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History
At the time of the Spanish Conquest of Venezuela,
the region was inhabited by some 500,000 indigenous
peoples belonging to three principal ethnolinguistic
groups - the Cariban, Arawak and Chibcha. The first Spanish
settlement on the mainland was established at
Cumaná in 1521.
The indigenous tribes put up a strong struggle against
the colonial depredations of both the Spanish and the Germans.
In the end, though, their resistance was subdued when many tribal
communities fell victim to European diseases such as smallpox, which
wiped out two-thirds of the population in the Caracas Valley alone.
However, the lack of lootable wealth in Venezuela soon led to colonial
neglect, which in turn prompted dissatisfaction and resentment among
the American-born Spanish elites. The Spanish rulers were eventually
thrown out by the young Simón Bolívar, known locally as 'El Libertador'.
He seized Venezuela from Spain in 1821.
By the late 1920s Venezuela had become the world's largest oil exporter, but little of this newfound wealth found its way to the common people. With poverty rife and educational and health facilities in a deplorable state, a series of popular uprisings took place,
culminating in the country's first democratic elections in 1947.
The country's economy, which was hit hard by the 1988 drop in world oil prices, remains shaky. Then-president Caldera's unconstitutional crackdown on economic speculation and civic freedoms in 1994 incensed civil libertarians, but it took until early 1996 for popular opinion to swing against him.
In December 1998 Venezuelans signaled their impatience with the government's impotence, electing a fierce populist, Hugo Chávez, to the presidency with the largest vote margin in 40 years. Just six years earlier, Chávez had attempted a coup against the government and had spent two years in jail for his troubles. Chávez was reelected for a six-year term by a comfortable margin again in 2000.
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