Republic of Venezuela - Flag

Venezuela, officially called the Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America. Venezuela's territory covers around 1.226.038 km2 (473.376,29 sq mi) with an estimated population around 33.416.000. Venezuela is considered a state 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 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 in Venezuela. Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves and 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.

Background

The territory currently known as Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American colonies to declare independence, which was not securely established until 1821, when Venezuela was a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia. It gained full independence as a separate country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional caudillos (military strongmen) until the mid-20th century. Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments. Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to several political crises, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for embezzlement of public funds in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup-involved career officer Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution, beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.

In 2014, a series of protests, political demonstrations, and civil insurrection began in Venezuela due to the country's high levels of violence, inflation, and chronic shortages of basic goods attributed to economic policies such as strict price controls.The majority of protests had been peaceful, consisting of demonstrations, sit-ins, and hunger strikes, with an estimated 52% of protests in opposition to the government and smaller numbers in support of various economic and social policy changes. However, small groups of protestors had been responsible for attacks on public property, such as government buildings and public transportation. Erecting improvised street barricades, dubbed guarimbas, was the most common form of protest, although their use was controversial.

Although the protest reached high levels of intensity and spread all over the country they slowly started to lose intensity by the end of 2014. It wasn't until July 2015 with a rampant crime, corruption, food shortages and fraudulent legislative elections that a new wave of protest erupted across the country. This time the protest were violent with mobs demanding the resignation of President and Cabinet and attacking government buildings and blocking most of the major highways and avenues effectively paralyzing the country’s most important cities. Realizing they were losing control of the country the socialist government decided to use its paramilitary groups and militias to try suffocate he protest, the initial wave of repression ended up with hundreds dead and thousands injured or arrested but this did not have the effect the government had expected as it only helped to fuel the protest even more. After seeing that protesters would not back down the government started threatening the population with using the National Guard if the protesters did not go back to their homes. This decision triggered a massive military reaction from the nationalist faction inside of the Venezuelan Armed Forces which remained loyal to the original Republic of Venezuela. On 5 July 2015 the nationalist faction of the armed forces started a military operation to take down the government and eliminate the revolution started by Chavez. The uprising included elements from the Army, Air Force and Navy, in the morning of the 5th of July F-16’s from Maracay started bombing the presidential palace and paramilitary strongholds and establishing a no fly zone in the capital while army armored units advanced towards Miraflores. Many government officials were caught trying to escape the country and wee immediately taken prisoners by the military. By 8:00 PM army tanks and infantry had reached the presidential palace were they had managed to defeat the presidential guard and the militias and take the president as well as many other key government officials who were taken into custody by the army effectively overthrowing the government and bringing 15 years of socialism to an abrupt end. The next day a military junta took control of the government and formed a joint civilian-military government to stabilize the country and guarantee a safe transition to democracy with the candidate of the newly formed Venezuelan Nationalist Party being elected as president by a majority of the vote in October.

After the end of the Bolivarian revolution the new Venezuelan government found itself in a very difficult situation, in order to solve the problems a massive modernization program was launched, using the money from oil sales and also the money taken from corrupt government officials many of which had been stealing money and resources since 1999. The massive amount of money collected allowed the new administration to solve the food shortages, electrical blackouts, education among others. One of the consequences of Chavez's expropriations was the great number of nationalised business and companies had been bankrupted, this meant that it was up to the government to manage them, immediately the administration started pumping money into this companies and also an aggressive campaign was launched to attract national and foreign investors although some industries such as oil would remain nationalised. One of the main goals of the modernization project was to diversify the Venezuelan economy and make it independent of oil. The strategy promoted economic growth through labor-intensive manufactured exports, in which Venezuela could develop a competitive advantage. Government initiatives played an important role in this process. The inflow of foreign capital was greatly encouraged to supplement the shortage of domestic savings at the beginning. These efforts enabled Venezuela to achieve rapid growth in exports and subsequent increases in income.

The new government based most of its policies in a doctrine known as “Nuevo ideal nacional” (New national ideal) that had been used in Venezuela from 1950 to 1958 and had effectively turned it into the most powerful country in South America in less than five years. The original doctrine of the 1950’s sought to make Venezuela an influential power in the hemisphere, following its historical tradition and role in liberating five Latin American nations and being a fundamental piece in the continental balance of power.

Economy

The Central Bank of Venezuela is responsible for developing monetary policy for the Venezuelan bolívar which is used as currency. The currency is primarily printed on paper and distributed throughout the country. The President of the Central Bank of Venezuela also serves as the country's representative in the International Monetary Fund.

Venezuela had a Market-based mixed economy dominated by the petroleum sector, which accounted for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of exports, and more than half of government revenues. 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 founding member of OPEC. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. Although this figures would start changing as the new policies started to be applied and the economy became increasingly diverse.

Manufacturing contributed 17% of GDP in 2006 this figure had increased to 42% by 2020 with Venezuela manufacturing and exporting heavy industry products such as steel, aluminium and cement, with production concentrating around Ciudad Guayana, and new production facilities being built in the Zulia state. The Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world and the provider of about three-quarters of Venezuela's electricity had suffered many maintenance problems during the Chavez government relating mainly to corruption and lack of maintenance, causing numerous blackouts all over the country and in order to solve the problems an ambitious upgrade program was launched for the dam and construction of other dams were launched in other parts of the country. In order to reduce Venezuela’s dependence on oil great emphasis was placed on the development of alternative energies such as Wind power, Ethanol biofuels, Solar energy & Geothermal electricity.


Military

The National Armed Forces of the 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 4 components of Ground, Sea and Air. The components of the National Armed Forces are: the Venezuelan Army, the Venezuelan Navy, the Venezuelan Air Force and the Venezuelan National Guard.

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 male citizens of Venezuela have a constitutional duty to register for the military service at the age of 18, which is the age of majority in Venezuela.

Founder of the South American Defence Organization (SADO) with Brazil, Colombia, Perú, Chile, Pánama, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay & Uruguay