Venezuela

Venezuela is a country on the northern coast of South America with many islands in the Caribbean, bordered by Colombia, Brazil and Guyana. Its 912,050 km2 (352,140 sq mi) take in the end of the Andes, the Llanos plains, the Orinoco basin and the Guiana Highlands.

Caracas is the capital and largest city. Spanish is the official language, and the constitution recognizes more than 30 Indigenous languages. The name probably goes back to Amerigo Vespucci, whose crew saw stilt houses on Lake Maracaibo and thought of Venice. Columbus reached the Gulf of Paria in 1498, and Spain began colonizing the territory in 1522. Under Francisco de Miranda the First Republic of Venezuela declared independence in 1811, Simón Bolívar carried on the struggle, and the naval victory on Lake Maracaibo on 24 July 1823 sealed it. Venezuela belonged to Gran Colombia until it became a fully separate state in 1830.

The president, elected by direct vote for six years, leads both the state and the government. Oil found beneath Lake Maracaibo during World War I turned the economy away from farm exports, the largest reserves lie in the Orinoco Basin, and in 1960 the minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso led the founding of OPEC. Pico Bolívar in the Andes is the highest point at 4,979 m (16,335 ft), and the Guiana Highlands hold the flat-topped tepuis and Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world.

The architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva designed the Central University of Venezuela, a World Heritage Site, and Martín Tovar y Tovar painted scenes of the independence struggle. Andrés Bello, poet and teacher of the young Bolívar, and the novelist Rómulo Gallegos are among its writers. The cuatro is the national instrument, the joropo is the national dance, and the gaita of Zulia is sung at Christmas, while El Sistema, a public youth music program, has been copied in other countries. Arepas, first made by Indigenous peoples, are a staple. Baseball, played since the late 19th century, spread with oil workers from North America, and Rubén Limardo won Olympic gold in fencing.