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.
Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello, known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was a Venezuelan politician who served as the president of Venezuela, from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of the Democratic Action, Venezuela's dominant political party in the 20th century.
Martín Tovar y Tovar was a Venezuelan painter, best known for his portraits and historical scenes.
Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) lit. 'National Siderurgy Company' or 'National Steel Company' is the largest fully integrated steel producer in Brazil and one of the largest in Latin America in terms of crude steel production. Its main plant is located in the city of Volta Redonda, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Its current CEO is Benjamin Steinbruch.
Aceralia was a large Spanish steel producer formed in 1997 by restructuring of a group formed from earlier mergers of the steel producers ENSIDESA and Altos Hornos de Vizcaya. The company merged into Arcelor in 2001, and became part of ArcelorMittal in 2006.
The Guayana Region is an administrative region of eastern Venezuela.
Eugenio Mendoza Goiticoa was a Venezuelan business tycoon who made important contributions in the modernization of the country during the 20th Century.
Ternium S.A. is a manufacturer of flat and long steel products with production centers in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, and the United States. It is the leading steel company in Latin America with highly integrated processes to manufacture steel and value-added products. Along with Nippon Steel and Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional, Ternium owns Usiminas of Brazil. The company has an annual production capacity of 12.4 million tons.
The Libyan Iron and Steel Company (Lisco) is one of the largest iron and steelmaking companies operating in North Africa. Based in Misrata, it is subsidized and owned by the Libyan government. Lisco's foundation stone was officially laid on 18 September 1979. In 2004, the online magazine Arab Steel ranked Lisco third among the largest Arab iron and steel companies.
Siderúrgica del Turbio S.A. (Sidetur) was a subsidiary of Siderúrgica de Venezuela S.A. (Sivensa), the biggest wholly private Venezuelan steel corporation. Their main products are rebars, bars, beams, angles and flats. Sidetur develops their exporting activity in more than 25 countries in the markets of America, Africa, Asia and Europe. Their seven operating plants are located in the states of Bolívar, Carabobo, Miranda, Lara and the Capital District. Additionally, Sidetur has 14 ferrous material collection centers located in various cities.
Banco de Venezuela is an international universal bank based in Caracas. It was the market leader in Venezuela until 2007, when it fell to third place, with an 11.3% market share for deposits; its major competitors are Banesco, Banco Mercantil and BBVA Banco Provincial. As of June 2008, it had 285 branches in Venezuela.
From his election in 1998 until his death in March 2013, the administration of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez proposed and enacted populist economic policies as part of his Bolivarian Revolution.
Siderúrgica de Orinoco C.A. (Sidor) is the largest Venezuelan steel corporation. The company is situated in an industrial zone in Ciudad Guayana, Bolívar State, near the Orinoco River.
Mining in Bolivia has been a dominant feature of the Bolivian economy as well as Bolivian politics since 1557. Colonial era silver mining in Bolivia, particularly in Potosí, played a critical role in the Spanish Empire and the global economy. Tin mining supplanted silver by the twentieth century and the central element of Bolivian mining, and wealthy tin barons played an important role in national politics until they were marginalized by the industry's nationalization into the Bolivian Mining Corporation that followed the 1952 revolution. Bolivian miners played a critical part to the country's organized labor movement from the 1940s to the 1980s.
When elected in 2013, Nicolás Maduro continued the majority of existing economic policies of his predecessor Hugo Chávez. When entering the presidency, President Maduro's Venezuela faced a high inflation rate and large shortages of goods that was left over from the previous policies of President Chávez. These economic difficulties that Venezuela was facing were one of the main reasons of the current protests in Venezuela. President Maduro has blamed capitalism for speculation that is driving high rates of inflation and creating widespread shortages of staples, and often said he was fighting an "economic war", calling newly enacted economic measures "economic offensives" against political opponents he and loyalists state are behind an international economic conspiracy. However, President Maduro has been criticized for only concentrating on public opinion instead of tending to the practical issues economists have warned the Venezuelan government about or creating any ideas to improve the economic situation in Venezuela such as the "economic war".
Tourism in Venezuela has been developed considerably for decades, particularly because of its geographical position, the variety of landscapes, the richness of plants and wildlife, the artistic expressions and the privileged tropical climate of the country, which affords each region throughout the year. Since 2013, the country is having a very severe economic and political crisis affecting tourism all over the country.
María Asunción Calcaño Ruiz, usually known as Mary Calcaño or by her married name Mary Keeler (1906–1992), was the first Venezuelan woman to be granted a pilot's licence. She received licence No. 73,550 from the United States Civil Aeronautics Authority on 13 November 1939 after training at Roosevelt Field, Long Island. Shortly afterwards, on 6 December 1940, she received her Venezuelan pilot's licence.
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.
Venezuela has experienced a marked deficit in the generation of electrical energy. The immediate cause of the energy crisis was a prolonged drought that caused the water in the reservoir of the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant to reach very low levels. Although various measures were taken to overcome the crisis, one of the most controversial was the implementation of a program of electrical rationing throughout the country, except in the capital Caracas, which was ultimately officially suspended in June 2010, due to the recovery of reservoirs due to the rains, and not to interrupt the transmission of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Power cuts have continued to occur in the interior of the country, although with less frequency and duration, this time driven by failures in other parts of the system. The situation of "electrical emergency" decreed by the government on 21 December 2009 was suspended on 30 November 2010; however, on 14 May 2011, after the country experienced two national blackouts, the government of Hugo Chávez announced a temporary rationing plan and acknowledged that the electricity system continued to face "generation weaknesses" that they did not expect to surpass until end the year.
US$ 1.7 billion (2009)
