protests and looting that followed his social spending cuts, Pérez ordered the violent repression and massacre of protesters known as ''El Caracazo'', which "according to official figures ... left a balance of 276 dead, numerous injured, several disappeared and heavy material losses. However, this list was invalidated by the subsequent appearance of mass graves", indicating that the official death count was inadequate. Pérez had used both the DISIP political police and the army to orchestrate ''El Caracazo''. Chávez did not participate in the repression because he was then hospitalized with chicken pox, something for which he would remain be grateful while also condemning the event as "genocide".

Disturbed by the ''Caracazo'', rampant government corruption, the domination of politics by the Venezuelan oligarchy through the Punto Fijo Pact, and what he called "the dictatorship of the IMF", Chávez began preparing for a military coup d'état, known as Operation Zamora. Initially planned for December, Chávez delayed the MBR-200 coup until the early twilight hours of 4 February 1992. On that date, five army units under Chávez's command moved into urban Caracas with the mission of overwhelming key military and communications installations, including the Miraflores presidential palace, the defense ministry, La Carlota military airport and the Military Museum. Chávez's immediate goal was to intercept and take custody of Pérez, who was returning to Miraflores from an overseas trip. Despite years of planning, the coup quickly encountered trouble. At the time of the coup, Chávez had the loyalty of less than 10% of Venezuela's military forces, and, because of numerous betrayals, defections, errors, and other unforeseen circumstances, Chávez and a small group of rebels found themselves hiding in the Military Museum, without any means of conveying orders to their network of spies and collaborators spread throughout Venezuela. Furthermore, Chávez's allies were unable to broadcast their prerecorded tapes on the national airwaves, during which Chávez planned to issue a general call for a mass civilian uprising against the Pérez government. Finally, Chávez's forces were unable to capture Pérez, who managed to escape from them. Fourteen soldiers were killed, and fifty soldiers and some eighty civilians injured during the ensuing violence.

Realising that the coup had failed, Chávez gave himself up to the government. On the condition that he called upon the remaining active coup members to cease hostilities, he was allowed to appear on national television, something that he insisted on doing in his military uniform. During this address, he invoked the name of national hero Simón Bolívar and declared to the Venezuelan people that "Comrades: unfortunately, for now, the objectives we had set for ourselves were not achieved in the capital city. That is, those of us here in Caracas did not seize power. Where you are, you have performed very well, but now is the time for a reflect. New opportunities will arise and the country has to head definitively toward a better future." Many viewers noted that Chávez had remarked that he had only failed "''por ahora''" (for now), and he was immediately catapulted into the national spotlight, with many Venezuelans, particularly those from the poorer sections of society, seeing him as a figure who had stood up against government corruption and kleptocracy.

Chávez was arrested and imprisoned at the San Carlos military stockade, where he remained wracked with guilt, feeling responsible for the coup's failure, despite his growing popular support amongst the civilian population. Indeed, pro-Chávez demonstrations that took place outside of San Carlos led to him being transferred to Yare prison soon after. The government meanwhile began a temporary crackdown on media supportive of Chávez and the coup. A further attempted coup against the government occurred in November, which was once more defeated, although Pérez himself was impeached a year later for malfeasance and misappropriation of funds for illegal activities.

Political rise: 1992–1998

Whilst Chávez and the other senior members of the MBR-200 were in prison, his relationship with Herma Marksman broke up in July 1993. She would subsequently become "a bitter critic of Chávez, whose supporters wondered how much of her anger was stoked by their failed romance." In 1994, Rafael Caldera (1916–2009) of the centrist National Convergence Party was elected to the presidency, and soon after taking power, freed Chávez and the other imprisoned MBR-200 members as per his pre-election pledge. Caldera had however imposed upon them the condition that they would not return to the military, where they could potentially organise another coup. After being mobbed by adoring crowds following his release, Chávez went on a 100 day tour of the country, promoting his Bolivarian cause of social revolution. Now living off a small military pension as well as the donations of his supporters, he continued to financially support his three children and their mother despite divorcing Nancy Colmenares around this period. On his tours around the country, he would meet Marisabel Rodríguez, who would give birth to their daughter shortly before becoming his second wife in 1997.

Travelling around Latin America in search of foreign support for his Bolivarian movement, he visited Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, and finally Cuba, where the Marxist-Leninist President Fidel Castro (1926–) organised to meet him. After spending several days in one another's company, Chávez and Castro became friends, with the former describing the Cuban President as being like a father to him. Returning to Venezuela, Chávez failed to gain mainstream media attention for his political cause, something his supporters believed was partially down to the fact that the mainstream media was owned and controlled by the wealthy oligarchy that Chávez himself was so opposed to. Instead, he gained publicity from small, local-based newspapers and media outlets. As a part of his condemnation of the ruling class, Chávez became critical of President Caldera, whose neoliberal economic policies had caused inflation, and who had both suspended constitutional guarantees and arrested a number of Chávez's supporters. According to the United Nations, by 1997, the per capita income for Venezuelan citizens had fallen to US$ 2,858 from US$ 5,192 in 1990, whilst poverty levels had increased by 17.65% since 1980 and homicide and other crime rates had more than doubled since 1986, particularly in Caracas. Coupled with this drop in the standard of living, widespread dissatisfaction with the representative democratic system in Venezuela had "led to gaps emerging between rulers and ruled which favoured the emergence of a populist leader".

A debate soon developed in the Bolivarian movement as to whether it should try to take power in elections or whether it should instead continue to believe that military action was the only effective way of bringing about political change. Chávez was a keen proponent of the latter view, believing that the oligarchy would never allow him and his supporters to win an election, whilst Francisco Arias Cárdenas instead insisted that they take part in the representative democratic process. Cárdenas himself proved his point when, after joining the Radical Cause socialist party, he won the December 1995 election to become governor of the oil-rich Zulia State. Subsequently changing his opinion on the issue, Chávez and his supporters in the Bolivarian movement decided to found their own political party, the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR—''Movimiento Quinta República'') in July 1997 in order to support Chávez's candidature in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1998.

1998 election

At the start of the election run-up, most polls gave Irene Sáez, then-mayor of Caracas' richest district, Chacao, the lead. Although an independent candidate, she had the backing of one of Venezuela's two primary political parties, Copei. In opposition to her right wing and pro-establishment views, Chávez and his followers described their aim as "laying the foundations of a new republic" to replace the existing one, which they cast as "party-dominated"; the current constitution, they argued, was no more than the "legal-political embodiment of puntofijismo", the country's traditional two-party patronage system. This revolutionary rhetoric gained Chávez and the MVR support from a number of other leftist parties, including the ''Patria Para Todos'' (Motherland for All), the ''Partido Comunist Venezolano'' (Venezeuelan Communist Party) and the ''Movimiento al Socialismo'' (Movement for Socialism), which together fashioned a political union supporting his candidacy called the ''Polo Patriotic'' (Patriotic Pole).

Chávez's promises of widespread social and economic reforms won the trust and favor of a primarily poor and working class following. By May 1998, Chávez's support had risen to 30% in polls, and by August he was registering 39%. Much of his support came from his 'strong man' populist image and charismatic appeal. This rise in popularity worried Chávez's opponents, with the oligarchy-owned mainstream media proceeding to attack him with a series of allegations, which included the claim – which he dismissed as ridiculous – that he was a cannibal who ate children. With his support increasing, and Sáez's decreasing, both the main two political parties, Copei and Democratic Action, put their support behind Henrique Salas Römer, a Yale University-educated economist who representated the Project Venezuela party.

Chávez won the election in a landslide victory with 56.20% of the vote, having gained 3, 673, 685 voted cast in his favour. Salas Römer came second, with 39.97%, whilst the other candidates, including Irene Sáez and Alfaro Ucero, only gained tiny proportions of the vote. Academic analysis of the election showed that Chávez's support had come primarily from the country's poor and the "disenchanted middle class", whose standard of living had decreased rapidly in the previous decade, although at the same time much of the middle and upper class vote had instead gone to Salas Römer. Following the announcement of his victory, Chávez gave a speech in which he declared that "The resurrection of Venezuela has begun, and nothing and no one can stop it."

Presidency

First Presidential Term: 1999–2000

Chávez's presidential inauguration took place on 2 February 1999, and during the usual presidential oath he deviated from the prescribed words to proclaim that "I swear before my people that upon this moribund constitution I will drive forth the necessary democratic transformations so that the new republic will have a Magna Carta befitting these new times." He subsequently set about appointing new figures to a number of government posts, including promoting various leftist allies to key positions; he for instance gave one of the founders of MBR, Jesús Urdaneta, the position in charge of the secret police, and made one of the 1992 coup leaders, Hernán Grüber Ódreman, governor of the Federal District of Caracas. Chávez also appointed some conservative, centrist and centre-right figures to government positions as well, reappointing Caldera's economy minister Maritza Izaquirre to that same position and also appointing the businessman Roberto Mandini to be president of the state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela. His critics referred to this group of government officials as the "Boliburguesía" or "Bolivarian bourgeoisie", and highlighted the fact that it "included few people with experience in public administration." He also made several alterations to his presidential privileges, scrapping the presidential limousine, giving away his entire presidential wage of $1,200 a month to a scholarship fund, and selling off many of the government-owned airplanes, although alternately many of his critics accused him of excessive personal expenses for himself, his family and friends. The involvement of a number of his immediate family members in Venezuelan politics has also led to accusations of nepotism, something Chávez denies. Meanwhile, in June 2000 he separated from his wife Marisabel, and their divorce was finalised in January 2004.

Although he publicly used strong revolutionary rhetoric from the beginning of his presidency, the Chávez government's initial policies were moderate, capitalist and centre-left, having much in common with those of contemporary Latin American leftists like Brazil's president Lula da Silva. Chávez initially believed that capitalism was still a valid economic model for Venezuela, but that it would have to be Rhenish capitalism or the Third Way that would be followed rather than the neoliberalism which had been implemented under former governments with the encouragement of the United States. He followed the economic guidelines recommended by the capitalist International Monetary Fund and continued to encourage foreign corporations to invest in Venezuela, even visiting the New York Stock Exchange in the United States in an attempt to convince wealthy investors to do so. To increase his visibility abroad, Chávez spent fifty-two days of his first year as president outside of Venezuela, travelling the world meeting various national leaders, such as American President Bill Clinton, Governor of Texas George W. Bush and Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin.

Whilst he was remaining fiscally conservative, he introduced measures in an attempt to alleviate the poverty of the Venezuelan working class. Chávez immediately set into motion a social welfare program called Plan Bolívar 2000, which he organised to begin on 27 February 1999, the tenth anniversary of the ''Caracazo'' massacre. Costing $113,000,000, Plan Bolívar 2000 involved 70,000 army officers going out into the streets of Venezuela where they would repair roads and hospitals, offer free medical care and vaccinations, and sell food at cheap prices. Chávez himself described the Plan by saying that "Ten years ago we came to massacre the people. Now we are going to fill them with love. Go and comb the land, search out and destroy poverty and death. We are going to fill them with love instead of lead." In order to explain his latest thoughts and plans to the Venezuelan people, in May he also launched his own Sunday morning radio show, ''Aló Presidente'' (''Hello, President''), on the state radio network, as well as a Thursday night television show, ''De Frente con el Presidente'' (''Face to Face with the President''). He followed this with his own newspaper, ''El Correo del Presidente'' (''The President's Post''), founded in July, for which he acted as editor-in-chief, but which was later shut amidst accusations of corruption in its management. In his television and radio shows, he answered calls from citizens, discussed his latest policies, sung songs and told jokes, making it unique not only in Latin America but the entire world.

Constitutional reform

Chávez then called for a public referendum – something virtually unknown in Venezuela at the time – which he hoped would support his plans to form a constitutional assembly, composed of representatives from across Venezuela, as well as from indigenous tribal groups, which would be able to rewrite the nation's constitution. The referendum went ahead on 25 April 1999, and was an overwhelming success for Chávez, with 88% of voters supporting the proposal.

Following this, Chávez called for an election to take place on 25 July, in which the members of the constitutional assembly would be voted into power. Of the 1,171 candidates standing for election to the assembly, over 900 of them were opponents of Chávez, but despite this, his supporters won another overwhelming electoral victory, taking 125 seats (95% of the total), including all of those belonging to indigenous tribal groups, whereas the opposition were voted into only 6 seats. On 12 August 1999, the new constitutional assembly voted to give themselves the power to abolish government institutions and to dismiss officials who were perceived as being corrupt or operating only in their own interests. Whilst supporters of the move believed that it could force reforms that had been blocked by corrupt politicians and judicial authorities for years, many opponents of the Chávez regime argued that it gave Chávez and the Bolivarians too much power at the expense of their political opponents, and was therefore dictatorial.

The elected members of the constituent assembly put together a new constitution, and a referendum on the issue of whether to adopt it was held in December 1999; the referendum saw an abstention vote of over 50%, although amongst those voting, 72% approved the new constitution's adoption. The new constitution included increased protections for indigenous peoples and women, and established the rights of the public to education, housing, healthcare and food. It added new environmental protections, and increased requirements for government transparency. It increased the presidential term from five to six years, allowed people to recall presidents by referendum, and added a new presidential two-term limit. It converted the bicameral legislature, a Congress with both a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, into a unicameral one comprising only a National Assembly. The constitution gave greater powers to the president, not only by extending their term but also by giving them the power to legislate on citizen rights as well as the economic and financial matters that they were formerly able to do. It also gave the military a role in the government by providing them with the mandated role of ensuring public order and aiding national development, something they had been expressely forbidden from doing under the former constitution. As a part of the new constitution, the country, which was then officially known as the Republic of Venezuela, was renamed the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (República Bolivariana de Venezuela) at Chávez's request, thereby reflecting the government's ideology of Bolivarianism and the influence of Simón Bolívar on the nation as a whole.

Second Presidential Term: 2000–2006

Under the new constitution, it was legally required that new elections be held in order to relegimatize the government and president. This presidential election in July 2000 would be a part of a greater "megaelection", the first time in the country's history that the president, governors, national and regional congressmen, mayors and councilmen would be voted for on the same day. For the position of president, Chávez's closest challenger proved to be his former friend and co-conspirator in the 1992 coup, Francisco Arias Cárdenas, who since becoming governor of Zulia state had turned towards the political centre and begun to denounce Chávez as autocratic. Although some of his supporters feared that he had alienated those in the middle class and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy who had formerly supported him, Chávez was re-elected with 59.76% of the vote (the equivalent of 3,757,000 people), a larger majority than his 1998 electoral victory, again primarily receiving his support from the poorer sectors of Venezuelan society.

That year, Chávez helped to further cement his geopolitical and ideological ties with the Cuban government of Fidel Castro by signing an agreement under which Venezuela would supply Cuba with 53,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates, in return receiving 20,000 trained Cuban medics and educators. In the ensuing decade, this would be increased to 90,000 barrels a day (in exchange for 40,000 Cuban medics and teachers), dramatically aiding the Caribbean island's economy and standard of living after its "Special Period" of the 1990s. However, Venezuela's growing alliance with Cuba came at the same time as a deteriorating relationship with the United States: in late 2001, just after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in retaliation for the September 11 attacks against the U.S. by Islamist militants, Chávez showed pictures of Afghan children killed in a bomb attack on his television show. He commented that "They are not to blame for the terrorism of Osama Bin Laden or anyone else", and called on the American government to end "the massacre of the innocents. Terrorism cannot be fought with terrorism." The U.S. government responded negatively to the comments, which were picked up by the media worldwide.

Meanwhile, the 2000 elections had led to Chávez's supporters gaining 101 out of 165 seats in the Venezuelan National Assembly, and so in November 2001 they voted to allow him to pass 49 social and economic decrees. This move antagonized the opposition movement particularly strongly.

At the start of the 21st century, Venezuela was the world's fifth largest exporter of crude oil, with oil accounting for 85.3% of the country's exports, therefore dominating the country's economy. Previous administrations had sought to privatise this industry, with U.S. corporations having a significant level of control, but the Chávez administration wished to curb this foreign control over the country's natural resources by nationalising much of it under the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PdVSA). In 2001, the government introduced a new Hydrocarbons Law through which they sought to gain greater state control over the oil industry: they did this by raising royalty taxes on the oil companies and also by introducing the formation of "mixed companies", whereby the PdVSA could have joint control with private companies over industry. By 2006, all of the 32 operating agreements signed with private corporations during the 1990s had been converted from being primarily or solely corporate-run to being at least 51% controlled by PdVSA.

Growing opposition and the CD

During Chávez's first term in office, the opposition movement had been "strong but reasonably contained, [with] complaints centring mainly on procedural aspects of the implementation of the constitution". However, the first organized protest against the Bolivarian government occurred in January 2001, when the Chávez administration tried to implement educational reforms through the proposed Resolution 259 and Decree 1.011, which would have seen the publication of textbooks with a heavy Bolivarian bias. The protest movement, which was primarily by middle class parents whose children went to privately run schools, marched to central Caracas shouting out the slogan "Don't mess with my children." Although the protesters were denounced by Chávez, who called them "selfish and individualistic," the protest was successful enough for the government to retract the proposed education reforms and instead enter into a consensus-based educational program with the opposition. That year, an organization known as the ''Coordinadora Democrática de Acción Cívica'' (CD) was founded, under which the Venezuelan opposition political parties, corporate powers, most of the country's media, the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce, the Frente Institucional Militar and the Central Workers Union all united to oppose Chávez's regime. The prominent multimillionaire businessman Pedro Carmona (1941–) was chosen as the CD's leader. They received support from various foreign sources, including from the United States government, which disliked the Bolivarian government's implementation of the new Hydrocarbons Law, and which funded the CD through the state-funded National Endowment for Democracy.

The CD and other opponents of Chávez's Bolivarian government accused it of trying to turn Venezuela from a democracy into a dictatorship by centralising power amongst its supporters in the Constituent Assembly and granting Chávez increasingly autocratic powers. Many of them pointed to Chávez's personal friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro and the one-party socialist government in Cuba as a sign of where the Bolivarian government was taking Venezuela. Others did not hold such a strong view, but still argued that Chávez was a "free-spending, authoritarian populist" whose policies were detrimental to the country. For instance, Venezuelan lawyer and academic Allan R. Brewer-Carías, a prominent and vocal opponent of Chávez, made the claim that under his regime the country had "suffered a tragic setback regarding democratic standards, suffering a continuous, persistent and deliberate process of demolishing institutions and destroying democracy, which has never before been experienced in the constitutional history of the country." Other academics have argued that the opposite was true, and that "the Chávez government is in fact more democratic than previous ones" because of the increased checks and balances introduced by the 1999 constitution and the introduction of workers' councils.

The pro-Chávez political analyst Gregory Wilpert argued, in his study of the Bolivarian administration, that the opposition movement was dominated primarily by members of the middle and upper classes. He further argued that this wealthy elite was particularly furious at the Bolivarian government because they themselves had lost much of their dominance over Venezuelan politics with the introduction of the 1999 constitution and the relegitamization of all areas of government that it required. He went on to argue that this wealthy elite subsequently used its control of the country's mass media to create an anti-Chávez campaign aimed primarily at the middle classes, stirring up the latent racism and classism that existed in Venezuelan culture. One of the most prominent examples of this was through the popularization of the racist term ''ese mono'' ("that monkey") which began to be applied to Chávez by his opponents, who would also often accuse him of being "vulgar and common". Both Venezuelan and Western opposition media also characterized Chávez's supporters, who were known as the Chávistas, as being "young, poor, politically unsophisticated, antidemocratic masses" who were controlled, funded and armed by the state, and they were regularly referred to as "hordes" in opposition media discourse, which also commonly referred to the Bolivarian Circles as "terror circles". Such descriptions have been refuted by certain academics, such as Cristóbal Valencia Ramírez, who, after studying Chavista groups, have argued that they consist of people from many classes of society, and are educated and largely non-violent. Chavista-run organizations have since claimed to have been the target of violent attacks from opposition groups: for instance, the Ezequiel Zamora National Farmers' Coordinator estimated that 50 Chavista leaders involved in the land-reform program had been assassinated during 2002 and 2003.

Coup, strikes and the recall referendum

On 11 April 2002, mass protests took place in Caracas against the Bolivarian government, during which guns were fired, and violence ensued involving both pro- and anti-Chávez supporters, the police and the army. Twenty people were killed and over 110 were wounded. A group of high ranking anti-Chávez military officers, likely supported by figures in the business community, media and certain political parties, had been planning to launch a coup against Chávez and used the civil unrest as an opportunity. After the plotters gained significant power, Chávez agreed to step down, and was transferred by army escort to La Orchila, and although he requested to be allowed to leave the country, he refused to officially resign from the presidency at the time. Nonetheless, the wealthy business-leader Pedro Carmona declared himself president of an interim government. Carmona abolished the 1999 constitution and appointed a small governing committee to run the country. Protests in support of Chávez along with insufficient support for Carmona's regime, which many felt was implementing totalitarian measures, led to Carmona's resignation and Chávez was returned to power on 14 April.

Chávez's reaction to the coup attempt was to moderate his approach, implementing a new economic team that appeared to be more centrist and reinstated the old board of directors and managers of the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), whose replacement had been one of the reasons for the coup. At the same time, the Bolivarian government began preparing for potential future uprisings or even a US invasion by increasing the country's military capacity, purchasing 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and several helicopters from Russia, as well as a number of Super Tucano light attack planes from Brazil. Troop numbers were also increased, with Chávez announcing in 2005 the government's intention to increase the number of military reserves from 50,000 to 2,000,000.

In December 2002, the Chávez presidency faced a two-month management strike at the PdVSA when he initiated management changes. As Wilpert noted, "While the opposition labelled this action a 'general strike', it was actually a combination of management lockout, administrative and professional employee strike, and general sabotage of the oil industry." The Chávez government's response was to fire about 19,000 striking employees for illegally abandoning their posts, and then employing retired workers, foreign contractors and the military to do their jobs instead. This move further damaged the strength of Chávez's opposition by removing the many managers in the oil industry who had been supportive of their cause to overthrow Chávez.

Following the failure of these two attempts to remove Chávez from power, the opposition finally resorted to legal means in order to try to do so. The 1999 constitution had introduced the concept of a recall referendum into Venezuelan politics, and so the opposition called for such a referendum to take place. A 2004 referendum to recall Chávez was defeated. 70% of the eligible Venezuelan population turned out to vote, with 59% of voters deciding to keep the president in power. Unlike his original 1998 election victory, this time Chávez's electoral support came almost entirely from the poorer working classes rather than the middle classes, who "had practically abandoned Chávez" after he "had consistently moved towards the left in those five and a half years". Meanwhile, some figures in the opposition movement began calling for the United States military to intervene and invade the country in order to topple Chávez.

"Socialism of the 21st Century"

The various attempts at overthrowing the Bolivarian government from power had only served to further radicalize Chávez. In January 2005, he began openly proclaiming the ideology of "Socialism of the 21st century", something that was distinct from his earlier forms of Bolivarianism, which had been social democratic in nature, merging elements of capitalism and socialism. He used this new term to contrast the democratic socialism which he wanted to promote in Latin America from the Marxist-Leninist socialism that had been spread by socialist states like the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China during the 20th century, arguing that the latter had not been truly democratic, suffering from a lack of participatory democracy and an excessively authoritarian governmental structure.

In May 2006, Chávez visited Europe in a private capacity, where he announced plans to supply cheap Venezuelan oil to poor working class communities in the continent. The leftist Mayor of London Ken Livingstone welcomed him, describing him as "the best news out of Latin America in many years".

Third Presidential Term: 2006–present

In the presidential election of December 2006, which saw a 74% voter turnout, Chávez was once more elected, this time with 63% of the vote, beating his closest challenger Manuel Rosales, who conceded his loss. The election was certified as being free and legitimate by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center. After this victory, Chávez promised an "expansion of the revolution."

United Socialist Party of Venezuela and domestic policy

On 15 December 2006, Chávez publicly announced that those leftist political parties who had continually supported him in the Patriotic Pole would unite into one single, much larger party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (''Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela'', PSUV). In the speech which he gave announcing the PSUV's creation, Chávez declared that the old parties must "forget their own structures, party colours and slogans, because they are not the most important thing for the fatherland." According to political analyst Barry Cannon, the purpose of creating the PSUV was to "forge unity amongst the disparate elements [of the Bolivarian movement], providing grassroots input into policy and leadership formation, [and] uniting the grassroots and leadership into one single body." It was hoped that by doing so, it would decrease the problems of clientelism and corruption and also leave the movement less dependent on its leadership: as Chávez himself declared, "In this new party, the bases will elect the leaders. This will allow real leaders to emerge."

Chávez had initially proclaimed that those leftist parties which chose to not dissolve into the PSUV would have to leave the government, however, after several of those parties supporting him refused to do so, he ceased to issue such threats. There was initially much grassroots enthusiasm for the creation of the PSUV, with membership having rising to 5.7 million people by 2007, making it the largest political group in Venezuela. The United Nations' International Labour Organization however expressed concern over some voters being pressured to join the party.

In 2007, the Bolivarian government set up a constitutional commission in order to review the 1999 constitution and suggest potential amendments to be made to it. Led by the prominent pro-Chávez intellectual Luis Britto García, the commission came to the conclusion that the constitution could include more socially progressive clauses, such as the shortening of the working week, a constitutional recognition of Afro Venezuelans and the elimination of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. It also suggested measures that would have increased many of the president's powers, for instance increasing the presidential term limit to seven years, allowing the president to run for election indefinitely and centralizing powers in the executive. The government put the suggested changes to a public referendum in December 2007. Abstention rate was high however, with 43.95% of registered voters not turning out, and in the end the proposed changes were rejected by 50.65% of votes. This would prove to the first electoral loss that Chávez had faced in the thirteen electoral contests held since he took power, something analysts argued was due to the top-down nature of the changes, as well as general public dissatisfaction with "the absence of internal debate on its content, as well as dissatisfaction with the running of the social programmes, increasing street crime, and with corruption within the government."

In order to ensure that his Bolivarian Revolution became socially engrained in Venezuela, Chávez discussed his wish to stand for re-election when his term ran out in 2013, and spoke of ruling beyond 2030. Under the 1999 constitution, he could not legally stand for re-election again, and so brought about a referendum on 15 February 2009 to abolish the two-term limit for all public offices, including the presidency. Approximately 70% of the Venezuelan electorate voted, and they approved this alteration to the constitution with over 54% in favor, allowing any elected official the chance to try to run indefinitely.

Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Bank of the South

The Bolivarian government placed a great emphasis on providing financial and medical aid to the rest of Latin America, bolstered by the profits produced by the Venezuela oil industry: indeed, in the first eight months of 2007 alone, Venezuela spent $8.8 billion in doing so, something which was "unprecedented for a Latin American country" in terms of scale. Adding to this, the Chávez administration sought greater political, economic and military alliances with those Latin American countries who had seen leftist, and in particular socialist governments elected in the early 21st century. The widespread success of left-leaning candidates at the time had led to what political analysts have described as a "pink tide" sweeping the region, although there was a great deal of diversity within this leftist trend. Those that became the closest allies of Bolivarian Venezuela were Evo Morales and his Movement for Socialism, which was elected into power in Bolivia in 2005, and Rafael Correa and his PAIS Alliance, who won the election in Ecuador in 2006.

In 2007, the socialist Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front were elected into government in Nicaragua, and his administration immediately entered into deals with the Venezuelan government. On Ortega's first day in power, Chávez announced plans to aid the impoverished Central American country by forgiving the $30 million it owed Venezuela, and agreed to supply them with a further gift of $10 million in aid, as well as providing them with a $20 million loan with little or no interest designed to benefit the country's poor.

In 2004, Venezuela had been one of the founding states in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA).

As of September 26, 2009, Chávez, along with allies such as Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia, has set up a regional bank and development lender called Bank of the South, based in Caracas, an attempt to distance himself from financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Chávez first mentioned the project before winning the Presidential election in 1998. Chávez maintains that unlike other global financial organizations, the Bank of the South will be managed and funded by the countries of the region with the intention of funding social and economic development without any political conditions on that funding. The project is endorsed by Nobel Prize winning, former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz, who said: "One of the advantages of having a Bank of the South is that it would reflect the perspectives of those in the south," and that "It is a good thing to have competition in most markets, including the market for development lending."

As the Arab Spring erupted across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, Chávez openly criticised those leaders who had been backed by the U.S., such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, but at the same time championed those who had adhered to Arab socialist ideals, such as Syria's Bashar al-Assad, whom he called "a humanist and a brother" in spite of Assad's government's violent crackdown on protesters. Following the outbreak of the 2011 Libyan civil war, in which forces opposed to the socialist government rose up against the regime, Chávez, who had always had good international relations with Libya – describing its ceremonial leader Muammar al-Gaddafi as "a friend of mine" During the subsequent 2011 military intervention in Libya, in which western forces attacked the Libyan army in support of the NTC, Chávez criticised the "indiscriminate bombing" of the country, accusing the United States of simply trying to "lay its hands on Libya's oil". Upon the killing of Muammar al-Gaddafi at the hands of NTC fighters in October 2011, Chávez proclaimed that "We shall remember Gaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr. They assassinated him. It is another outrage."

Cancer and further nationalisation

On June 30, 2011, Chávez confirmed in a televised address from Havana, Cuba that he was recovering from a June 10 operation to remove an abscessed tumor with cancerous cells. Vice President Elías Jaua declared that the President remained in "full exercise" of power and that there was no need to transfer power due to his absence from the country. A July 2 report in ''El Periódico de Catalunya'' reported that, according to Venezuelan diplomatic sources, Chávez had "colon cancer that has perforated the intestinal wall and has caused an infection in the abdomen." On July 3, the Venezuelan government denied, however, that Chávez had colon cancer, and stated that the tumour had been completely removed, further stating that Chávez was heading for "complete recovery". On July 17, 2011, television news reported that Chavez had returned to Cuba for further cancer treatments.

Chávez gave a public appearance on his 57th birthday in which he stated that his health trouble had led him to radically reorient his life towards a "more diverse, more reflective and multi-faceted" outlook, and he went on to call on the middle classes and the private sector to get more involved in his Bolivarian Revolution, something he saw as "vital" to its success. Soon after this speech, in August Chávez announced that his government would nationalise Venezuela's gold industry, taking it over from Russian-controlled company Rusoro, whilst at the same time also moving the country's gold stocks, which were largely stored in western banks, to banks in Venezuela's political allies like Russia, China and Brazil.

Political philosophy

Hugo Chávez defines his political position as Bolivarianism, an ideology developed by himself which is heavily influenced by the writings of Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), a 19th-century general who led the fight against the imperialist Spanish authorities, and who is widely revered across Latin America today. Along with Bolívar, the other two primary influences upon Bolivarianism are Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), a philosopher who was Bolívar's tutor and mentor, and Ezequiel Zamora, (1817–1860), the Venezuelan Federalist general. Political analyst Gregory Wilpert, in his study of Chávez's politics, noted that "The key ingredients for Chávez's revolutionary Bolivarianism can be summarized as: an emphasis on the importance of education, the creation of civilian-military unity, Latin American integration, social justice, and national sovereignty. In many ways this is not a particularly different set of principles and ideas to those of any other Enlightenment or national liberation thinker."

Although he has been a leftist ever since his days at the military academy, since becoming president Chávez's political position has progressed further left, rejecting capitalist leftist ideologies like social democracy or the Third Way and instead embracing socialism. He has propagated what he calls "socialism for the 21st century", but according to Gregory Wilpert, "Chávez has not clearly defined twenty-first century socialism, other than to say that it is about establishing liberty, equality, social justice, and solidarity. He has also indicated that it is distinctly different from state socialism", as implemented by the governments of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. As a part of his socialist ideas, he has emphasised the role of participatory democracy, which he has implemented through the foundation of the Venezuelan Communal Councils and Bolivarian Circles which he cites as examples of grassroots and participatory democracy.

Chávez is well acquainted with the various traditions of Latin American socialism, espoused by such figures as Colombian politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, former Chilean president Salvador Allende, former Peruvian president Juan Velasco Alvarado, former Panamanian president Omar Torrijos and the Cuban revolutionaries Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Other indirect influences on Chávez's political philosophy are the writings of American linguist Noam Chomsky and the Gospel teachings of Jesus Christ.

Chávez's connection to Marxism is a complex one. In May 1996, he gave an interview with Agustín Blanco Muñoz in which he remarked that "I am not a Marxist, but I am not anti-Marxist. I am not communist, but I am not anti-communist." He is, however, well versed in many Marxist texts, having read the works of many Marxist theoreticians, and has often publicly quoted them. Various international Marxists have supported his government, believing it to be a sign of proletariat revolution as predicted in Marxist theory. In 2010, Hugo Chávez proclaimed support for the ideas of Marxist Leon Trotsky, saying "When I called him (former Minister of Labour, José Ramón Rivero)" Chávez explained, "he said to me: 'president I want to tell you something before someone else tells you ... I am a Trotskyist', and I said, 'well, what is the problem? I am also a Trotskyist! I follow Trotsky's line, that of permanent revolution," and then cited Karl Marx and Lenin.

Policy overview

Economic and social policy

Venezuela is a major producer of oil products, which remains the keystone of the Venezuelan economy. Chávez has gained a reputation as a price hawk in OPEC, pushing for stringent enforcement of production quotas and higher target oil prices. According to Cannon, the state income from oil revenue has "increas[ed] from 51% of total income in 2000 to 56% 2006"; oil exports "have grown from 77% in 1997 [...] to 89% in 2006"; and "this dependence on oil is one of the chief problems facing the Chávez government". The economist Mark Weisbrot, in an analysis of the Chávez administration, said: "The current economic expansion began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003. Since then, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP has nearly doubled, growing by 94.7 percent in 5.25 years, or 13.5 percent annually." For the year 2009, the Venezuelan economy shrank by an average of 2.9% due to the global recession. Chávez has stated that the Venezuelan economy will most likely continue shrinking throughout 2010, citing both the IMF and World Bank. Chávez sees the economic crisis as "an opportunity for socialism to spread and take root..". According to Ian James, citing estimates from the Venezuelan Central Bank, the Venezuelan government "controls" the same percentage of the economy as when Chávez was elected in 1998, with "the private sector still control[ling] two-thirds of Venezuela's economy".

Since Chávez was elected in 1998, over 100,000 worker-owned cooperatives—representing approximately 1.5 million people—have been formed with the assistance of government start-up credit and technical training; and the creation and maintenance, as of September 2010, of over 30,000 communal councils, examples of localised participatory democracy; which he intended to be integration into regional umbrella organizations known as ''"Communes in Construction"''. In 2010, Chávez supported the construction of 184 communes, housing thousands of families, with $23 million in government funding. The communes produce some of their own food, and are able to make decisions by popular assembly of what to do with government funds. In September 2010, Chávez announced the location of 876 million bolivars ($203 million) for community projects around the country, specifically communal councils and the newly formed communes. Chávez also criticised the bureaucracy still common in Venezuela saying, when in discussion with his Communes Minister Isis Ochoa, that "All of the projects must be carried out by the commune, not the bureaucracy." The Ministry for Communes, which oversees and funds all communal projects, was initiated in 2009.

Chávez has also supported the creation of a series of Bolivarian Missions aimed at providing public services to improve economic, cultural, and social conditions. A 2010 OAS report indicated achievements in addressing illiteracy, healthcare and poverty, and economic and social advances.

Barry Cannon writes that "most areas of spending have increased". "[S]pending on education as a percentage of GDP stood at 5.1% in 2006, as opposed to 3.4% in the last year of the Caldera government." Spending on health "has increased from 1.6% of GDP in 2000 to 7.71% in 2006". Spending on housing "receives low public support", increasing only "from 1% in GDP to 1.6% in 2006". Teresa A. Meade, writes that Chávez's popularity "rests squarely on the lower classes who have benefited from these health initiatives and similar policies [...] poverty rates fell from 42 to 34 percent from 2000 to 2006, still leaving over 30 percent in this oil-rich nation below the poverty line".

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) reports that the Venezuelan economy grew on average by 11.85% in the period 2004–2007. According to ''The Washington Post'', citing statistics from the United Nations, poverty in Venezuela stood at 28% in 2008, down from 55.44% in 1998 before Chávez got into office. Economist Mark Weisbrot found that, "During the ... economic expansion, the poverty rate [was] cut by more than half, from 54 percent of households in the first half of 2003 to 26 percent at the end of 2008. Extreme poverty has fallen even more, by 72 percent. These poverty rates measure only cash income, and does take into account increased access to health care or education."

Food

Since 2003, Chavez has been setting strict price controls on food "seeking to curb the region’s highest inflation rate by stamping down on what he terms price “speculation.” and these price controls have been causing shortages and hoarding. In January 2008, Chavez ordered the military to seize 750 tons of food that sellers were illegally trying to smuggle across the border to sell for higher prices than what was legal in Venezuela. In February 2009, Chavez ordered the military to temporarily seize control of all the rice processing plants in the country and force them to produce at full capacity, which he claimed they had been avoiding in response to the price caps. In May 2010, Chavez ordered the military to seize 120 tons of food from Empresas Polar. In March 2009, Chavez set minimum production quotas for 12 basic foods that were subject to price controls, including white rice, cooking oil, coffee, sugar, powdered milk, cheese, and tomato sauce. Business leaders and food producers claimed that the government was forcing them to produce this food at a loss. Chávez has nationalized many large farms. Chávez said of the farmland, "The land is not private. It is the property of the state." Some of the farmland that had been productive while under private ownership is now idle under government ownership, and some of the farm equipment sits gathering dust. As a result, food production has fallen substantially. One farmer, referring to the government officials overseeing the land redistribution, stated, "These people know nothing about agriculture." Chávez has seized many supermarkets from their owners. Under government ownership, the shelves in these supermarkets are often empty. In 2010, after the government nationalized the port at Puerto Cabello, more than 120,000 tons of food sat rotting at the port. In May 2010, after price controls caused shortages of beef, at least 40 butchers were arrested, and some of them were held at a military base and later strip searched by police.

Human rights

Amnesty International has criticized the Chávez administration for targeting critics following several politically motivated arrests. Freedom House lists Venezuela as being "partly free" in its 2011 Freedom in the World annual report, noting a recent decline in civil liberties. A 2010 Organization of American States report found concerns with freedom of expression, human rights abuses, authoritarianism, press freedom, threats to democracy, as well as erosion of separation of powers, the economic infrastructure and ability of the president to appoint judges to federal courts. OAS observors were denied access to Venezuela; Chávez rejected the OAS report, pointing out that its authors did not even come to Venezuela. He said Venezuela should boycott the OAS, which he feels is dominated by the United States; a spokesperson said, "We don't recognize the commission as an impartial institution". He disclaims any power to influence the judiciary. A Venezuelan official said the report distorts and takes statistics out of context, saying that "human rights violations in Venezuela have decreased". Venezuela has said it will not accept an IACHR/OAS visit as long as Santiago Cantón remains its Executive Secretary, unless the IACHR apologizes for what he describes as its support of the 2002 coup.

In 2008, Human Rights Watch released a report reviewing Chávez's human rights record over his first decade in power. The report praises Chávez's 1999 amendments to the constitution which significantly expanded human rights guarantees, but notes a "wide range of government policies that have undercut the human rights protections established" by the revised constitution. In particular, the report accuses Chávez and his administration of engaging in discrimination on political grounds, eroding the independence of the judiciary, and of engaging in "policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela." The report also mentioned improvements in women's rights and indigenous rights. Subsequently, over a hundred Latin American scholars signed a joint letter with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs criticizing the Human Rights Watch report for its alleged factual inaccuracy, exaggeration, lack of context, illogical arguments, and heavy reliance on opposition newspapers as sources, amongst other things. The International Labor Organization of the United Nations expressed concern over voters being pressured to join the party.

Venezuelan Judge Maria Afiuni was arrested in 2009 on charges of corruption, after she ordered the conditional release on bail of banker Eligio Cedeño, who had been held on charges of fraud and other crimes due to alleged illegal currency trading activities. Some human rights officials allege the arrest was politically motivated; Cedeño "had been in pretrial detention for nearly three years, despite a two-year limit prescribed by Venezuelan law". Cedeño later fled to the U.S. to avoid prosecution. Following Afiuni's arrest, several groups, including the United Nations, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Episcopal Conference of Venezuela, Human Rights Watch, the Law Society of England and Wales, the U.S. Department of State, and the European Union Parliament accused Chávez of "creating a climate of fear" among Venezuela's legal profession. The European Parliament called this "an attack on the independence of the judiciary by the President of a nation, who should be its first guarantor". A director of Human Rights Watch said, "Once again the Chávez government has demonstrated its fundamental disregard for the principle of judicial independence."

In the 1999 Venezuelan constitution, 116 of 300 articles were concerned with human rights; these included increased protections for indigenous peoples and women, and established the rights of the public to education, housing, healthcare, and food. It called for dramatic democratic reforms such as ability to recall politicians from office by popular referendum, increased requirements for government transparency, and numerous other requirements to increase localized, participatory democracy, in favor of centralized administration. It gave citizens the right to timely and impartial information, community access to media, and a right to participate in acts of civil disobedience.

Media and the press

Although the freedom of the press is mentioned by two key clauses in the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela, in 2008, Human Rights Watch criticized Chávez for engaging in "often discriminatory policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression." Freedom House lists Venezuela's press as being "Not Free" in its 2011 Map of Press Freedom, noting that "[t]he gradual erosion of press freedom in Venezuela continued in 2010." Reporters Without Borders has criticized the Chávez administration for "steadily silencing its critics". In the group's 2009 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders noted that "Venezuela is now among the region’s worst press freedom offenders."

The large majority of mass media in Venezuela is privately owned but subject to significant state control. For example, the Venezuelan government has required that all private television stations dedicate at least 25% of their airtime to programs created by community groups, non-profits, and other independent producers. As of 2007, private corporations controlled 80% of the cable television channels, 100% of the newspaper companies, and 706 out of 709 radio stations.

In July 2005 Chávez inaugurated TeleSUR, a Pan-American equivalent of Al Jazeera that seeks to challenge the present domination of Latin American television news by Univision and the United States-based CNN en Español. In 2006 Chávez inaugurated a state-funded movie studio called ''Villa del Cine'' (English: Cinema City). According to Chávez, the goal of this indigenous film industry is to counter what he describes "the dictatorship of Hollywood", the lack of alternative media.

Chávez has a Twitter account with more than 1,100,000 followers as of December 2010. Chávez's Twitter account has been described as a way for people to bypass bureaucracy and contact the president directly. There is a team of 200 people to sort through suggestions and comments sent via Twitter. Chávez has said Twitter is "another mechanism for contact with the public, to evaluate many things and to help many people", and that he sees Twitter as "a weapon that also needs to be used by the revolution". In a Twitter report released in June 2010 Venezuela is third globally for the prevalence of Twitter with 19% of the population using it, nearly 2/3 of all internet users. This is behind Indonesia with 20.8% and Brazil with 20.5%.

In 2010 availability of internet service in Venezuela rose by 43%. The Venezuelan state has instituted ''Infocenters'', community spaces equipped with computers with internet connections which are free to use. As of March 2010 there are 668 such centers, with more planned.

In the days before the 11 April 2002 coup, the five main private Venezuelan TV stations gave advertising space to those calling for anti-Chávez demonstrations. In 2006, Chávez announced that the terrestrial broadcast license for RCTV would not be renewed, due to its refusal to pay taxes and fines, and its alleged open support of the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez, and role in helping to instigate the oil strike in 2002–2003. RCTV was transmitted via cable and satellite and was widely viewable in Venezuela until January 2010, when it was excluded by cable companies in response to an order of National Commission of Telecommunications. The failure to renew its terrestrial broadcast license had been condemned by a multitude of international organizations, many of whom have claimed that the closure was politically motivated, and was intended to silence government critics.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) questioned whether, in the event a television station openly supported and collaborated with coup leaders, the station in question would not be subject to even more serious consequences in the United States or any other Western nation. In a poll conducted by Datanalisis, almost 70 percent of Venezuelans polled opposed the shut-down, but most cited the loss of their favorite soap operas rather than concerns about limits on freedom of expression.

Crime and punishment

During the 1980s and 1990s there was a steady increase in crime in Latin America, and Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela and Brazil all had homicide rates above the regional average. The major reasons for high levels of crime in Latin America are high inequality, low incarceration rates and small police forces.

During Chávez' administration, homicide rates have more than doubled, with one NGO finding the rate to have nearly quadrupled; the number of homicides increased from 6,000 in 1999 to 13,000 in 2007. Kidnappings have also become increasingly common. Caracas in 2010 had the world's highest murder rate. Chávez maintains that the nation is no more violent now than it was when he took office. Some claim that the current administration, or president Chavez himself is to blame for the rises in crime rates. Although critical of Chavez, a recent International Crisis Group report claimed that when Chavez took office, there were factors beyond his control that led to the crime phenomenon. The study went on to say that cross border activity, mainly with Colombia, is also an important factor. It claims that international organised crime filters between the two countries and leads to higher rates of kidnapping, drug trafficking and homicides. Furthmore, supporters claim that the states with the highest murder rates are controlled by the opposition.

Citizens now believe that crime is a serious problem and that police were themselves a factor in the increase in crime. Between 2000 and 2007, 6,300 police were investigated for violations of human rights. Because decentralization of police was blamed for their ineffectiveness, the 1999 constitution required the National Assembly to form a national police force; however legislation on this became bogged down in legislative discussions. In 2006 the government established the National Commission for Police Reform (Conarepol), in which a range of civil society representatives, politicians and academics investigated law enforcement in Venezuela and made recommendations. This included setting up a national police force designed to operate with high standards of professionalism and specific training in human rights. It also included initiatives whereby communal councils can participate in police supervision, by being able to request investigations into police behaviour and file recommendations and complaints.

In 2008, Chávez passed a decree designed to implement Conarepol's recommendation on the national police force, and the National Bolivarian Police (PNB), and Experimental Security University began operations in 2009. According to the PNB, murder has been reduced by 60%, robberies by nearly 59%, and gender-based violence has diminished by 66% in the pilot areas where the PNB has been active in and around Caracas. However, not all homicides due to encounters with police are reported. According to the publications ''El Espectador'' and ''Le Monde diplomatique'', rising crime in rural and urban areas is partly due to increased cross-border activity by Colombian right-wing paramilitary groups like ''Águilas Negras''.

The decree has been criticized because it was negotiated behind closed doors, and did not follow all of Conarepol's recommendations to deal with human rights, and because "politicization of the force could undercut the goal of professionalization".

Foreign policy

Chávez has refocused Venezuelan foreign policy on Latin American economic and social integration by enacting bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements, including his so-called "oil diplomacy". Chávez stated that Venezuela has "a strong oil card to play on the geopolitical stage ... It is a card that we are going to play with toughness against the toughest country in the world, the United States." Chávez has focused on a variety of multinational institutions to promote his vision of Latin American integration, including Petrocaribe, Petrosur, and TeleSUR. Bilateral trade relationships with other Latin American countries have also played a major role in his policy, with Chávez increasing arms purchases from Brazil, forming oil-for-expertise trade arrangements with Cuba, and creating unique barter arrangements that exchange Venezuelan petroleum for cash-strapped Argentina's meat and dairy products. Additionally, Chávez worked closely with other Latin American leaders following the 1997 Summit of the Americas in many areas—especially energy integration—and championed the OAS decision to adopt the Anti-Corruption Convention. Chávez also participates in the United Nations Friends groups for Haiti, and is pursuing efforts to join and engage the Mercosur trade bloc to expand the hemisphere's trade integration prospects.

Personal life

Chávez has been married twice. He first wed Nancy Colmenares, a woman from a poor family in Chávez's hometown of Sabaneta. Chávez and Colmenares remained married for 18 years, during which time they had three children: Rosa Virginia, María Gabriela, and Hugo Rafael, the latter of whom suffers from behavioural problems. The couple separated soon after Chávez's 1992 coup attempt. During his first marriage, Chávez had an affair with historian Herma Marksman; their relationship lasted nine years. Chávez's second wife was journalist Marisabel Rodríguez de Chávez, whom he divorced in 2000. Through that marriage, Chávez had another daughter, Rosinés. Both María and Rosa have provided Chávez with grandchildren. Allegations have been made that Chávez is a womaniser, and has been throughout both his marriages, but these have remained unproven and are contradicted by statements provided by other figures close to him.

Chávez was raised in the Roman Catholic denomination of Christianity, although he has had a series of disputes with both the Venezuelan Catholic hierarchy and Protestant groups like the New Tribes Mission. He describes himself as a Christian who grew up expecting to become a priest. According to him, as a result of this background his socialist policies have been borne with roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and he publicly used the slogan of "Christ is with the Revolution!". Although he has traditionally kept his own faith a private matter, Chávez has over the course of his presidency become increasingly open to discussing his religious views, stating that both his faith and his interpretation of Jesus' personal life and ideology have had a profound impact on his leftist and progressive views:

:He [Jesus] accompanied me in difficult times, in crucial moments. So Jesus Christ is no doubt a historical figure—he was someone who rebelled, an anti-imperialist guy. He confronted the Roman Empire.... Because who might think that Jesus was a capitalist? No. Judas was the capitalist, for taking the coins! Christ was a revolutionary. He confronted the religious hierarchies. He confronted the economic power of the time. He preferred death in the defense of his humanistic ideals, who fostered change.... He is ''our'' Jesus Christ.

Recognition

The United States-based ''Time'' magazine included Hugo Chávez among their list of the world's 100 most influential people in 2005 and 2006. In a 2006 list compiled by the British magazine ''New Statesman'', he was voted eleventh in the list of "Heroes of our time". In 2010 the magazine included Chávez in its annual ''The World's 50 Most Influential Figures''. His biographers Marcano and Tyszka believed that within only a few years of his presidency, he "had already earned his place in history as the president most loved and most despised by the Venezuelan people, the president who inspired the greatest zeal and the deepest revulsion at the same time."

During his term, Chávez has been awarded the following honorary degrees:

Honorary Doctorate in Political Science – Granted by Kyung Hee University (South Korea) by Rector Chungwon Choue on 16 October 1999.

Honorary Doctorate in Jurisprudence – Granted by the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) on 9 March 2001.

Honorary Doctorate – Granted by the University of Brasília (Brazil) by Rector Alberto Pérez on 3 April 2001.

Honorary Doctorate – Granted by the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russian Federation) on 15 May 2001.

Honorary Doctorate in Economics – Granted by the Faculty of Economics and Commerce of Beijing University (People's Republic of China) on 24 May 2001.

See also

¿Por qué no te callas?

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Books

|year= 2006 |publisher= Verso |location= London and New York |isbn=9781844671021 |nopp=|ref=Ali06}} |year= 2010 |publisher= Cambridge University Press |location= Cambridge and New York |isbn=9780521195874 |nopp=|ref=Bre10}} |year= 2008 |publisher= Pluto Press |location=London |isbn=9780745327365 |nopp= |ref=Bru08}} |year= 2009 |publisher= Manchester University Press |location= Manchester |isbn=9780719077715 |nopp=|ref=Can09}} |year= 2011 |publisher= Brookings Institution Press |location=Washington D.C. |isbn=9780815704973 |nopp=|ref=Cor11}} |year= 2010 |publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press |location=Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |isbn=9780822960645 |nopp= |ref=Gat10}} |year= 2005 |publisher= Verso |location= London and New York |isbn=9781844675333 |nopp=|ref=Got05}} |year= 2010 |publisher= Cambridge University Press |location= New York |isbn=9780521765039 |nopp=|ref=Haw10}} |year= 2007|publisher= Steerforth Press |location= Hanover, New Hampshire |isbn=9781586421359 |nopp=|ref=Jon07}} |year= 2006 |publisher= Palgrave Macmillan |location= New York |isbn=9781403973153 |nopp=|ref=Koz06}} |year= 2008 |publisher= Palgrave Macmillan |location= New York |isbn=9780230617544 |nopp=|ref=Koz08}} |year= 2007 |publisher= Random House |location=New York |isbn=9780679456667 |nopp=|ref=Mar07}} |year= 2005 |publisher= Seven Stories Press |location=New York |isbn=9781583226803 |nopp=|ref=McC05}} |year= 2005 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |location=Westport, Connecticut |isbn=9780313335259 |nopp=|ref=Tar05}} |year= 2005 |publisher= University of North Carolina Press |location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina |isbn=9780807856505 |nopp=|ref=Tri05}} |year= 2007 |publisher= Verso |location=London and New York |isbn=9781844675524 |nopp=|ref=Wil07}} |year= 2006 |publisher= Well Red Books |location= London |isbn=9781900007214 |nopp= |ref=Woo06}}

Academic articles

|year=2002 |title=The 'Radical' Thesis on Globalization and the Case of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez |journal=Latin American Perspectives |volume=29 (6) |publisher=SAGE Publications |location=Thousand oaks, California |pages=88–93|ref=Ell02 |jstor=3185001 |first1=S. |issue=6}} |year=2006 |title=Business as Usual: what the Chávez era tells us about democracy under globalisation |journal=Third World Quarterly |volume=27 (2) |publisher=Routledge |location=London |pages=265–279 |ref=Gib06 |jstor=4017674 |first1=T. |issue=2}} |year=2003 |title=Hugo Chávez Frias: his movement and his presidency |url= |journal=Venezuelan Politics in the Chavez Era: Class, Polarization and Conflict |editor=Steve Ellner and Daniel Hellinger |publisher=Lynne Riener |location=Boulder |pages=73–92|ref=Lop03}} |year=2005 |title=Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution: Who Are the Chavistas?|journal=Latin American Perspectives |volume=32 (3) |publisher=SAGE Publications |location=Thousand Oaks, California |pages=79–97|ref=Ram05 |jstor=30040243 |first1=C. b. V. |issue=3}} |year=2003 |title=The Chávez Phenomenon: Political Change in Venezuela |journal=Third World Quarterly |volume=24 (1) |publisher=Routledge |location=London |pages=63–76 |ref=Syl03 |jstor=3993630 |first1=R. D. |last2=Danopoulos |first2=C. P. |issue=1}} |year=Spring 2008 |title=The Missionary Politics of Hugo Chávez|journal=Latin American Politics and Society |volume=50 (1) |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |location=Hoboken, New Jersey |pages=91–121|ref=Zuq08 |jstor= 30130840}}

News articles and reports

|url=http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/141/53.0.html |newspaper=Christianity Today |publisher=Christianity Today International |location=Carol Stream, Illinois |date=14 October 2005 |accessdate=25 March 2011 |ref=Alf05}} |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2006/may/07/featuresreview.review |newspaper=The Observer |publisher=Guardian Media Group |location=London |date=7 May 2006 |accessdate=25 March 2011 |ref=Bea06}} |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/dec/17/alexbellos?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487 |newspaper=The Guardian |publisher=Guardian Media Group |location=London |date=17 December 1999 |accessdate=25 March 2011 |ref=Bel99}} |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011101856.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |publisher=The Washington Post Company |location=Washington D.C. |date=11 January 2007 |accessdate=12 May 2011 |ref=Car07}} |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/16/hugo-chavez-indefinite-rule |newspaper=The Guardian |publisher=Guardian Media Group |location=London |date=16 February 2009 |accessdate=27 March 2011 |ref=Car09}} |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/03/libyan-rebels-reject-hugo-chavez |newspaper=The Guardian |publisher=Guardian Media Group |location=London |date=3 March 2011 |accessdate=25 March 2011 |ref=Chu11}} |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/200605220016 |newspaper=New Statesman |location=London |date=22 May 2006 |accessdate=27 March 2011 |ref=Cow06}} |url=http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1972656_1972691_1973045,00.html |newspaper=Time |publisher=Time Inc.|location=New York City |date=18 April 2005 |accessdate=25 March 2011 |ref=Pad05}} |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187165,00.html |newspaper=Time |publisher=Time Inc.|location=New York City |date=30 April 2006 |accessdate=25 March 2011 |ref=Pad06}} |url=http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1719158,00.html |newspaper=Time |publisher=Time Inc.|location=New York City |date=3 March 2008 |accessdate=25 March 2011 |ref=Pad08}} |url=http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/22/idUSN21321293 |publisher=Reuters |location=London |date=21 September 2009 |accessdate=30 March 2011 |ref=Pre09}} |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/world/americas/17venez.html?scp=2&sq=hugo+chavez&st=nyt |newspaper=The New York Times |publisher=The New York Times Company |location=New York City |date=16 February 2010 |accessdate=10 April 2011 |ref=Rom10}} |newspaper=Foreign Affairs |publisher=Council on Foreign Relations |location=New York City |volume=85 (3) |date=May–June 2006 |pages=45–59|ref=Shi06 |jstor=20031966 |first1=M. |issue=3 |journal=Foreign Affairs}}

Interviews

|coauthors= |date=15 June 2010 |work=HARDtalk |publisher=British Broadcasting Corporation |location=London |accessdate=25 March 2011 |ref=SacCha10}}

Websites and e-publications

|publisher=Venezuela Analysis |date=17 October 2005 |accessdate=30 March 2011 |ref=Ell05}} |publisher=ZCommunications |date=9 March 2005 |accessdate=30 March 2011 |ref=O'K05}} |publisher=Venezuela Analysis |date=27 August 2003 |accessdate=3 May 2011 |ref=Wil03}} |publisher=The Carter Centre |location=Atlanta, Georgia |date=February 1999 |accessdate=21 March 2011 |ref=Tri99}}

External links

;Official Official personal blog ;Multimedia

PBS Frontline Documentary: The Hugo Chávez Show

The Guardian: The Rise and Rule of 'Hurricane Hugo' audio slide show

Democracy Now! 16 September 2005 Interview: Part I and Part II with Hugo Chavez, in New York City

ABC News Video, 27 April 2007: Barbara Walters interviews Hugo Chávez

Interview with Hugo Cháves about the American threat October 2009

NPR Audio Report, 18 February 2008: The Politics of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez

;Articles and Interviews

BBC News: Profile: Hugo Chávez

Shifter, Michael. In Search of Hugo Chávez. ''Foreign Affairs'', May/June 2006 issue

Palast, Greg. Hugo Chávez Interview. ''The Progressive'', July 2006

;Miscellaneous

Category:Living people Category:1954 births Category:Anti-poverty advocates Category:Current national leaders Category:Fifth Republic Movement politicians Category:Indigenous activists of the Americas Category:People from Barinas (state) Category:People with cancer Category:Presidents of Venezuela Category:Recipients of Venezuelan presidential pardons Category:Venezuelan people of Black African descent Category:Venezuelan people of indigenous peoples descent Category:Venezuelan people of Spanish descent Category:Che Guevara Category:Venezuelan rebels Category:Venezuelan revolutionaries Category:Venezuelan soldiers Category:Venezuelan socialists Category:United Socialist Party of Venezuela politicians Category:Youth rights individuals

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