Venezuela, on the Caribbean coast of northern South America, is a country of striking natural beauty, ranging from the snow-capped Andean peaks in the west, through the Amazonian jungles in the south, to the beaches of the north.
Among the most highly urbanised countries in Latin America, Venezuela is the fifth largest oil exporting country in the world with the largest reserves of heavy crude oil as well as huge quantities of coal, iron ore, bauxite and gold.
Despite this, most of the 28m Venezuelans live in poverty, many of them in shanty towns, some of which sprawl over the hillsides around the capital, Caracas. Unemployment is high and, according to official figures, around 60% of households are poor.
President Hugo Chávez, a firebrand former paratrooper, was elected President in 1998 on a promise to aid Venezuela's poor, who re-elected him in 2000 and in 2006. Chávez says he is leading the country - which has enjoyed a windfall from high oil prices in recent years - through a socialist revolution.
This revolution has split the country between his red-wearing supporters and the opposition, mainly the upper and middle classes, who have staged massive protests against his rule and unsuccessfully tried to end it in a 2004 recall referendum.
After Chávez won a third term in elections in December 2006, he was granted sweeping powers to rule by decree for the next 18 months and used them to nationalise key sectors of the economy, assert more control over the oil industry and to raise taxes on the rich. His opponents say the new laws he introduced amount to an abuse of power.
Chávez has diverted up to $14bn a year of Venezuela's record oil revenue into social spending on grass roots projects to combat disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty, and other social ills. He has also exported his revolutionary values via cheap oil deals from Bolivia and Nicaragua to, controversially, Boston, the Bronx and London (this last brokered by left wing former London Mayor Ken Livingstone and cancelled last May by new Tory Mayor Boris Johnson).
Part 2 continues here
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