Venezuela SA
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Three equal horizontal bands of yellow (top), blue, and red with the coat of arms on the hoist side of the yellow band and an arc of eight white five-pointed stars centered in the blue band
Venezuela Country Profile
República Bolivariana de Venezuela
Venezuela was one of three countries that emerged from the collapse of Gran Colombia in 1830 (the others being Ecuador and New Granada, which became Colombia). For most of the first half of the 20th century, Venezuela was ruled by generally benevolent military strongmen, who promoted the oil industry and allowed for some social reforms. Democratically elected governments have held sway since 1959. Hugo CHAVEZ, president since 1999, seeks to implement his "21st Century Socialism," which purports to alleviate social ills while at the same time attacking globalization and undermining regional stability. Current concerns include: a weakening of democratic institutions, political polarization, a politicized military, drug-related violence along the Colombian border, increasing internal drug consumption, overdependence on the petroleum industry with its price fluctuations, and irresponsible mining operations that are endangering the rain forest and indigenous peoples.
— CIA World Factbook
In Venezuela, Plantations of Cacao Stir Bitterness
By SIMON ROMERO | The New York Times
HENRI PITTIER NATIONAL PARK, Venezuela
Kai Rosenberg acknowledges that he might be a little insane. He owns a cacao plantation in this swath of untamed cloud forest in northern Venezuela, where ocelots dart under towering saman trees and howler monkeys shriek at visitors. So far this decade, squatters have tried to wrest control of his land, a fungus nearly wiped out his entire crop, government inspectors have solicited bribes and export officials have given him countless headaches with demands for a barrage of permits.
Even worse, intruders armed with machine guns broke into his house one night. In the struggle that ensued, he said, one shot him in the throat. Evacuated by helicopter, he recovered after six operations. But he went back to growing the Venezuelan cacao bean, the raw ingredient for chocolate coveted in Europe and the United States. "Maybe I'm actually more than a little insane, but that's a job requirement for working in cacao," said Mr. Rosenberg, a German Jew who was born in Hamburg in 1940 and moved to Venezuela at age 18.
Venezuela produces about the same amount of cacao as it did three centuries ago: 15,000 tons a year, less than 1 percent of global cacao output. But that amount stirs the passions of critics and devotees, turning a luxury crop destined for foreigners into a contentious, and sometimes violent, political issue. Cacao from here is so desirable that European chocolate makers sometimes engage in cut-throat competition to gain access to it. Chocolatiers talk of the unique factors here on the Caribbean's edge in a way that resembles the goût de terroir, or taste of the earth, crucial to fine wines.
"Venezuela is in a league of its own," said Gary Guittard, a California chocolate maker who buys Venezuelan cacao. "It takes years to develop the uniqueness of the best cacao, maybe 20 or 30 years, maybe 100, so other nations need to catch up." Viewed as a treasure abroad, cacao is seen differently by many Venezuelans, from the president to the poor. A loophole for this nature reserve allows cacao haciendas to dot the forest, near villages populated by descendants of African slaves and near poor migrants who live in squatter villages in the park. >>> Go to Full Story >>>
Brain Drain
By Mac Margolis | NEWSWEEK
After a decade of 21st-century socialism, the chief export of Venezuela and its allies seems to be the intelligentsia.
For just a moment, in the early days of his presidency, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez looked almost like a healer. "Let's ask for God's help to accept our differences and come together in dialogue," he implored his conflicted compatriots in 2002. Instead, what Venezuelans got was an avenger. The government is seizing privately owned companies and farms. Labor unions have been crushed. Political opponents are routinely harassed or else prosecuted by Chavista-controlled courts. And now, after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. Artists, lawyers, physicians, managers, and engineers are leaving the country in droves, while those already abroad are scrapping plans to return. The wealthiest among them are buying condos in Miami and Panama City. Cashiered oil engineers are working rigs in the North Sea and sifting the tar sands of western Canada. Those of European descent have applied for passports from their native lands. Academic scholarships are lifeboats. An estimated 1 million Venezuelans have moved abroad in the decade since Chávez took power.
This exodus is splitting families and interrupting careers, but also sabotaging the country's future. Just as nations across the developing world are managing to lure their scattered expatriates back home to fuel recovering economies and join vibrant democracies, the outrush of Venezuelan brainpower is gutting universities and think tanks, crippling industries, and hastening the economic disarray that threatens to destroy one of the richest countries in the hemisphere. Forget minerals, oil, and natural gas; the biggest export of the Bolivarian revolution is talent.
The Bolivarian diaspora is a reversal of fortune on a massive scale. Through most of the last century, Venezuela was a haven for immigrants fleeing Old World repression. Refugees from totalitarianism and religious intolerance in Spain, Italy, Germany, and Eastern Europe flocked to this country nestled between the Caribbean and the Andean cordillera and helped forge one of the most vibrant societies in the New World. Like most developing nations, the country was split between the burgeoning poor and an encastled elite. But in the 1970s and 1980s, Venezuelans were the envy of Latin America. Oil-rich, educated, with a solid democratic tradition, they lived a tier above the chronically unstable societies in the region. "We had a relatively rich country that offered opportunities, with no insecurity. No one thought about leaving," says Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations who lives in New York. "Now we have rampant crime, a repressive political system that borders on apartheid, and reverse migration. Venezuela is now a country of emigrants." >>> Go to Full Story >>>