ABSTRACT
The rapid change of social and political practices in Venezuela in the past two decades is hard to grasp. This country, previously known abroad either for its oil wealth or its success at international beauty contests like Miss Universe and World, started to change. By the late 1980s, the image of a wealthy and prosperous nation enhanced by the beauty of its women was no longer the best way to describe this tropical South American country with more than 1,700 miles of Caribbean coastline.
