Venezuela Up To Date

Learn everything you need to about the Republic of Venezuela! The Key Facts on Venezuela provides readers with essential statistical and business information on the South American country, including: -Background of Venezuela -Geography of Venezuela -People and Society of Venezuela -Government and Key Leaders of Venezuela -Economy of Venezuela -Energy Resources of Venezuela -Communications in Venezuela -Transportation in Venezuela -Military of Venezuela -Transnational Issues of Venezuela The Internationalist Business Guides provide crucial up-to-date facts on countries around the world. Visit us at www.internationalist.com

An indispensable resource for readers interested in Venezuelan history, this book analyzes Venezuela's economic crisis through the context of its political and social history. For decades, the economy of Venezuela has depended on petroleum. As a consequence of a reduction in the price of oil, Venezuela recently experienced an economic downturn resulting in rampant social spending, administrative corruption, and external economic forces that collectively led credit-rating agencies to declare in November 2017 that Venezuela was in default on its debt payments. How did this Latin American nation come to this point? The History of Venezuela explores Venezuela's history from its earliest times to the present day, demonstrating both the richness of Venezuela and its people and the complexity of its political, social, and economic problems. As with all titles in The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations series, this chronological narrative examines political, economic, cultural, philosophical, and religious continuities in Venezuela's long and rich history, providing readers with a concise yet up-to-date study of the nation. The volume highlights the country's wide variety of cultures, languages, political ideologies, and historical figures and landmarks through maps, photographs, biographies, a timeline, and a bibliographical essay with suggestions for further reading.

Available here for the first time in English, Rómulo Betancourt has been a Spanish-language classic in Venezuela since its publication in 2013. This book is an extended essay on a transformational figure in the country’s history from an internationally-renowned public intellectual, Germán Carrera Damas. In this work, Carrera Damas captures a significant transition for the nation that began in the 1940s when Rómulo Betancourt and his colleagues overthrew the ruling military dictatorship and established a modern democratic regime. However, the system Betancourt created eventually deteriorated after his presidency. Carrera Damas not only delves into the evolving political thought of a leader who remained dedicated to his cause throughout a varied career, but also offers insights on what it takes to create and sustain a democratic republic under difficult circumstances. As the country’s current economic and political crisis intensifies, this book will help English speakers understand the cultural context of Venezuela’s contemporary moment as well as set a historical precedent for the next stages in the development of its position in the world. Funding provided by the Kislak Family Foundation, Inc.

Oil has played a major role in Venezuela’s economy since the first gusher was discovered along Lake Maracaibo in 1922. As Miguel Tinker Salas demonstrates, oil has also transformed the country’s social, cultural, and political landscapes. In The Enduring Legacy, Tinker Salas traces the history of the oil industry’s rise in Venezuela from the beginning of the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the experiences and perceptions of industry employees, both foreign and Venezuelan. He reveals how class ambitions and corporate interests combined to reshape many Venezuelans’ ideas of citizenship. Middle-class Venezuelans embraced the oil industry from the start, anticipating that it would transform the country by introducing modern technology, sparking economic development, and breaking the landed elites’ stranglehold. Eventually Venezuelan employees of the industry found that their benefits, including relatively high salaries, fueled loyalty to the oil companies. That loyalty sometimes trumped allegiance to the nation-state. North American and British petroleum companies, seeking to maintain their stakes in Venezuela, promoted the idea that their interests were synonymous with national development. They set up oil camps—residential communities to house their workers—that brought Venezuelan employees together with workers from the United States and Britain, and eventually with Chinese, West Indian, and Mexican migrants as well. Through the camps, the companies offered not just housing but also schooling, leisure activities, and acculturation into a structured, corporate way of life. Tinker Salas contends that these practices shaped the heart and soul of generations of Venezuelans whom the industry provided with access to a middle-class lifestyle. His interest in how oil suffused the consciousness of Venezuela is personal: Tinker Salas was born and raised in one of its oil camps.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Venezuela had one of the poorest economies in Latin America, but by 1970 it had become the richest country in the region and one of the twenty richest countries in the world, ahead of countries such as Greece, Israel, and Spain. Between 1978 and 2001, however, Venezuela’s economy went sharply in reverse, with non-oil GDP declining by almost 19 percent and oil GDP by an astonishing 65 percent. What accounts for this drastic turnabout? The editors of Venezuela Before Chávez, who each played a policymaking role in the country’s economy during the past two decades, have brought together a group of economists and political scientists to examine systematically the impact of a wide range of factors affecting the economy’s collapse, from the cost of labor regulation and the development of financial markets to the weakening of democratic governance and the politics of decisions about industrial policy. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Omar Bello, Adriana Bermúdez, Matías Braun, Javier Corrales, Jonathan Di John, Rafael Di Tella, Javier Donna, Samuel Freije, Dan Levy, Robert MacCulloch, Osmel Manzano, Francisco Monaldi, María Antonia Moreno, Daniel Ortega, Michael Penfold, José Pineda, Lant Pritchett, Cameron A. Shelton, and Dean Yang.