Caracas, officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas. Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern part of the country, within the Caracas Valley of the Venezuelan coastal mountain range. The valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the coast by a steep 2,200-meter-high (7,200 ft) mountain range, Cerro El Ávila; to the south there are more hills and mountains. The Metropolitan Region of Caracas has an estimated population of almost 5 million inhabitants.
The Caracas Metro is a mass rapid transit system serving Caracas, Venezuela. It was constructed and is operated by Compañía Anónima Metro de Caracas, a government-owned company that was founded in 1977 by José González-Lander who headed the project for more than thirty years since the early planning stages in the 1960s. Its motto is "Somos parte de tu vida". In 1978 MTA – New York City Transit's R46 #816 was shipped from the Pullman Standard's plant as a sample of rolling stock to be used for the new metro system that was under construction at the time.
Chacao is one of the five political and administrative subdivisions of the city of Caracas, Venezuela. The other four are Baruta, El Hatillo, Libertador and Sucre. This legal entity is known as the Caracas Metropolitan District. Chacao is also one of the 21 municipalities that make up the State of Miranda, Venezuela.
The 2008 Bolivian political crisis saw protests against President Evo Morales and calls for greater autonomy for the country's eastern departments. Demonstrators escalated the protests by seizing natural gas infrastructure and government buildings. In response, supporters of the national government and its reform of the constitution, mobilized across these regions.
Jacqueline Coromoto Faría Pineda is a Venezuelan politician. She was the head of the state mobile phone company Movilnet Minister of Environment and Natural Resources (2005–2007), and head of Caracas' water company, Hidrocapital. She is a hydraulic civil engineer by profession.
In 2014, a series of protests, political demonstrations, and civil insurrection began in Venezuela due to the country's high levels of urban violence, inflation, and chronic shortages of basic goods and services. Explanations for these worsening conditions vary, with analysis blaming strict price controls, alongside long-term, widespread political corruption resulting in the under-funding of basic government services. While protests first occurred in January, after the murder of actress and former Miss Venezuela Mónica Spear, the 2014 protests against Nicolás Maduro began in earnest that February following the attempted rape of a student on a university campus in San Cristóbal. Subsequent arrests and killings of student protesters spurred their expansion to neighboring cities and the involvement of opposition leaders. The year's early months were characterized by large demonstrations and violent clashes between protesters and government forces that resulted in nearly 4,000 arrests and 43 deaths, including both supporters and opponents of the government. Toward the end of 2014, and into 2015, continued shortages and low oil prices caused renewed protesting.
The 2014 Venezuelan protests began in February 2014 when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans protested due to high levels of criminal violence, inflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods because of policies created the Venezuelan government. The protests have lasted for several months and events are listed below according to the month they had happened.
In 2014, a series of protests, political demonstrations, and civil insurrection began in Venezuela due to the country's high levels of urban violence, inflation, and chronic shortages of basic goods attributed to economic policies such as strict price controls. Mass protesting began in earnest in February following the attempted rape of a student on a university campus in San Cristóbal. Subsequent arrests and killings of student protesters spurred their expansion to neighboring cities and the involvement of opposition leaders. The year's early months were characterized by large demonstrations and violent clashes between protesters and government forces that resulted in nearly 4,000 arrests and 43 deaths, including both supporters and opponents of the government.
2015 protests in Venezuela began in the first days of January primarily due to shortages in the country, with the first massive demonstration occurring on 23 January, on the anniversary of the 1958 coup d'etat against dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. The series of protests originally began in February 2014 when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans protested due to high levels of criminal violence, inflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods because of policies created the Venezuelan government. As of January 2015, over 50 people had been arrested for protesting. The protests are listed below according to the month they had happened.
2016 protests in Venezuela began in early January following controversy surrounding the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary elections and the increasing hardships felt by Venezuelans. The series of protests originally began in February 2014 when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans protested due to high levels of criminal violence, inflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods because of policies created by the Venezuelan government though the size of protests had decreased since 2014.
The 2017 Venezuelan protests began in late January following the abandonment of Vatican-backed dialogue between the Bolivarian government and the opposition. The series of protests originally began in February 2014 when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans protested due to high levels of criminal violence, inflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods because of policies created by the Venezuelan government though the size of protests had decreased since 2014. Following the 2017 Venezuelan constitutional crisis, protests began to increase greatly throughout Venezuela.
The Mother of All Marches, also known as the Mother of All Protests, was a day of protests held on April 19, 2017, in Venezuela against the Chavista government of president Nicolás Maduro. The protests began after the Supreme Tribunal of Justice dissolved the National Assembly and took over its legislative powers March 29, 2017 in what was called a self-coup. The dissolution of the National Assembly was reversed shortly thereafter on April 1, 2017.
The 2017 Venezuelan protests were a series of protests occurring throughout Venezuela. Protests began in January 2017 after the arrest of multiple opposition leaders and the cancellation of dialogue between the opposition and Nicolás Maduro's government.
2018 protests in Venezuela began in the first days of January as a result of high levels of hunger by desperate Venezuelans. Within the first two weeks of the year, hundreds of protests and looting incidents occurred throughout the country. By late-February, protests against the Venezuelan presidential elections occurred after several opposition leaders were banned from participating. Into March, the Maduro government began to crack down on military dissent, arresting dozens of high-ranking officials including former SEBIN director Miguel Rodríguez Torres.
The 2019 Venezuelan protests began in the first days of January as a result of the Venezuelan presidential crisis. Protests against the legitimacy of the Nicolás Maduro's presidency began at the time of his second inauguration following a controversial presidential election in 2018. Rallies of support were also held for President of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, with some Venezuelans and foreign government's recognizing him as the acting President of Venezuela.
The 2019 Venezuelan protests were a collection of protests that were organized, since 11 January, as a coordinated effort to remove Nicolás Maduro from the presidency. Demonstrations began following Maduro's controversial second inauguration, developing into a presidential crisis between Maduro and National Assembly president Juan Guaidó. The protests also included counter-demonstrations organized by those who support Maduro.
Nationwide recurring electrical blackouts in Venezuela began in March 2019. Experts and state-run Corpoelec sources attribute the electricity shortages to lack of maintenance and to a lack of technical expertise in the country resulting from a brain drain; Nicolás Maduro's administration attributes them to sabotage. Since March, various nationwide blackouts occurred in the country.
A political crisis occurred in Bolivia on 10 November 2019, after 21 days of civil protests following the disputed 2019 Bolivian general election in which incumbent President Evo Morales was initially declared the winner. The elections took place after a referendum to amend the Bolivian constitution, which limits the number of terms to two, was rejected in 2016. In 2017, the Constitutional Tribunal (TCP) ruled that all public offices would have no term limits despite what was established in the constitution and allowing Evo Morales to run for a fourth term.
Juan Pablo Pernalete Llovera was a student and basketball player killed during the 2017 Venezuelan protests. On 24 May the Attorney General of Venezuela, Luisa Ortega Díaz, declared that an investigation by the Public Ministry concluded that Pernalete died as the result of the impact in his chest of a tear gas canister fired by a National Guardsman. While government officials and pro-government outlets initially alleged that Pernalete had been killed with a captive bolt pistol by fellow protesters, in 2021 Tarek William Saab, Luisa Ortega's successor, acknowledged that Pernelte was killed by a tear gas canister fired by the National Guard.
The Guaire RiverMiners, also known as Guaire River Garimpeiros, is the name given to the people who search for metals in the Guaire River, a 72-kilometer-long river in Caracas, Venezuela that is highly contaminated with sewage. The miners are mainly minors, homeless people or blue-collar workers who lost their jobs due to the shutdown of government works or whose salaries are not enough to subsist and do not want to resort to crime. Despite being a practice that dates back to at least 1994, as of 2016 the number of people engaged in this trade increased to dozens and even hundreds during the Venezuelan economic crisis, characterized by hyperinflation and shortages.
