Pre-Chavez Economy

History of Venezuela

Colonial Economy:

• Spanish expenditionaries arrived in what is present-day Venezuela in 1498, but generally neglated the area because of its apparent lack of mineral wealth
• Encomienda is a system where the Spanish crown granted rights over Indian labor and tribute to individual colonists, who in turn undertook to maintain order and to propogate Christianity among the Indians
• The Spanish crown officially ended the encomienda system in 1687, and enslaved Africans replaced the majority of Indian labor
• This time was dominated by a plantation culture, more closely resembling the systems of the Carribbean Islands than that of a South American territory
• Colonial authorities organized the local Indians into an encomienda system to grow tobacco, cotten, indigo, and cocoa