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Venezuelan Food History

Historical period

Indigenous cassava and maize systems across the Orinoco, the delta, the coast and the Andes; Spanish settlement from the 1520s with cattle, pigs, wheat, sugarcane and the encomienda; the CACAO economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, worked by enslaved Africans, which made Venezuela the world’s leading cacao exporter and created the Barlovento population; the Compañía Guipuzcoana monopoly and the Basque presence; independence from 1811 and the wars that wrecked the agricultural economy; COFFEE as the nineteenth-century export; ⚠ OIL FROM 1922, which made Venezuela rich, emptied the countryside, and turned a farming country into a food-importing one — a structural fact behind everything that came later; the great European immigration of 1945-60; and the collapse since 2014.

Atlas — where and when

What is recorded

  • Venezuela was the world’s leading cacao exporter during the eighteenth century under an economy built on enslaved labour and, in part, the Compañía Guipuzcoana monopoly. Coffee was the principal nineteenth-century export. Commercial oil production from 1922 transformed the economy, drew population from the countryside and made Venezuela a food-importing country — a structural change underlying much of the subsequent food history. documented
  • Independence and the wars that followed, which destroyed much of the agricultural economy and the cacao estates with it. documented
  • Commercial oil production begins. Venezuela becomes rich, the countryside empties, and a farming country becomes a food-importing one — the structural fact behind much of what follows. documented

Recipes

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