Caracas, Venezuela

Caracas is the capital and most populous city of Venezuela. Founded in the sixteenth century, Caracas was a small city until the growth of the Venezuelan oil industry. The international demand for petroleum made Caracas for many years a major financial center for the global oil market. However, this growth, coupled with a lack of centralized planning and an increasing disparity between the rich and poor, also caused many problems for the city. In the early twenty-first century, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez made Caracas a new capital for leftist government in South America, with policies that nationalized the oil industry and redistributed wealth to the poor. But the combined effects of plummeting oil prices and the death of Chavez in 2013 took Venezuela down a difficult road; by the end of the decade, Venezuela was wracked by full-blown political and economic crisis, with food and basic services in Caracas and throughout the country in perilously short supply.

Landscape

Caracas is located in the northern center of Venezuela, separated from the coast by the Cerro El Ávila mountain range. The high mountain slopes contain the metropolitan area of Caracas in a wide valley where the land rises and falls in elevation from between 843 to 1,073 meters (2,765 to 3,520 feet). The highest point in the city is the mountain peak Pico El Ávila, which stands at 2,159 meters (7,083 feet).

The original settlement was at a low elevation, but as Caracas has grown in population, the outlying barrios and suburbs have climbed the surrounding mountainsides. Oil revenues led to government investment in infrastructure, and a modern highway system connects various barrios with one another. However, persistent traffic problems have also led to the development of an underground rail system.

The Guaire River flows through the center of the city before emptying into the Tuy River. Numerous other streams and tributaries flow down from the mountains and pass through Caracas. Aqueducts carry most of the city's drinking water from two holding reservoirs located outside the city.

Because of its elevation, Caracas is spared the tropical heat found at sea level. The average temperature in Caracas is 23 degrees Celsius (74 degrees Fahrenheit), with little seasonal variation throughout the year. Total rainfall and precipitation is between 900 and 1,300 millimeters (35 to 51 inches) annually.

Venezuela is experiencing accelerated climate change. The temperature has significantly increased and the amount of rainfall has decreased. The country has experienced severe and long-lasting droughts that have hampered agricultural production. Rapidly rising sea levels have caused flooding.

People

The population of the Caracas metropolitan area stood around 2.97 million in 2023, according to the World Population Review. The city has seen a surge in population in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The poor barrios and suburbs surrounding the city are home to thousands of Venezuelans who have migrated to Caracas from all over the country. As a result, the population of Caracas is a mixture of ethnicities. People of African, Indian, and European descent all reside in the capital, and a distinct criollo (mixed-race) culture has arisen from intermarriage between the groups. During the twentieth century, there was a brief wave of immigration by political refugees fleeing unrest in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, but in the early twenty-first century immigrants tended to come from other countries in South American and the Caribbean. Political and economic crisis in the late 2010s led to Venezuelans fleeing the country in large numbers, however.

Caracas is a very religious city, with Roman Catholics making up 96 percent of the population. There are numerous cathedrals in all sections of the city. The population also includes a large number of young students, with over a dozen public universities located within the city limits. Moreover, Venezuela as a whole boasted a literacy rate of 99 percent by 2021, according to Global Data, and several newspapers cater to the urban populace.

Economy

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. As the political capital and financial center for the country, Caracas manages the Venezuelan oil economy. Caracas industrialists and politicians were among the first leaders, along with those in the Middle East, to push for founding the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), conceived and formulated in 1960 as a means to coordinate global oil sales. The national oil company for Venezuela, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), manages all Venezuelan oil exports.

However, this dependence on oil makes the Caracas economy very volatile. When worldwide oil prices fluctuate, Caracas feels these shocks first. During the major collapse in oil prices in the 1980s, widespread crime and political instability broke out in Caracas. While Caracas enjoyed the benefits of high oil prices in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when prices began to plummet in the mid-2010s due to increased worldwide production and other factors, Caracas and the rest of the country were hit hard.

Oil revenues are used to fund the socialist policies of Venezuela's government, including subsides for the urban poor. National banks in Caracas give low interest loans out to Caracas barrio residents trying to start up collectives or businesses, and oil dividends helped provide free medical care for poor residents. However, due to economic mismanagement, food and other shortages began toward the end of Chavez's time in office, and accelerated drastically under his successor, Nicolas Maduro. By 2019, the country was experiencing severe shortages of food and medicine, chronic electricity blackouts, and skyrocketing inflation.

Landmarks

The surrounding mountains, most prominently the Pico El Ávila, highlight the natural beauty of Caracas and offer spectacular views for residents and visitors.

The cultural and historical heart of the city is at the Plaza Bolivar, where the city was founded in 1567. The great public buildings of Caracas such as the Catedral Metropolitana (Metropolitan Cathedral), the Capitolio Nacional (Capitol Building), and the Palacio Municpal (Presidential House) are all located in the Plaza Bolivar, which also serves as a public park and open-air market for the people of Caracas.

Many old cathedrals in Caracas serve as historical or art museums, the most notable of these being the Catedral Metropolitana and the Panteón Nacional (National Pantheon). La Galeria de Arte Nacional (The National Art Gallery) contains a collection of most Venezuelan artists, including the arts and crafts made by pre-Columbian native tribes. As the birthplace of South American revolutionary Simón Bolivar, Caracas hosts the Museo Bolivar, a museum located in the childhood home of the man Venezuelans refer to as “The Liberator.”

The Jardim Botânico (Botanical Garden) offers a variety of flora and fauna within the city limits, and the El Ávila National Park has many hiking trails for outdoor enthusiasts and nature lovers.

Caracas is a modern, cosmopolitan city. Little colonial architecture remains, and skyscrapers and high rises have become the architectural style of choice in the growing city. In addition, an increasing number of fast food restaurants and shopping malls have begun to spring up around the city.

History

In 1567, Caracas was founded by the Spanish conquistador Diego de Losada. A small settlement was built around slave-based agriculture and the cocoa trade with Spain. For the next two hundred years, Caracas was a neglected provincial backwater of the Spanish Empire.

However, the early nineteenth century brought significant change to Caracas. Inspired by the American War of Independence as well as the French Revolution, men such as Simón Bolivar and Francisco de Miranda, both Caracas natives, began to agitate for independence from Spain. These two men were instrumental in creating Venezuela's declaration of independence, which was signed in Caracas in 1811.

Caracas suffered greatly during the struggle for independence. In 1812, a powerful earthquake shook the city, destroying most houses and buildings. The continuing struggle for independence from Spain prevented the city from being rebuilt for much of the following decade. By 1821, the successful expulsion of Spanish forces from South America by Bolivar had allowed some new growth in Caracas. In 1830, after the failure of Bolivar's superfederation of Gran Colombia, Venezuela became a separate nation, with the capital in Caracas.

For much of the nineteenth century, Caracas was the center of power for a series of military strongmen who ruled Venezuela as a personal fiefdom. While undemocratic, these dictators ensured that Caracas was the lynchpin for all military, political, and financial decisions in the country. The importance of Caracas for the rest of the country only increased with the discovery of oil in 1914, which turned the city into a worldwide financial powerhouse.

From 1958 onward, a series of democratically elected presidents encouraged the growth of a middle class in Caracas. During this period of high oil prices, Caracas enjoyed an intensive investment in infrastructure, including highways and public transportation. However, the decline of oil prices in the 1980s caused great political unrest. This culminated in 1989 in riots, protests, and looting that shook Caracas for a week. The government ordered the military to use any means necessary to end the disturbances. Over three thousand people died in the resulting crackdown, many of them inhabitants of the poorest sections of Caracas.

In 1992, two political coups took place in Caracas, one of which was led by Hugo Chávez. In 1998, Chávez was elected president of Venezuela, promising the poor underclass greater economic equality by sharing the country's oil wealth. Chávez enjoyed great popularity among the urban poor of Caracas, who became some of his most vocal supporters and his political base within the city. A 2002 military coup against Chávez was defeated when supporters poured into the streets of Caracas in protest and shut down the city until Chávez was restored to power.

Chávez called for a “Bolivar Revolution” for South America that would be led from Caracas. He became famous for his criticisms of American foreign policy and the detrimental effects of capitalism in Latin America and elsewhere. Caracas was ultimately the site of Chávez's state funeral in 2013.

In January 2016, Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Publica y la Justicia Penal (Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice) in Mexico City, Mexico, released a study that showed Caracas was the most violent city in the world in 2015, with almost 120 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. However, by 2019 the economic crisis had had the paradoxical effect of reducing the rates of murder and other types of crime, as fewer people had anything worth stealing, and literally millions of people had left the country.

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