Cruises in Venezuela

The Venezuela (official name in Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela, in Italian: Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) is a federal and democratic republic located in the north of South America. It is part of Latin America or Latin America. It was the first Latin American State to emancipate itself from the Spanish Crown and proclaim its independence on July 5, 1811. Its capital is Caracas. The country, currently structured in 23 States and a federal district (currently defined as Distrito Capital), is bordered to the north by the Caribbean Sea (which in turn includes the maritime border with the Dominican Republic, Aruba, Dutch Antilles, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Trinidad and Tobago), to the east it borders Guyana, to the south and south-east with Brazil, to the west and south-west with Colombia. Venezuela covers a total land area of 916,445 km², including the cross-continental, the island of Margarita and the Venezuelan federal dependencies. The northernmost point of its territory is represented by the island of Aves. The country exercises sovereignty over 860,000 km² of sea surface under the concept of Exclusive Economic Zone. Venezuela also has a historical territorial dispute with Guyana over an area of approximately 159,500 square kilometers included in the Guayana Esequiba located along the eastern border, designated as Zona en Reclamación. The territory currently forming part of Venezuela was inhabited by some Amerindian tribal groups including the Caribe and Arawak. It was discovered by Christopher Columbus, in the service of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, in 1498. From this period the colonization by Spain and the process of ethnic and cultural mixing began. After the proclamation of independence and for a large part of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, due to internal instability and a series of civil struggles, Venezuela failed to achieve satisfactory economic development. It was only starting from the second half of the twentieth century, with the massive European immigration (including many Italians) and the intensive exploitation of its mineral resources (and in particular oil) that it began to modernize rapidly, experiencing strong economic growth. At the end of the 1950s of the 20th century, in the aftermath of the fall of the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1958) a democratic system of government was imposed in the country, in force to this day. Venezuela is still considered a developing country with an economy based mainly on the extraction, refining and marketing of oil and other mineral resources. Agriculture is now of little importance while industry has had uneven development in recent decades (for the most part it is still an assembly and assembly industry). It is considered as one of the 17 countries with the greatest ecological diversity in the world, with a varied geography that combines tropical regions, desert climates, jungles, vast plains and Andean environments. In this State there is the largest protected area in Latin America (known as: Zones subject to a special administrative regime), which covers about 63% of the national territory. Its population counts approximately 28 million inhabitants (2008) largely metics born from the crossbreeding of indigenous ethnic groups with whites generally of Spanish origin and with Creoles and Africans. There are also many Europeans (Spanish, Italians and Portuguese in particular) and their descendants in the country, while the indigenous people in the pure state and the Asians represent a negligible part of the population. The multi-ethnicity of Venezuela has strongly influenced both its social and cultural life and art. The current head of state is Nicolás Maduro. The official language is Spanish.