Venezuela: Progress and Trouble

Venezuela has twice suffered an abrupt intrusion of the technology and culture of more highly developed societies. The Spanish invasion suddenly introduced a European way of life into a country in the same latitude as Guinea—that is, into an environment that by nature
is not hospitable to it. Venezuelan life, like that of all the Latin-American world, is mountain life. In the southern half of the country, the savannahs on the Orinoco and its swampy delta are, for all practical purpose...