Caracas, Venezuela.

Venezuela; Caracas (Venezuela)

Caracas is the capital and most populous city of Venezuela. Founded in the sixteenth century, Caracas was a small city until the growth of the Venezuelan oil industry. The international demand for petroleum made Caracas for many years a major financial center for the global oil market. However, this growth, coupled with a lack of centralized planning and an increasing disparity between the rich and poor, also caused many problems for the city. In the early twenty-first century, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez made Caracas a new capital for leftist government in South America, with policies that nationalized the oil industry and redistributed wealth to the poor. But the combined effects of plummeting oil prices and the death of Chavez in 2013 took Venezuela down a difficult road; by the end of the decade, Venezuela was wracked by full-blown political and economic crisis, with food and basic services in Caracas and throughout the country in perilously short supply.