 At
the time of the Spanish Conquest of Venezuela, the region was
inhabited by some 500,000 indigenous peoples belonging to three
principal ethnolinguistic groups - the Cariban, Arawak and Chibcha.
Columbus was the first European to set foot on the soil of what
is now Venezuela, and the country was given its name (meaning
'Little Venice') a year later by the explorer Alonso de Ojeda.
The first Spanish settlement on the mainland was established
at Cumaná in 1521.
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The indigenous tribes put up a strong struggle
against the colonial depredations of both the Spanish and the
Germans, who left a swath of death and destruction behind them
as they pushed onward in search of the chimerical El Dorado. In
the end, though, their resistance was subdued when many tribal
communities fell victim to European diseases such as smallpox,
which wiped out two-thirds of the population in the Caracas Valley
alone.
 However,
the lack of lootable wealth in Venezuela soon led to colonial
neglect, which in turn prompted dissatisfaction and resentment
among the American-born Spanish elites. The Spanish rulers were
eventually thrown out by the young Simón Bolívar,
known locally as 'El Libertador'. He seized Venezuela from Spain
in 1821 with a decisive victory at Campo Carabobo, near Valencia,
aided by British mercenaries and an army of horsemen from Los
Llanos. Bolívar had already brought independence to Colombia,
and went on, with his lieutenant Antonio José de Sucre,
to liberate Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. His dream of a united state
of Gran Colombia, which would unify Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador,
did not survive his death in 1830, when Venezuela declared full
independence under a new constitution.
The postindependence period was marked by a succession
of military dictators, political coups and economic instability,
until the discovery of huge oil reserves in the Maracaibo basin
in the 1910s brought some degree of prosperity to the country.
By the late 1920s Venezuela had become the world's largest oil
exporter, but little of this newfound wealth found its way to
the common people. With poverty rife and educational and health
facilities in a deplorable state, a series of popular uprisings
took place, culminating in the country's first democratic elections
in 1947.
Despite recent political stability, Venezuela's
political climate continues to be marred by corruption scandals
and the threat of a military coup. The country's economy, which
was hit hard by the 1988 drop in world oil prices, remains shaky.
Then-president Caldera's unconstitutional crackdown on economic
speculation and civic freedoms in 1994 incensed civil libertarians,
but it took until early 1996 for popular opinion to swing against
him. The government's tough measures were designed to bring Venezuela's
rampant inflation and alarming currency slump under control, but
the bloated public service has resisted attempts to put it on
a lo-cal diet. It remains to be seen whether Venezuela's ingrained
anachronistic economic culture will be nudged toward a brave new
world.
In December 1998 Venezuelans signaled their impatience
with the government's impotence, electing a fierce populist, Hugo
Chávez, to the presidency with the largest vote margin
in 40 years. Just six years earlier, Chávez had attempted
a coup against the government and had spent two years in jail
for his troubles. Chávez was reelected for a six-year term
by a comfortable margin again in 2000.
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