Portal:Venezuela

Coffee production in Venezuela began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the premontane region of the Andes Mountains. José Gumilla, a Jesuit priest, is credited with introducing coffee into Venezuela, in 1732. Its production is attributed to the large demand for the product, coupled with cheap labour and low land costs. It was first exported to Brazil. Coffee production in Venezuela led to the "complex migration" of people to this region in the late nineteenth century. Though Venezuela was ranked close to Colombia at one time in coffee production, by 2001, it produced less than one percent of the world's coffee. (Full article...)

Official portrait, 2007

Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician, revolutionary, and military officer who was the president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. Chávez changed the country's name from the Republic of Venezuela to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, creating the fifth republic in Venezuelan history and led the Bolivarian Revolution. Chávez was the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the ruling party of Venezuela since 2007. The political ideology centered around Chávez's ideas is known as Chavismo.

Born into a middle-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer. After becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system based on the Puntofijo Pact, he founded the 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. (Full article...)

• October 8, 1993 — Birth of Garbiñe Muguruza, Spanish-Venezuelan tennis champion (2016, 2017) and former world #1
• October 9, 1557 — In the Venezuelan Andes, Captain Diego García de Paredes founds the village of Trujillo
• October 11, 1980 — Baruj Benacerraf wins the Nobel Prize for Medicine
• October 12, 1966 — "The Anacoco Crisis" erupts between Guyana and Venezuela over the sovereignty of the eastern part of Ankoko Island, a 28 km² river island on the Cuyuní River, part of the boundary of the disputed area of Guayana Esequiba
• October 17, 2004 — The Twin Towers of Central Park are bombed, with a resulting fire destroying the East Tower
• October 18, 1945 – A group of the Venezuelan Armed Forces stages a coup d'état against President Isaías Medina Angarita, who is overthrown by the end of the day
• October 26, 2016 — Protests marches are held after the recall referendum against the Maduro administration is suspended
• October 28, 1875 — The National Pantheon of Venezuela is inaugurated
• October 29, 1988 — The Massacre of El Amparo occurs, with 14 fisherman murdered
• October 29, 2008 — Venezuela begins its space race, with the help of China, launching the Simón Bolívar Satellite part of the Venesat-1 project
• October 30, 1817 – Simón Bolívar becomes President of the Third Republic of Venezuela

• ... that a Venezuelan fishing town of 3,000 people produced three generations of professional baseball players?
• ... that the flag of La Guaira is based on the design of a banner from a 1797 conspiracy against Spanish rule in Venezuela?
• ... that Manuel Aguirre was the first Jesuit to become a naturalized citizen of Venezuela?
• ... that Juan de Casas, the Spanish military governor of Venezuela, cried after the French demanded that he accept a Frenchman as king?
• ... that the current flag of Falcón, a state of Venezuela, was first hoisted at the Monument to the Venezuelan Federation in 2006 and is based on the design of the 1806 naval flag of Francisco de Miranda?
• ... that Pedro Berroeta Morales, a diplomat and later the president of a Venezuelan television channel, has also written fiction and essays on topics from science to esotericism?

A bronze statue of Luis Aparicio, the namesake of the award

The Luis Aparicio Award is given annually to a Venezuelan player in Major League Baseball (MLB) who is judged to have recorded the best individual performance in that year. The winner of the award is determined by a vote conducted by Venezuelan sports journalists and Spanish-language media around the world. It is named after former MLB shortstop Luis Aparicio, who is the only player from Venezuela to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The award was first presented in 2004, and was created in order to honour Aparicio's major league career and to commemorate his father, who died thirteen years before his son was elected into the Hall of Fame.

Johan Santana, Jose Altuve, Miguel Cabrera, and Ronald Acuña Jr. are the only players to win the Luis Aparicio Award more than once, with Cabrera having won the award five times. Cabrera won the MLB Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award and Hank Aaron Award alongside the Luis Aparicio Award in 2012 and 2013, becoming the first Venezuelan to win the MLB MVP Award. Santana, the 2004 and 2006 recipient, also won the Cy Young Award in those two years, winning by a unanimous vote on each occasion. Altuve is the only player to win the Luis Aparicio Award, the MVP award, and become a World Series champion in the same season in 2017. He has also won a batting title in three of his four award seasons. Santana (2006) and Cabrera (2012) are the only award winners to also earn the pitching and batting Triple Crown respectively in the same season. In accomplishing the feat, Cabrera became the first player in 45 years to achieve a Triple Crown in batting since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967, while Santana became the first pitcher since Dwight Gooden in 1985 to secure a "Major League Triple Crown" by leading all of MLB in wins, earned run average and strikeouts. Francisco Rodríguez compiled a major league record of 62 saves in a single season in 2008 and went on to win the Rolaids Relief Man Award in the same year as the Luis Aparicio Award. Five winners, Cabrera, Altuve, Magglio Ordóñez, Carlos González, and Arráez, were batting champions in their respective leagues in the same year they won the award. (Full article...)

27 October 2026 – War on drugs

A bomb explodes near a bridge in Cúcuta, Colombia, at the border with Venezuela, injuring four police officers. (AP)

25 October 2026 – Crisis in Venezuela

Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado announces she has returned to Venezuela from exile. (CNN)