Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0399/03991.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 32KB | 494 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03991}
$Pretitle{271}
$Title{Venezuela
Chapter 4A.   Social System}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Kathyrn Therese Johnson}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{class
social
rural
lower
status
system
government
population
society
upper}
$Date{1976}
$Log{}
Country:     Venezuela
Book:        Venezuela, A Country Study
Author:      Kathyrn Therese Johnson
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1976

Chapter 4A.   Social System

     Throughout most of its history Venezuela remained a poor country with a
rigidly stratified, largely rural population. The political system was one in
which shifting factions loosely organized around a caudillo vied for dominance
over the virtually disenfranchised masses. The economy was largely controlled
by an upper class of relatively wealthy landowners whose status derived from
white skin and a Hispanic cultural legacy and whose income came from coffee
and cacao plantations. Although it held national power, prestige, and wealth
to a greater degree than any other class, the upper stratum never formed a
cohesive, invincible oligarchy as similar groups had done throughout the rest
of the continent (see ch. 3).

     Below this fragmented upper class was a small middle class and a lower
class, comprising the bulk of the population. Lower class persons were usually
peasants of mixed descent, who frequently possessed values, life-styles,
family patterns, and religious practices very different from those of the
upper class and who were marginal to the decisionmaking process in every
sphere. Their position in the socioeconomic structure was a weak and dependent
one, and their political role was one of passive acceptance. Chances for
mobility-either social or geographic-were extremely limited.

     Between the 1920s and the 1970s the society underwent remarkable changes
because of the discovery of oil. Venezuela emerged as an urbanized, wealthy,
and powerful nation which has been strengthened by a democratically elected
government since 1959. The economic and subsequently the demographic
structures were altered; the traditional agricultural-based economy was
transformed into a modern industrial-based system. The economic changeover was
accompanied by intense rural-to-urban migration and by rapid decline and
stagnation in the rural sector. The introduction of new techniques, modern
structures, and opportunities for accruing wealth in nontraditional ways also
produced a number of effects on the previously static society. A great deal of
occupational differentiation took place, and Venezuelans became a highly
mobile people, moving from place to place and job to job. Traditional values
changed in ways that made the society more open and class boundaries somewhat
more flexible. The ongoing process of value modification has also contributed
to social change in the late 1970s.

     Although few observers-in or outside Venezuela-have disputed the dynamic
and irreversible quality of the changes, there was considerable disagreement
over their nature and comprehensiveness. Some insisted that the social system
had been fundamentally changed; others argued that the net effect had been
simply an expansion and diversification of the three-class system. Observers
in the latter group stated that the economic changes had not erased
interethnic or class boundaries, but had made them slightly more permeable and
had improved mobility for all Venezuelans so that the majority of the
population moved up with little change in relative rank.

     Governments of the 1960s and early 1970s have stressed the need for a
more egalitarian society and the importance of government-directed social
reform. Legislation and rhetoric have stressed the need to eliminate
traditional ethnic and class boundaries and increase opportunities for
everyone. Increasing emphasis has been placed on bringing the marginal lower
class-a diminishing but still large percentage of the total population-into
active participation in the socioeconomic and political systems through
improvements in educational, health, communication, and welfare services as
well as through a conscious effort at upgrading Venezuela's unique folk
heritage and capitalizing on budding feelings of national pride. Because of
governmental efforts to guide and finance attempts at social change, Venezuela
stood a greater chance of effecting sweeping social change as it entered the
final quarter of the twentieth century than at any other time in its history.

Development of Venezuelan Society

     The Venezuelan society is an amalgam of three races. Although ethnic
background was an important criterion of status in colonial times, it became
less so as mestizaje (see Glossary) made distinguishing between racial types
increasingly difficult. Eventually ethnic categories came to be regarded as
points along a continuum rather than as discrete entities, and physical
appearance and skin color-instead of ethnic group per se-became major criteria
for determining status. No national census has classified Venezuelans
according to ethnicity since 1926, so only rough estimates of the national
ethnic composition can be made. In the mid-1970s between 10 and 25 percent
were white, between 3 and 10 percent black, and between 4 and 7 percent
mulatto; less than 1 percent were Indian, and between 60 and 90 percent were
mestizos, a mixture of any of the four. The only consideration given to such
categories in subsequent censuses was in the form of a separate count of
tribal Indians.

     At the beginning of the sixteenth century the territory that is
present-day Venezuela was a kaleidoscope of Indian groups of widely varying
cultures and linguistic affiliations. The more advanced groups were ruled by a
chief and supported a priesthood to serve the local temples, whereas the more
primitive groups lived as wandering hunters and gatherers or as seminomadic
slash-and-burn farmers. The Spanish conquest resulted in a rapid and
widespread extermination of indigenous groups. Enslavement under inhuman
conditions, constant warfare, epidemics of hitherto unknown diseases, and
famines all took immediate tolls. No population statistics are available, and
it is impossible to estimate the loss of Indian life in the first years of
Spanish rule, but in can be stated with certainty that in the first century of
that rule at least twenty of the most populous tribes became extinct.

     With the settlement of permanent and stable Spanish colonies based on
cattle ranching and the commercial planting of cacao and tobacco-essentially
completed by the end of the sixteenth century-Spain introduced institutions
that at once sought to bring the remaining Indians under economic and
political control and convert them to Christianity. Mission outposts were
founded by various religious orders. A system that dispersed groups of Indians
and forcibly resettled them in accessible towns under the supervision of
church authorities was known as reducciones. Under another system, the
encomienda, individual colonists were given the right to collect tribute from
Indians within a specific territory in return for undertaking their religious
conversion. Each of these systems of pacification and conversion made a
profound cultural impact on the native peoples. The traditional political and
ritual forms, and with them the tribal identities of their members, passed
out of existence. Loss of cultural identity was paralleled by mestizaje. The
earliest invaders brought no Spanish women and, although most half-breed
offspring were raised by material kin, it was not uncommon for mestizos to be
legitimized and raised by their fathers as Spaniards.

     By the end of the sixteenth century the role of the Indians in the
national ethnic structure had been fully set. The most populous tribes-those
of the chiefdoms-were virtually extinct, their surviving members reduced to
bondage under the Spaniards. Remnants of once numerous and powerful tribes
fled to less accessible and therefore more desirable territory-p