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Venezuela was Colonized by Spain in the 1500s.
People in the area fought for independence under Simon Bolivar and others in the 1810s and 1820s. Essetially the current independent country of Venezuela was formed in 1830.
Venezuela got fairly rich from its oil. It once had the highest per-capita GDP in Latin America.
Venezuela was mostly ruled by various strongmen and military goverments until 1958. Since then it has been ruled by democratically elected presidents.
In 1992 President Carlos Andres Perez was doing austerity measures under the standard IMF model of the time. As a result of course he was unpopular. Hugo Chavez tried to overthrow Perez. Chavez failed and was jailed. His supporters tried a second coup, which also failed. Chavez was later pardoned.
In 1998 Chavez was elected president. He initiated land reform and nationalized industry. In 1999 a national referendum overwhelmingly approved a new constitution giving the state stronger role in society and industry - i.e., affirming Chavez' agenda.
Of course the US and its client states began all sorts of attempts to get rid of Chavez.
In 2001 the Spanish armed forces did an exercise simulating an attack on Venezuela. US and Nato assisted the exercise.
In 2002 a US-backed coup brought Chavez down for a couple of days, but ultimately collapsed. Chavez resumed power.
In 2003 the US backed employer-sponsored "strikes".
In 2004 the US backed a referendum to try to pull Chavez from power. Chavez won by about 60% the "right" to finish his term.
In 2005 Venezuela signed a new oil agreement with its Caribbean neighbors.
In 2006 Chavez won his third election with about 60% of the vote.
In 2007 Chavez nationalized yet more industry.
Since his first election, Chavez has pushed people-oriented policies like land reform and nationalizing industry, in particular using profits from the national oil industry to help the poor. As a result of course he is very popular with the Venezuelan people. The US has tried to get rid of him. While this isn't widely known in the USA, it is widely known in Venezuela. Popular opinion in Venezuela is happy with their president and proud of how he has stood up to the US attempts to bring him down and thereby threaten the well-being of the people.
The US role in Venezuela has been consistent. The US supported Marcos Perez Jimenez, who in 1947 overthrew the first democratically-elected president Romulo Gallegos. Today the US continues to try to bring down president Hugo Chavez, democratically elected 3 times in a row and clearly the people's choice.
Foreign Minister Rodriguez put it to the public in painful mildness: "We are not doing anything in order to change the policies, the decisions of the government of the United States. So we ask for the same treatment with Venezuela."
(CNN.com. "OAS members balk at U.S. intervention plan." CNN.com, June 7, 2005.http://
(A brief note on this source: It says the US is trying to "promote democracy," has a "vision of extending democracy worldwide" and that this has been the goal of the OAS since its founding, but that it has been unable to do so. The article says the US wants to enable the OAS to "intervene in nations to foster or strengthen democracy." Six countries, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, are mentioned in the article. Some of them are mentioned as being somewhat resistant to US plans for interventions. In all six of these countries (as in most other Latin American countries), the US has intervented in the past, to support or even to establish military dictatorships. Most of the military dictatorships supported for years or decades by the US in Latin America targeted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed large numbers of their own citizens. In the first three of the countries mentioned here, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela, the US tried to overthrow democracy and replace it with military dictatorship (in Chile and Brazil, the overthrow of democracy was successful and the US backed the resulting military dictators for years as they "cleansed" their countries of people politically undesirable to the US and the dictators). The most recent case of the three is obviously Venezuela itself, where the overthrow of democratically elected leaders was, as usual, backed by the US, but, surprisingly, not successful.)
Sources for the rest of the material above:
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