VE is the abbreviation for Venezuela, the 32nd largest country in the world. Officially Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Venezuela is a country located in south America, bordering Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago. Caracas is the capital city of Venezuela. Major cities include Caracas (population: 2,999,989), Maracaibo (population: 2,224,989), Maracay (population: 1,754,245), Valencia (population: 1,385,072), Barquisimeto (population: 809,479), Ciudad Guayana (population: 746,524), Barcelona (population: 424,784), Maturín (population: 410,961), Puerto Cruz (population: 369,989), and Petare (population: 364,673).
Country Profile
- Capital: Caracas
- Language: Spanish
- Area: 916,445 km2
- Population: 31,568,179
- Currency: Petro Bolívar Soberano (VES)
- Time zone: UTC−4
- Calling code: 58
- ISO 2-Letter Abbreviation: VE
- UN 3-Letter Abbreviation: VEN
- Internet TLD: .ve
- State Government Website: http://www.gobiernoenlinea.ve/
List of Venezuela Acronyms
The most commonly used abbreviations about Venezuela are VE which stands for Venezuela and VES which means Petro Bolívar Soberano (Venezuela currency). In the following table, you can see all acronyms related to Venezuela, including abbreviations for airport, city, school, port, government, and etc.
Geography
Venezuela is often divided into four parts: the fertile lowlands around Lake Maracaibo in the northwest, the Andes and the Andean highlands in the west, the grasslands inland and the Guyanese highlands in the southeast. Much of the country’s oil is produced in the shallow Maracaibo Lake. Although the sea is often called the continent’s largest lake, it is actually a brackish water basin in the sea. The prairie-like area in the east, Los Llanos, is used for grazing land and accounts for one third of the land area. Guiana Highland in the southeast covers half of the country and consists of savanna and rainforest.
Venezuela has nearly 300 islands and over a thousand rivers. The country also has the world’s highest waterfall, the Angel Falls, which is over 979 meters high. Most of Venezuela has a tropical climate. Temperatures in the country vary with the large elevation differences. The rainy season from April to November is referred to as winter, while the dry period from December to April is called summer.
History
Venezuela was populated by Native American tribes when the Spaniards arrived in the area in 1498. Spain ruled the country from 1567 to 1821, when the hero of the revolution Simón Bolívar won a ten-year war of independence. He tried to rally a Great Colombia, but this collapsed in 1830, and Venezuela became an independent republic. The next hundred years were unstable, with ever-changing rulers out of control of the country.
Only in 1959 was the country given a democratically elected government. To create stability and democracy, the two largest parties chose to switch to power. Going forward during this period, Venezuela achieved the highest standard of living in Latin America, until oil revenues dropped in the 1980s. At the same time, both the population and the foreign debt grew, and the differences between poor and rich increased.
The country experienced a troubled period of coup attempt from the 1980s, until Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998. He spent the oil money on a socialist social project he called the Bolivarian Revolution: People were lifted out of poverty, and economic inequality became severe reduced.
Hugo Chávez died in 2013 and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro. Since 2014, Venezuela has been hit by an economic crisis that has led to crime, hunger and serious human rights violations.
Society and politics
Venezuela is a federal republic where the president is head of state and government. The president is elected for six years at a time and can sit for an unlimited number of periods. Parliament is elected for five years at a time, but the Supreme Court deprived the legislative assembly of all real power in 2017. A new constitution was passed in 1999; then the president was given authority as commander in chief.
The country’s courts support the government, and the legal security of its citizens is poor. At the same time, Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and corruption permeates the military.
The economic crisis has created fierce protests, which have been hard hit. Neighboring countries such as Colombia, Brazil and Peru have criticized the Maduro government for human rights violations and the catastrophic handling of the economic crisis. At the same time, the United States has imposed several sanctions on the country. Maduro won a new, undemocratic election in 2018, which the opposition criticized and boycotted. When Chávez became president, he concentrated his power on the president, forming alliances with the courts and the military, which were later reinforced by Maduro.
In 2018, the UN reported that since 2015, more than 500 people have been killed by security forces, and more than 3 million people have fled due to violence, hyperinflation and food shortages. During this time, the proportion of poverty increased from 30 to 90 per cent. Venezuela is one of the countries in the world with the most crime; Robbery, killings and kidnappings characterize the country and many people have been killed in political demonstrations.
Economics and Commerce
Venezuela is in deep economic crisis today. In Maduro’s first presidential term, GDP fell by at least 30 percent, a fall only comparable to the Great Depression in the United States in 1929-32.
The country has more oil than any other country in the world, in addition to large deposits of coal, gold and other natural resources. Yet many people live in poverty. Before the fall in oil prices, oil accounted for 95 percent of export revenues, half of the state’s revenues, and a quarter of the country’s economic output (GDP). In good economic times, the oil has given the state money to invest in welfare and infrastructure, but oil dependency has also made Venezuela vulnerable to fluctuations in oil prices – instead of investing in food production, the country has used oil money to import two-thirds of the food Venezuela needed.
Under Chávez, the economy was largely nationalized. The state became the owner of the oil, agriculture, banking, mining, telecommunications, electricity, transport and tourism sectors. The economy became unattractive for international investment, and state control of currency and prices led to the development of an unofficial black-dollar economy with the US dollar as well, because high inflation (inflation) caused Venezuelan money to lose value quickly.
After a huge fall in oil prices in 2014, Venezuela’s economy was severely deteriorated by hyperinflation and shortages of goods such as food, electricity and medicines. Venezuela also suffers from high corruption.
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