Where Does Our Interest in Venezuela Come From?

Abstract

Until recently, very few people in the world heard of Venezuela. It was known that the seventh largest country in Latin America had a relatively well-established democracy, was friendly to immigrants, and rich in natural resources. And that was basically it – since the beginning of 1958 and the fall of the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, when Venezuela entered the path to democratic development, it has not fed the world press with any sensational news. From a detached, European perspective, with its often distorted Euro-centric point of view, there has been nothing special about Venezuela to distinguish it from among other Latin American countries.