My Life in Venezuela

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Venezuelan elite traditionally has placed a high value on education and cultural attainment. In the 19th century, Venezuela's anticlerical rulers supported secular public education and patronized writers, poets, and painters. Promotion of literary and artistic expression appeared as the primary purpose of a "public" school system that, in fact, was inaccessible to the great majority of the children of the republic. Exclusiveness and preoccupation with academic subjects traditionally characterized Venezuelan education. But when a democratic and nationalistic regime came to power in 1958, it was determined to spread all the benefits of learning and culture to all citizens, and to provide the necessary technical training for Venezuelans to take over from foreigners the development of the country's natural resources. Education. Venezuela has made great strides in education since the democratic revolution of 1958. Total school enrollments, 845,000 in 1958, surpassed 2.5 million two decades later. The literacy rate, barely above 50% in the 1950s, reached 93% in 2001. As a percentage of government spending, outlays for public education doubled to 25% in 1973 and have remained above 20% since then. For Venezuela's private, mostly church-related, primary and secondary schools, expenditures and enrollments have increased in absolute terms although their share of the country's growing school population has decreased from 20% in the 1950s to about 15% in the early 2000s. Although state and municipal governments operate primary and secondary schools, about 75% of Venezuela's students attend schools directly administered by the national government. Budgeting and curriculum for these national schools are controlled by the ministry of education in Caracas, which has increasingly emphasized vocational and technical education at the secondary level. The national government also maintains an extensive adult-education system, which offers basic literacy courses as well as job training for the unskilled. These schools and programs benefit mostly urban or industrializing areas. Although education is legally free and compulsory to age 14, many youngsters in remote areas have no school to attend—or have access only to a single-room, multigrade school staffed by one inadequately trained teacher. Institutions of higher learning include the Central University of Venezuela and Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, other major national universities in Maracaibo and Mérida, and smaller public and private institutions in various parts of the country. The national university system is tuition-free and offers a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs. Promising students, especially in scientific fields, may be sent to study at leading foreign universities on Venezuelan government scholarships. Culture. Venezuela was led to independence by Simón Bolívar, a statesman of towering intellect and extraordinary literary skill. The letters, essays, and manifestos of the Liberator, together with those of his sometime mentor, Andrés Bello, are the best examples of early 19th-century Venezuelan prose. Bello, also a renowned poet, spent most of his life in exile in England and Chile. Other poets, such as José Antonio Maitín and Abigaíl Lozano, flourished in Venezuela even under the worst dictators. The tyrannical Antonio Guzmán Blanco was, in fact, a great patron of the arts: his government (1870–1888) built the Caracas Music Theater, subsidized composers and performers, and founded the Academy of Fine Arts. A Francophile, Guzmán chose as his official artist Paris-trained Martín Tovar y Tovar, who brought to Venezuela the best techniques of French romantic painting. Arturo Michelena, a Tovar disciple, became one of South America's finest artists. After Guzmán Blanco, Venezuela's most notable despot was the unschooled Juan Vicente Gómez, who had only contempt for the arts. However, his brutal regime (1908–1935) inspired some impressive literary works of social and political protest. The short stories of Rufino Blanco Fombona, a master of poetry as well as prose, are often thinly veiled attacks on the dictator and his supporters. Naturalistic novels such as Rómulo Gallegos' Doña Bárbara (1929; Doña Barbara, 1931) highlight a strain of barbaric cruelty in the Venezuelan character. Nonfiction from the period includes Rómulo Betancourt's account of his own incarceration, Dos meses en las cárceles de Gómez (1928; "Two Months in Gómez' Jails"). Arturo Uslar Pietri's El camino de El Dorado (1947; "The Road to El Dorado") treats the rebellion of the conquistador Lope de Aguirre against Spain in 1560. Salvador Garmendia is the leading contemporary novelist. Under such cultivated presidents as Betancourt and Gallegos, the democratic revolution has promoted artistic expression in many forms, including folk art. Mural painters and sculptors have been commissioned to enhance the modernistic structures of the Central University, rebuilt under the direction of architect Carlos Raúl Villaneuva. The government subsidizes the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra and offers prizes annually for music, literature, and drama. Emphasis on nationalism has led to the incorporation of folk themes into symphonic music and the ballet. Attention has been given to Venezuela's national dance, the joropo, which is accompanied by maracas and a four-stringed guitar. Despite official interest in drama, Venezuela has little legitimate theater, and film production is largely confined to news and documentaries. Mass Communications Media. Movie theaters featuring foreign films—including many from the United States, with Spanish subtitles—are well attended. Some foreign programs are shown on television, available in major urban areas, but law requires that broadcasting be 50% live or locally recorded. Radio, reaching every part of the country through more than 200 stations, remains the most effective mass medium. In the 21st century the government exerted increased control over the mass media. Caracas newspapers are airlifted daily to Venezuela's other cities and major towns, where they are read by the local elites. Weekly magazines, also published in Caracas, cover current events with heavy reliance on photographs.