After the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état brought an end to a three-year experiment in democracy, a triumvirate of military personnel controlled the government until 1952, when it held presidential elections.

These were free enough to produce results unacceptable to the government, leading them to be falsified and to one of the three leaders, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, assuming the Presidency.

[4] After a military coup d'état on 23 January 1958 sent General Marcos Pérez Jiménez into exile, Venezuela's three main political parties signed the Punto Fijo Pact.

[5] Around the same time, the left-wingers excluded from the Punto Fijo Pact (Revolutionary Left Movement and Armed Forces of National Liberation) began an insurgency that was backed by the Communist Party of Cuba and its leader, Fidel Castro.

Luis Herrera Campins was elected to the presidency in 1979, with the country in deep debt and bound by International Monetary Fund demands.

[8] Pérez was elected again in 1988 and, looking to solve the recession, adopted economic measures that set off major protests, the biggest of which was the Caracazo wave of 1989.

Octavio Lepage served as acting president for about two weeks, at which point the historian and parliamentarian Ramón José Velásquez took over the interim role.

Despite initially rejecting liberalization policies,[9][better source needed] his economic agenda was later focused on cutting subsidies, privatizations, and legislation to attract foreign investment.

Naím began at the lowest rung of economic liberalization, which was freeing controls on prices and a ten percent increase in that of gasoline,[10] which in Venezuela is sacrosantly very low.

The response resulted in the declaration of a state of emergency and led to a large number of deaths, ranging from the official estimate of 277 dead[11] to over 2000.

He re-imposed exchange controls, which Pérez's administration had lifted as part of a general financial liberalisation (unaccompanied by effective regulation, which contributed to the banking crisis).

The economic crisis continued, and by the 1998 presidential election the traditional political parties had become unpopular;[citation needed] an initial front-runner for the presidency in late 1997 was Irene Sáez.

Jacinto Convit developed vaccines against leprosy and leishmaniasis,[15] and Baruj Benacerraf was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1980 for his immunological research.

Several Venezuelans won international beauty contests: Maritza Sayalero (1979), Irene Sáez (1981), Bárbara Palacios Teyde (1986), and Alicia Machado (1996).