Yet Italians began to transmit their cultural heritage, giving and receiving demonstrations of social empathy, which contributed to their integration and to the huge flows into Venezuela in 1947 and in 1948.

[8] The massive presence of travelers, explorers, missionaries, and other peninsular and insular Italian immigrants over the course of almost 500 years made Venezuela acquire a Latin vocation instead of a Hispanic one.

[9] Similarly, beyond the ethnic contribution, Italian culture has had a significant impact in Venezuela, a country which is the second in the world with the highest consumption of pasta per capita after Italy.

In colonial times, only a few hundred Italians (such as Filippo Salvatore Gilii, Juan Germán Roscio, Francisco Isnardi) arrived in Venezuela with a slight increase during the war of independence, including the privateer Giovanni Bianchi, Colonel Agostino Codazzi, Constante Ferrari, Gaetano Cestari and General Carlos Luis Castelli.

[11] In the Republican era of the 19th century there was a small number of Italians and their descendants who attained high status in Venezuelan society, such as the surgeon Luis Razetti.

[12] At the beginning of the 20th century, several thousand Italians immigrated to Venezuela, obtaining good working conditions, even while the community remained relatively small.

[13] By 1926 there were 3,009 Italians in Venezuela ... approximately one-third lived in the capital, one-sixth in Trujillo and there were respectable showings in Bolivar, Carabobo, and Monagas.

The Casa co-sponsored an Italian school, a cultural institute and several sports teams, notably in soccer and cycling.In the 1940s and 1950s, the dictatorship of the general Marcos Pérez Jiménez promoted European immigration to his depopulated country, and more than 300,000 Italians emigrated to Venezuela where they flourished under his administration because he had started many urban infrastructure projects due to the revenues of oil exportation.

There were ample opportunities to work in construction developments, and as a result the economic stance increased within its cities, especially Caracas, Valencia, Barquisimeto and Maracaibo.

When General Perez Jimenez fell from power on 23 January 1958, the hostile attitude of the provisional military government towards the removed president was also reflected on the groups who were supportive of him.

For this reason, many migrants and their families chose to return to Italy through the following year, subsiding towards the end of February, when the Minister of Foreign Affairs recognized the potential damage of this shift and proceeded to guarantee security to the remaining Italians in Venezuela.

This is a relevant factor, since acts of disdain towards the Italian populace undoubtedly affected the decisions of that ethnic group in regards to choosing to leave or enter the country.

[18] The Italian language in Venezuela is influencing Venezuelan Spanish with some modisms and loanwords and is experiencing a notable revival between the Italian-Venezuelans of second and third generation.

Currently, Italian citizens resident in Venezuela are reduced to less than 50,000 due mainly to demographic mortality and to their return to Italy (because of a Venezuelan political and economic crisis in the 2000s).

Italian immigration has been a decisive factor for the modernization of production (industrial and agricultural) and commercial activities in the urban and rural areas of Venezuela, as well as for the improvement of living standards.

[23] Deportivo Italia achieved worldwide fame in the Pompeo D'Ambrosio era (it was considered the best Venezuelan team of the 20th century together with Estudiantes de Mérida F.C., according to the International Federation of Football History & Statistics) winning several national championships and participating in the Copa Libertadores in the 1960s and 1970s (getting the famous Little Maracanazo).

The Italian Embassy calculates that one-third of the Venezuelan industries, not related to the oil sector, are directly or indirectly owned and/or managed by Italian-Venezuelans.

[28] In the Italian community, actually one of the most important in Venezuela, there are Presidents of Venezuela (such as Jaime Lusinchi and Raúl Leoni), entrepreneurs (such as Delfino, who with his "Constructora Delpre" made in Caracas the tallest skyscrapers of South America (Parque Central Complex), managers (such as Pompeo D'Ambrosio), sportsmen (such as Johnny Cecotto), artists (such as Franco De Vita), beauty pageants (such as Daniela di Giacomo and Viviana Gibelli), and many others personalities.

They include 62 associations, clubs and similar entities; 17 of them are located in Caracas and satellite cities, namely the Italian-Venezuelan Center ("Centro Italo-Venezuelano") and Italy House ("Casa d'Italia").

These organizations have grown in the past years, encouraged by such processes as the election of" Comitati degli ltaliani all' Estero" (Committees of Italians Abroad).

In the second half of the 20th century, more than 300,000 Italians moved to Venezuela and left their linguistic imprint on the local vocabulary: "Ciao" is now a usual friendly salute in Caracas, for example.

lasagne) is extremely common dish in Venezuelan cuisine, pasticho basically lasagne is one of the traditional Venezuelan dishes being popular as hallaca, it is consumed in the original form, but also received adaptations, the variants are innumerable, for example, in some, layers of ham are added or the pasta is replaced by banana or by cachapas leafs, a version which is known as chalupa, in others it has been completely modified which involve sauce of chicken or fish, and Pasticho de berenjena which resembles greek Moussaka.