Venezuela

H

Plants and Animals

Forests of varied species including palms, coral trees, mangoes, and brazilwoods cover 54.1 percent of Venezuela. Plant life common to the Temperate Zone (the region north of the tropic of Cancer) thrives above about 900 m (about 3,000 ft). Long grass grows on the Llanos, and mangrove swamps cover much of the Orinoco River delta.

Among the animals of Venezuela are jaguars, monkeys, sloths, anteaters, ocelots, bears, deer, and armadillos. Birdlife is abundant and includes flamingos, herons, ibis, guacharos (also called oilbirds), and numerous other species. Reptiles, including crocodiles and large snakes, such as anacondas and boa constrictors, are also found in Venezuela.

I

Environmental Concerns

Venezuela protects more than a third of its land area—the highest percentage of any country in North and South America. Yet despite these protective measures, Venezuela continues to lose some of its valuable tropical forests each year. In addition, soil degradation in the grasslands of the Llanos, resulting from years of overgrazing, has become a major problem.

Occasional oil spills have killed fish and shut down shoreline resorts on Lake Maracaibo. Industrial pollution also plagues the Caribbean Sea coast where most of the country’s population lives. Insufficient sewage treatment facilities contribute to the pollution of the Caribbean Sea coast as well. In rural areas many people lack access to proper sanitation. Air pollution is an additional concern in urban centers such as Caracas, Maracaibo, and Valencia. Venezuela is party to international treaties concerning biodiversity, climate change, endangered species, marine life conservation, ship pollution, tropical timber, and wetlands.

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III

People

About 67 percent of the population of Venezuela is made up of mestizos (people of mixed European and Native American ancestry), and 21 percent is of European descent. The remainder is predominantly black, and about 2 percent of the total population is unmixed Native American. The society is 88 percent urban. Spanish is the official language of the country. The principal religion is Roman Catholicism.

Venezuelan society is marked by a striking contrast between rich and poor. In Caracas government-distributed oil wealth has created impressive buildings and a class of millionaires and highly paid technicians whose standard of living is on a par with that of the wealthy in any Western country. But in the hills surrounding Caracas, unskilled laborers live in squalor in shantytowns. Similarly, in the countryside a small number of landowners live in mansions, while undernourished farmworkers live in rudimentary dwellings.

The Venezuelan population is 26,084,662 (2007 estimate), giving the country an overall population density of 30 persons per sq km (77 per sq mi). The overwhelming majority of the population lives in the northern highlands or coastal regions. Only a small percentage inhabits the huge area (nearly 50 percent of the total land area) south of the Orinoco River.

A

Principal Cities

Venezuela is highly urbanized. Caracas (population, 2001, 1,836,000) is the capital as well as the financial, cultural, and commercial center of Venezuela. Located in a beautiful valley in the coastal highlands, Caracas is a city in which modern skyscrapers and apartment houses contrast sharply with elegant old colonial buildings and with the slum dwellings of recent migrants from the countryside who have come to the city seeking employment. The nearby town of La Guaira serves as the seaport for Caracas.

Maracaibo (population, 2001, 1,219,927), the country’s second largest city, is located on the shores of Lake Maracaibo. Once a collection of crude huts built on stilts over water, Maracaibo developed into a modern city during the 20th century, largely because of its role as a major center of the petroleum industry. Valencia (population, 2001, 742,145), in the coastal highlands, is one of the country’s main manufacturing centers. Barquisimeto (895,989), in the Andes, is the hub of several important highways as well as a major railroad terminal.

B

Education

Education in Venezuela is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 15. The adult literacy rate in 2005 was 94 percent. The country’s 15,984 primary and preprimary schools had a total enrollment of 3.3 million pupils and were staffed by 185,748 teachers; secondary schools had an enrollment of 1,543,600 students.

In 2002–2003 about 983,000 students were enrolled in institutions of higher education, which included the Central University of Venezuela (1721) and Andrés Bello Catholic University (1953), in Caracas; Carabobo University (1852), in Valencia; the University of the Andes (1785), in Mérida; the University of Zulia (1891), in Maracaibo; and the Polytechnical Institute (1962), in Barquisimeto.

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