Portal:Venezuela

The Andean condor (Vultur gryphus) is a South American New World vulture and is the only member of the genus Vultur. It is found in the Andes mountains and adjacent Pacific coasts of western South America. With a maximum wingspan of 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in) and weight of 15 kg (33 lb), the Andean condor is one of the largest flying birds in the world, and is generally considered to be the largest bird of prey in the world.

It is a large black vulture with a ruff of white feathers surrounding the base of the neck and, especially in the male, large white patches on the wings. The head and neck are nearly featherless, and are a dull red color, which may flush and therefore change color in response to the bird's emotional state. In the male, there is a wattle on the neck and a large, dark red comb or caruncle on the crown of the head. The female condor is smaller than the male, an exception to the usual sexual dimorphism seen in birds of prey. (Full article...)

Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as] ^ⓘ; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician and military officer who served as president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period of forty-seven hours in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he led until 2012.

Born into a middle-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer and, after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system based on the Puntofijo Pact, he founded the clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s. Chávez led the MBR-200 in its unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Pardoned from prison two years later, he founded the Fifth Republic Movement political party, and then receiving 56.2% of the vote, was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He was re-elected in 2000 with 59.8% of the vote and again in 2006 with 62.8% of the vote. After winning his fourth term as president in the October 2012 presidential election with 55.1% of the vote, he was to be sworn in on 10 January 2013. However, the inauguration was postponed due to his cancer treatment, and on 5 March at age 58, he died in Caracas. (Full article...)

• May 2, 1816 – The Battle of Los Frailes is fought around the Los Frailes Archipelago.
• May 2, 1952 – The Sierra Nevada National Park is founded.
• May 3, 1502 – In present-day Venezuela, the Spanish conquistadors led by Alonso de Ojeda founded the village of Santa Cruz de Coquibacoa, the first European settlement in the Americas.
• May 5, 1883 – Birth of Eleazar López Contreras, soldier and politician, President of Venezuela (d. 1973)
• May 6, 1873 – Death of José Antonio Páez, politician and independence leader, three-time President of Venezuela (b. 1790)
• May 13, 1958 – During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, US Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by anti-American demonstrators.
• May 14, 1777 – In Madrid, Carlos III created the Protomedicato de Caracas by royal decree, thus beginning medical studies in Venezuela.
• May 18, 1499 – Alonso de Ojeda sets sail from Cádiz on his voyage to what is now Venezuela.
• May 21, 2014 – Death of Jaime Lusinchi, physician and politician, President of Venezuela (b. 1924)
• May 24, 1813 – South American independence leader Simón Bolívar enters Mérida, leading the invasion of Venezuela, and is proclaimed El Libertador ("The Liberator").
• May 27, 1924 – Birth of Jaime Lusinchi, physician and politician, President of Venezuela (d. 2014)
• May 27, 2007 – Hugo Chávez controversially closes the private television station Radio Caracas Television (RCTV); the next day he replaces it with a state-run television service.

• ... that Gil Kim played professional baseball in the Netherlands, China, Australia, Spain, and Venezuela, scouted in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, and coaches in Canada?
• ... that Julio Mayora was most happy about winning his silver medal for Venezuela at the 2020 Summer Olympics because it meant the government might give his mother a house?
• ... that after fleeing the Spanish Civil War to Venezuela, Spanish anarchist Concha Liaño became a supporter of Hugo Chávez?
• ... that during the Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003, all but one of Venezuelan chocolatier María Fernanda Di Giacobbe's ten businesses went bankrupt?
• ... that when elected as mayor, Venezuelan politician Gloria Lizárraga de Capriles did not have her own office and worked from a shopping mall?
• ... that Carlos Santana Tovar, who represented Amazonas in the 1952 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly, was taken hostage during the 1921 revolution and escaped only years later?

The University City of Caracas is a World Heritage Site in Caracas, Venezuela. It is a functional university campus for the Central University of Venezuela, as well as home to 108 notable works of art and famous examples of creative architecture. Many works of art are modernist and mosaic. The campus was designed by architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva, who oversaw much of the construction and design work, with the artwork overseen by Mateo Manaure.

Villanueva primarily enlisted artists who were either European or had European influences – Villanueva himself had been inspired for the campus design in Paris – including members of Los Disidentes, a group of Venezuelan artists who left for Europe to break from the Mexican mural tradition. Some artists did not initially want to work on the project, as they were opposed to the military dictatorship in place in Venezuela at the time, but French artist Fernand Léger encouraged them to participate by saying that "dictatorships pass but art remains"; part of Villanueva's intention was unity. Latin American art scholar Monica Amor wrote that Villanueva's Synthesis of the Arts philosophy, inspired by an André Bloc approach, "advocated a strong humanist approach to urban issues of reconstruction and social healing after the devastation of World War II." Amor noted that debate surrounding the dictatorship's funding of the project, and its realization in this context, persists into the 21st century. (Full article...)

11 July 2024 –

The U.S. Treasury Department and the White House announce sanctions on the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua and designate it as a "transnational criminal organization." The State Department also places a $12 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the organization's leaders. (Reuters)

3 July 2024 – 2024 Atlantic hurricane season

The death toll from Hurricane Beryl in the eastern Caribbean increases to nine, with deaths reported in Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela. (Reuters)