The name means "Little Venice" in Italian; it was given to the country by early explorer Amerigo Vespucci (who lent his own name to the American continents as a whole). This was a reference to the natives building settlements out on Lake Maracaibo, which reminded him of Venice. However he was not the first European to explore the country; a few years earlier Christopher Columbus himself came there and described the land effusively, comparing it to Paradise. He coined the name "Land of Grace", which remains a nickname for Venezuela.
Since Venezuela was one of the less fortunate among Spain's former colonies (not having something exploitable besides coffee and cocoa), it never was truly important until a rich dude named Simón Bolívar appeared around the early 1810's and proclaimed that his small province was independent since that moment. Then he decided to take his Independence Tour for some nearby territories, until forming five countries who called him "The Liberator". Then he began a long agony, politically and physically, until he died of exhaustion and TBG in 1830.
After Bolivar died, the country began a long period of caudillism, small civil wars and more caudillistic dictators until someone found oil in the early 1900's. Then began another long period of intercalating dictatorship and democracy which lasted for over 100 years. After the death of controversial president Hugo Chávez in 2013, the country's political situation became even more divisive as the next president, Nicolas Maduro, forcibly dissolved the National Assembly in 2017 and replaced it with a loyal "Constituent Assembly" (which was officially "elected", but in elections majoritarily judged as fraudulent), which was met internationally with wide disapproval.
Since 2013 and continuing to the present, Venezuela has suffered one of the worst economic and humanitarian crises in Latin American history as a result of gross economic mismanagement and falling oil prices. Citizens suffer from severe government corruption, a widespread epidemic of chronic hunger, lack of access to medical treatment, one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world, and hyperinflation peaking at around 1,000,000% (yes, six zeroes); the highest Venezuelan banknote worth less than a 1/10 of a (US) cent. A refugee crisis has been brewing since then, as hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans elected to leave the country to escape destitution; from 2015 to 2020, Venezuela's population dropped by a solid 2 million. The Maduro administration has long denied any humanitarian crisis exists and has refused international aid, only beginning to soften its stance in 2019. In September 2020 the United Nations Human Rights Council released a report formally accusing the Maduro Administration of crimes against humanity, alleging widespread extrajudicial executions, arbitrary imprisonments, and the systematic use of torture.
As of January 2019, the country has been experiencing a presidential crisis since incumbent President Nicolás Maduro swore himself for a second term after winning in the controversial and widely disputed May 2018 presidential elections (in which the opposition was barred from participating due to its abstinence from prior municipal elections). The National Assembly of Venezuela has since begun motions for a transitional government, spearheaded by its newly-elected president Juan Guaidó — a divisive figure in his own right — who on January 23 was declared interim president by multiple countries. In 2019 and 2020, supporters of Guaidó attempted to oust Maduro, failing both times; Maduro himself was quick to label them as coups led by the US' Central Intelligence Agency (Guaidó himself has denied any US involvement as well as any involvement of his own in the 2020 attempt).
Venezuela was rarely mentioned in media not produced by Venezuelans, but lately there's been an alarmingly increasing trend of mentioning its capital Caracas as the place from where drug traffickers and people with exotic diseases came from. The latter is a bit weird because Venezuela is a country where its population is mostly urban, and most of the diseases the voyagers export were controlled a lot of years ago even in some of the most distant areas, and there is a highly enforced policy of vaccinating tourists before going to the riskier areas. You may also notice it appear as a despot land in fiction such as in the series Bolívar on Netflix (which became famous when Maduro vocally bashed it), or in the second season of Jack Ryan, both released in 2019.
Before the US remembered Venezuela existed in 2019, if you saw a Venezuelan in non-Venezuelan media, chances are that it was a very gorgeous woman, probably a beauty queen. Venezuela has been famous for winning a lot of beauty pageants, near only with India and Puerto Rico. Venezuelans are very proud of the beauty of their women and take beauty pageants seriously, and they don't like the misinterpretations of their integrity; when in Kill Bill one of the women with a criminal had a "Miss Venezuela" band, there was a big uproar.
Venezuela is also the only country in continental Latin America where the "everyman" sport is Baseball instead of Football (Soccer).note Kids in the poorer areas play using a broom stick as a bat and bottle caps if they can't find balls. Baseball is very strong, with very active small and professional leagues, and the aspiration of most kids is becoming a Major League player. There was a great motive of national pride when the manager who broke the "Black Sox Curse" was a Venezuelan, Ozzie Guillen. On the other side, football has been rising in popularity over the years thanks to the surprise improving of the national selection (nicknamed La Vinotinto after the wine red color of their uniforms) under the hands of Richard Paez.
The Venezuelan Telenovela industry is a little bipolar: It can't decide between being Pink or Modern. Some of their most famous exportations were classic pink soaps (the most famous one, Kassandra, made congress meetings and even the battles in Kosovo's war stop in The '90s), but as a consequence of the "Cultural Telenovela" movement in the 1970's and early 1980's (where some scriptwriters began adapting Venezuelan Literature classics and then followed to touch controversial topics) there is a lot of experimentation, with results ranging from the successful, to the unmentionable.
Famous Venezuelans (bar Mr. Chávez) and Venezuelan things:
- Ilich Ramírez Sánchez AKA Carlos the Jackal. A terrorist with far more fame than actual "quality" as a terrorist, he is now serving life in a French prison. As well as being the villain in The Bourne Series, he has appeared elsewhere and inspired a few people along the way.
- La Gran Sabana AKA the mix of plains, jungle and table mountains at the south of the country. The place have appeared in a lot of movies. Half of the plot of Jinki:Extend happens there, as also the entirety of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World". The place is also the inspiration for many backgrounds in Pixar's Up. Having producers marveling about the existence of such fantastic sceneries is a compliment powerful enough to turn the most unpatriotic person into a mess of national pride.
- Wilmer Valderrama, Fez from That '70s Show.
- Édgar Ramírez, a rising Venezuelan movie star, who not only played Carlos The Jackal in the titled 'Carlos', he played Ares in Wrath of the Titans, and had a role in Zero Dark Thirty.
- Karen Hauer, famous ballroom and Latin dancer on Strictly Come Dancing; born in Valencia, her family jumped ship to New York.
- Patricia Velazquez, the girl who was the Egyptian princess Anck-Su-Namun in The Mummy Trilogy, who also is a supermodel.
- Maria Conchita Alonso, one of the actresses who predated the wave of Latin actress moving to Hollywood for about 20 years. Because she did it before it was fashionable to have a Latin Hottie in your film, she was forced to do tertiary roles and a lot of B movies. Her most memorable role was in that version of The Running Man starred by Arnold Schwarzenegger; she was the romantic interest. Her latest stunt was her Judge role in the VH-1 reality Viva Hollywood. For a while, she claimed to be Cuban, probably to appeal to the Miami market. She is Cuban-born, but her family moved to Venezuela when she was still a toddler.
- Simón Díaz, famous actor and folklore musician. Inside the country, he was more remembered either as a comedic actor for those born before The '80s, and as the beloved "Tío (Uncle) Simón" for the kids who born and grew up in that decade and after (Think about him like a Venezuelan Mr. Rogers). Outside the country, he was more known as a musician: a lot of his songs have been Covered Up to tears, and he was the author of "Caballo Viejo". He has given a honorary Grammy in 2008. Died in 2014.
- Terresa Carreño, a marvelous famous pianist and composer, she played for president Abraham Lincoln, and composed many songs and plays that are still played to this day. Her legacy persist in the Theater Teresa Carreño, a famous artistic Theater where plays and other artistic movements are presented.
- Fred Armisen, famous comedian and Saturday Night Live member, is Venezuelan from his mother's side, and have played a lot of Latin characters.
- Devendra Banhart, an indie folk musician, was born in Houston, Texas, but his mother was Venezuelan, so after a divorce, she took him to live with her to Caracas, until he was 14. He tends to sing in English as well as in Spanish, with a flawless Venezuelan accent, and one of his main inspirations is Simon Díaz, covering some of his songs in his music.
- Hermann Mejia, Venezuelan-born cartoonist, sculptor and painter, working for MAD Magazine and DC Comics, he moved from Venezuela in the 90s due to the eventual rising of crime rate and political situations.
- Famous 90's One-Hit Wonder La Macarena. OK, the duo who sang it was Spanish, but they did get inspiration from a Venezuelan flamenco dancer named Diana Patricia they met during a Latin American tour.
- Quite a lot of Beauty Contest Winners. The most notorious were Irene Saez (Miss Universe, won in 1981, and become Mayor of Venezuela's richest municipality in the late Nineties), Alicia Machado (the one Miss Universe who Donald Trump publicly forced on diet after she gained about 20 kilograms just months after her 1996's victory, now an actress and Reality Show star), the 2008 Miss Universe Winner, Dayana Mendoza (the one with the yellow dress) and the 2009 Miss Universe winner Stefanía Fernandez, who placed Venezuela into the Guiness Records for being the first country having two consecutive crowns.
- Ozzie Guillén, naturally. And hundreds of other Major League ballplayers over the years.
- Conductor Gustavo Dudamel, albeit outside the country is known mainly in the classical music circles.
- Angel David Revilla, known as Dross Rotzank, a pretty well-known blogger, and YouTuber, with one of the most subscribed channels in Latin America.
- Patricia Velásquez, actress of Waayu indigenous descent who appeared in The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns.
- Etcetera Group, one of the most prolific dubbing studios in Latin America, is based in Caracas.
- Zardonic is one of the country's top Electronic Music note producers and has since become well known around the world, especially in Europe.
- Arca, née Alejandra Ghersi, is one of the biggest names in music production, having produced music for the likes of Kanye West, Björk and FKA twigs. Her oeuvre is often pigeonholed as experimental electronic, but she ranges from IDM to reggaeton and UK garage as seen in her solo career.
- Franco De Vita, a Latin Grammy award winner and a prolific musician and songwriter.
Venezuela in fiction:
- Venezuela was the subject of some very early films, used as a pawn between the US and Europe fighting for imperialistic control after the 1895 Venezuelan crisis.
- Carlos Rivera, One of Joe Yabuki's rivals from Tomorrow's Joe is a flamboyant Venezuelan boxer with a bunch of nicknames such as "Venezuela's Terror" and the "Uncrowned Emperor", and well known for being also the man who helped Joe recover his fighting spirit. While he has some stereotypical Latino traits, he is considered one of the best characters in the series.
- In the seventh episode of Heroes, Maya and Alejandro are briefly seen in a church located in Zulia State, months before their arrival to the US.
- A few appearances in Burn Notice, typically as a location for only-partially-drug-related Latin American intrigue: the fact that Chávez gets along swimmingly with the Russians and not at all with the Americans means that an unusual amount of spying occurs in Caracas.
- Also in Covert Affairs, for essentially the same reasons.
- The second Mercenaries game was explicitly set in Venezuela, with a plot about mercenaries taking over the evil government. Chavez and his entourage immediately assumed it was an attack on his regime, and expressed their criticism towards the game. Ironically, the "evil government" and the game's main villain act more like the political enemies of Chavez than to the man himself.
- New Mutants member, Sofia Mantega, aka Wind Dancer, later known as Renascence, is Venezuelan-born.
- The Parks and Recreation episode "Sister City" centers on visiting delegates from Pawnee's sister city of Boraqua, Venezuela. The country is essentially portrayed as a mix of Banana Republic and Commie Land, which is explicitly a negative satire of Hugo Chávez. The episode is probably not airing in Venezuela anytime soon. The main Venezuelan delegate was played by Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen, who is Venezuelan on his mother's side in real life; this may have inspired the idea of putting Pawnee's sister city in Venezuela (besides SNL and Parks and Rec both being on NBC, Amy Poehler was an SNL alum and liked including her old colleagues in the show).
- There is a Venezuelan pilot, Evita Lambert, in the anime Gigantic Formula. As you can expect, she is a Wrench Wench Spicy Latina.
- Venezuela is the head country of a South American alliance in Call of Duty: Ghosts where they establish themselves as a global superpower thanks to South America's vast natural resources and sabotaging a kinetic weapons satellite and use it against United States to completely cripple their economy. They even went to the extent of invading United States to prove their military superiority.
- The eponymous Papillon, autobiographical alter-ego of Henri Charriere, is sent to a Penal Colony in French Guiana and spends fourteen years trying to escape; he is eventually imprisoned in Venezuela where he is finally released. The sequel Banco recounts over twenty years of his Venezuelan adventures as Papillon tries to bankroll his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the French justice system. These adventures take place during the turbulent period between 1945 and 1960, when Venezuela was often a Banana Republic prone to suffering both attempted and successful coup d'etats. Charriere speaks highly of the country and the Venezuelan people, describing them as being more generous than Europeans and willing to give a convicted criminal a second chance—France threw an innocent man away to die in a foreign swamp, Venezuela taught him how to live again.
- In SEAL Team Season 3, the "Siege Protocol" story arc takes place in Caracas as Bravo Team attempts to rescue Western hostages being held by the regime's Special Police. In Season 5, the team returns to Venezuela on a long-term top-secret black op to sabotage a secret nuclear weapons program being supported by North Korean & Iranian interests.
- Where the first arc of Jinki:Extend took place, on the Venezuelan plateau.
- Black Lagoon has Venezuela as a setting of a few episodes.
- Caracas occasionally appeared in the Mexican telenovela, Carita de ángel, presenting it either as a glamourous holiday destination for Dulce Maria and her family; or a business destination for her father. While drama inevitably happened, the show didn't fall into Venezuelan stereotypes.
The Venezuelan flag
The Venezuelan national anthem
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Government
- Federal dominant-party presidential constitutional republic
- President: Nicolás Maduro (sitting) or Juan Guaidó (disputed)
- Vice President: Delcy Rodríguez (disputed)
Miscellaneous
- Capital and largest city: Caracas
- Population: 28,887,118 (government) or 28,067,000 (IMF)
- Area: 916,445 km² (353,841 sq mi) (32nd)
- Currency: Venezuelan bolívar (Bs.S) (VES)
- ISO-3166-1 Code: VE
- Country calling code: 58
- Highest point: Pico Bolívar (4978 m/16,332 ft) (26th)
- Lowest point: Lagunillas Municipality (−12 m/−39 ft) (21st)
