Venezuela

Venezuela, oh Venezuela. Small Latin American country known for its exports: Oil, Telenovelas, oil, beauty queens, presidential theatrics, oil, baseball players, cocoa, oil, sugarcane, and oil. I'm serious about those: we have very good cocoa, and rums only rivalizing with the Cuban ones. There was also a president who starts Flame Wars via his very existence. His name was Hugo Chávez.

The name means "Little Venice" in Italian; according to legend it was given to the country by early explorer Amerigo Vespucci (who lent his own name to the American continents as a whole). This was a reference to the natives building settlements out on Lake Maracaibo, which reminded him of Venice. However he was not the first European to explore the country; a few years earlier Christopher Columbus himself came there and described the land effusively, comparing it to Paradise. He coined the name "Land of Grace", which remains a nickname for Venezuela.

Since Venezuela was one of the less fortunates among Spain's former colonies (not having something exploitable besides coffee and cocoa), it never was truly important until a rich dude named Simon Bolivar appeared around the early 1810's and proclaimed that his small province was independent since that moment. Then he decided to take his Independence Tour for some nearby territories, until forming five countries who called him "The Liberator". Then he began a long agony, politically and physically, until he died of exhaustion and TBG in 1830.

After Bolivar died, the country began a long period of caudillism, small civil wars and more caudillistic dictators until someone found Oil in the early 1900's. Then began another long period of intercalating dictatorship and democracy which culminates in the current political situation where actually no one knows how to call it. Let's say we're still in a very perverted version of democracy and stop the political discussion.

Venezuela is rarely mentioned in media not produced by Venezuelans, but lately it seemed a alarmingly increasing trend of mentioning its capital Caracas as the place from where drug traffickers and people with exotic diseases came from. The latter tended to be a bit weird because Venezuela is a country where its population is mostly urban, and most of the diseases the voyagers export were controlled a lot of years ago even in some of the most distant areas, and there is a highly enforced policy of vaccinating tourists before going to the riskier areas, but sadly due to the ongoing crises that become Truth in Television again.

If you see a Venezuelan in your country media, chances are that this one is a very gorgeous woman, probably a beauty queen. Venezuela has been famous for winning a lot of beauty pageants, near only with India and Puerto Rico. Venezuelans are very proud of the beauty of their women and take beauty pageants seriously, but don't like the misinterpretations on their integrity: when in Kill Bill one of the women with a criminal has a "Miss Venezuela" band, there was a big uproar.

Venezuela is also the only country in Latin America where the "everyman" sport is Baseball instead of Football (Soccer). Kids in the poorer areas play using a broom stick as a bat and bottle caps if they can't find balls. Baseball is very strong, with very active small and professional leagues, and the aspiration of most kids is becoming a Mayor League player. There was a great motive of national pride when the manager who broke the "Black Sox Curse" was a Venezuelan, Ozzie Guillen.

Venezuelan Soap Opera industry is a little bipolar: It can't decide between being Pink or Modern. Some of their most famous exportations were classic pink soaps (the most famous one, Kassandra, made congress meetings stop and even the battles in Kosovo's war in The Nineties), but as a consequence of the "Cultural Telenovela" movement in the 1970's and early 1980's (where some scriptwitters began adapting Venezuelan Literature classics and then followed to touch controversial topics) there is a lot of experimentation, with results ranging from the successful, to the unmentionable.

Famous Venezuelans (bar Mr. Chávez) and Venezuelan things:

 * Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. AKA Carlos the Jackal. A terrorist with far more fame than actual "quality" as a terrorist, he is now serving life in a French prison.
 * As well as being the villain in The Bourne Series, he has appeared elsewhere and inspired a few people along the way.
 * I think you are referring to Edgar Ramirez the actor. Who is Venezuelan too.
 * La Gran Sabana, a.k.a the mix of plains, jungle and table mountains at the south of the country. No, really; the place have appeared in a lot of movies. Half of the plot of Jinki Extend happens there, as also the entirety of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World".
 * The place is also the inspiration for many backgrounds in Pixar's upcoming film Up. Having producers marveling about the existence of such fantastic sceneries is a compliment powerfully enough to turn the most unpatriotic person into a mess of national pride.
 * Wilmer Valderrama, Fez from That 70's Show.
 * And speaking of anime, there is a Venezuelan pilot in the anime Gigantic Formula. As you can expect, she is a Wrench Wench Spicy Latina.
 * Patricia Velazquez, the girl who was the Egyptian princess in The Mummy Trilogy, who also is a supermodel.
 * María Conchita Alonso, one of the actresses who predated the wave of Latin actress moving to Hollywood for about 20 years. Because she did it before it was fashionable to have a Latin Hottie in your film, she was forced to do tertiary roles and a lot of B movies. Her most memorable role was in that version of The Running Man starred by Arnold Schwarzenegger; she was the romantic interest. Her latests stunt was her Judge role in the VH-1 reality Viva Hollywood. For a while, she claimed to be Cuban, probably to appeal to the Miami market.
 * She's actually cuban-born, but her family moved to Venezuela when she was still a toddler.
 * Simón Díaz, famous actor and folklore musician. Inside the country, he is more remembered either as a comedic actor for those born before The Eighties, and as the beloved "Tío (Uncle) Simón" for the kids who born and grew up in that decade and after (Think about him like a Venezuelan Mr. Rogers). Outside the country, he is more known as a musician: a lot of his songs have been Covered Up to tears, and he is the author of the official song for May December Romances, "Caballo Viejo". He has given a honorary Grammy in 2008.
 * Famous 90's One-Hit Wonder La Macarena. Okey, the duo who sang it was Spanish, but they did get inspiration from a Venezuelan flamenco dancer named Diana Patricia they met during a Latin American tour.
 * Quite a lot of Beauty Contest Winners. The most notorious were Irene Saez (Miss Universe, won in 1981, and become Mayor of Venezuela's richest municipality in the late Nineties), Alicia Machado (the one Miss Universe who Donald Trump publicly forced on diet after she gained about 20 kilograms just months after her 1996's victory), the 2008 Miss Universe Winner, Dayama Mendoza (the one with the yellow dress), and 2009 Miss universe Winner Stefanía Fernández (the only time in this contest where two consecutive winners were from the same country).
 * And Hugo Chávez.

Venezuela in fiction:

 * In the seventh episode of Heroes, Maya and Alejandro are briefly seen in a church located in Zulia State, months before their arrival to the US.
 * The unnamed main character in the Argentinian novel La Invención de Morel is an exiled Venezuelan.

The Venezuelan flag
Said