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.

C.

Culture

The dominant influence on the culture of Venezuela was that of the Spanish conquerors. The Native Americans of the country, lacking any political or cultural unity of their own, were assimilated into the immigrant groups and had only a slight influence on the national culture.

The distinct Venezuelan contribution to folk legend is the llanero, or South American cowboy. The national dance, the joropo, and popular instruments such as the maraca, a type of rattle, and the cuatro, an instrument with four strings that resembles a small guitar, are all associated with the llanero.

Venezuelan literature gained momentum in the early 19th century with the appearance of writers such as Simón Rodríguez, Andrés Bello, and Simón Bolívar. Outstanding among later writers of the 19th century was Juan Antonio Pérez Bonalde, known principally for his translations of German poet Heinrich Heine and American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Pérez Bonalde is considered a precursor of romanticism in Latin American literature. In the early 20th century, novelist Teresa de la Parra became one of the most popular women novelists of Latin America, and Rufino Blanco Fombana produced works about life in Venezuela in the late 19th century.

Two of the best-known Venezuelan novelists of the 20th century were former president Rómulo Gallegos and Arturo Uslar Pietri, who ran for president in 1968. Gallegos’s works reflect the interaction of humankind and nature. Uslar Pietri’s novel Un Retrato en la geografia (1962, Portrayal in Geography) is an original look at Venezuelan society in which a recently released political prisoner describes the new social landscape that he encounters.

Venezuelan artists of the 20th century who developed international reputations include sculptor Marisol (Escobar) and painter and sculptor Jesús Rafael Soto. Both artists moved between Venezuela, New York, and Paris. A museum dedicated to Soto’s work is in Ciudad Bolívar.

Venezuela, which was regarded as one of the less profitable colonies of Spain, lacks the splendors of Spanish architecture that are found in other South American countries. Nevertheless, in the second half of the 20th century, the combination of the wealth produced from oil discoveries and strong ties with the United States helped foster the development of modern architecture. Carlos Raúl Villanueva, who explored the structural and expressive possibilities of reinforced concrete, is the best-known Venezuelan architect of the 20th century. He designed the campus of the Central University in Caracas.

See also Latin American Architecture; Latin American Literature; Latin American Music; Latin American Painting; Latin American Sculpture.

D.

Museums

Some of Venezuela’s leading museums are located in Caracas. These include the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Colonial Art, the Natural Sciences Museum, and the Bolívar Museum, with displays on the life and times of Simón Bolívar. Also of interest are the Talavera Museum, in Ciudad Bolívar, and history museums in Maracaibo and Trujillo.