Venezuela

The country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world and one of the worst economic collapses ever recorded outside a war. Venezuela was a backwater of the Spanish empire, exporting cacao, and was the birthplace of both Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar, who led the independence wars across half a continent and died disillusioned in 1830 as Gran Colombia dissolved. Caudillo rule and civil wars filled the nineteenth century. Oil found around Lake Maracaibo in 1914 changed everything: by 1929 the country was the world's largest exporter, agriculture withered, and every government since has depended on the price of crude. Democracy from 1958 was managed by a pact between two parties that collapsed with the oil price in the 1980s, producing riots, two coup attempts by Hugo Chavez, and his election in 1998. His government funded extensive social programmes while prices were high and nationalised much of the economy. After his death in 2013 and the price fall, output collapsed, hyperinflation reached figures that made the currency worthless, and around seven million people left, one of the largest displacements in the world. Angel Falls is the highest waterfall on earth. Caracas is the capital. The country has about twenty-eight million people, or had before the exodus. Lake Maracaibo is the largest lake in South America. The Orinoco belt holds extra-heavy crude that is expensive to extract. Venezuela has won more Miss Universe titles than almost any country, a national preoccupation. Baseball rather than football is the dominant sport.

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