- Venezuela, home to the world's largest oil reserves, was once among the world's richest nations.
- Years of economic collapse drove one of the largest mass migrations in recent history.
- Now, the US has signaled that American oil firms could help revive Venezuela's oil production.
Half a century ago, Venezuela was one of the world's richest nations. Today, decades of economic collapse have driven nearly a quarter of its population to flee the country.
On January 3, the US launched a military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. He pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism and weapons-related charges in New York on Monday.
The seizure of the country's leader, which Venezuelan officials have called a "kidnapping," has raised questions about sovereignty and legality, as well as Venezuela's political and economic future.
The country, which has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, estimated at about a fifth of the world's total, produces less than 1% of the global oil production today, due to what President Donald Trump has called "badly broken infrastructure."
US officials have said they will seek to influence Venezuela's transitional government and attract investment from American energy companies to help revive its collapsed oil sector.
During the 1950s and more dramatically in the 1970s, Venezuela experienced periods of vast oil-fueled economic growth — nicknamed by historians as "Saudi Venezuela" — where luxury, foreign travel, and modernization defined a growing middle class.
At the same time, the dramatic wealth of the era left some behind, highlighting the visible inequalities that contributed to a shift in domestic politics by the end of the century.
These vintage photos capture what life in Venezuela was like during its decades of oil-fueled economic prosperity and how the country evolved as its economy boomed.
Oil was first discovered in Venezuela in 1914.
The first oil discovery in Venezuela was made near Lake Maracaibo in 1914. The national oil industry experienced exponential growth throughout the 1920s and 1930s, as foreign investments began to pour into the country.
The oil industry's boom transformed the country's economy, which had previously primarily been a coffee exporter.
By 1940, the country was the world's third-largest producer of crude oil. During that decade, the country began enacting laws that required oil companies to share portions of their oil revenues with the country's government.
Fueled by oil wealth, Caracas experienced rapid expansion in the mid-20th century.
The growing oil industry concentrated jobs and investment in the country's capital, drawing migrants from rural areas and smaller cities in search of work and opportunity.
The growing industry led to the expansion of an oil-oriented middle class.
"There was a growing, expansive, and increasingly influential middle class that established itself in the oil industry," said Miguel Tinker Salas, a Pomona College history professor focusing on Venezuelan oil culture and society.
Before the discovery and expansion of the oil industry in the country, Venezuela was a poor and rural nation, and its economy was defined by agricultural exports, such as coffee and cacao, as reported by Mongabay. Wealth in Venezuela was predominantly held by large landowners, who formed a dominant elite.
The rapid growth of the oil industry provided the country's middle class, which was relatively small and concentrated in cities like Caracas, with an opportunity for professional expansion.
"They benefited tremendously from oil wealth and held managerial and professional positions," Tinker Salas told Business Insider. "But they remained a small percentage of the population."
He estimates that less than 20% of the population was part of the middle class that emerged from oil growth.
Oil wealth fueled the expansion of consumer culture among the middle and upper classes.
By the 1950s, neighborhoods like Sabana Grande in Caracas had become symbols of a rapidly modernizing capital. Lined with department stores, cafés, cinemas, and international brands, the district reflected the interests of a growing consumer class, giving parts of the city a distinctly cosmopolitan feel.
"The hardware of modernity — the buildings, the architecture, the glitzy lights, and the planned development of cities — was made possible by oil," said Alejandro Velasco, an associate professor of Latin American history at New York University.
Department stores gained popularity in the capital during this time.
As oil wealth flowed into the country, urban consumer culture in Caracas and other major cities was heavily influenced by the United States. Among members of the middle and upper classes, shopping, fashion, and leisure increasingly reflected American tastes and lifestyles.
"For a particular segment of the population, they wanted to see themselves as an appendage of Miami-Dade County," Tinker Salas said. "For another segment of the population, that dream was never possible."
By the 1970s, the divide was especially visible.
"Those who had money," Tinker Salas said, "could get on a plane in Caracas on a Friday afternoon, be in Miami in three hours, shop at Miami department stores, and come back on Sunday afternoon."
Venezuela even became an international fashion hub.
Caracas also became an international hub for fashion and culture, attracting designers, models, and luxury brands from around the world.
From 1976 to 1982, Air France operated a weekly Concorde flight between Caracas and Paris, a symbol of how closely Venezuela's elites aligned themselves with Europe during the oil boom.
Luxury reflected the growing divide in oil-era Venezuela.
Economic prosperity made luxury brands and high-end shopping popular in parts of Caracas, particularly for the country's wealthiest residents. But that consumer culture existed alongside stark economic inequality.
"You had fancy department stores and consumer culture existing side by side with deep inequality," Tinker Salas said.
Growth also extended to regional cities.
While the capital city remained the center of political and economic power, oil revenues also fueled development in other cities, shaping urban life across much of the country and giving more people access to "electricity, medical services, and infrastructure that was often lacking in rural areas," Tinker Salas said.
Throughout the century, as the agricultural industry lost its dominance of the domestic economy, the country saw increased internal migration to urban centers.
Maracaibo emerged as Venezuela's second major city during the oil boom.
The city surrounding Lake Maracaibo, where oil was first discovered in the country, grew into Venezuela's second-largest city as oil production expanded.
Its economy, identity, and growth were closely tied to oil, making the city a counterpart to Caracas during Venezuela's decades of rapid expansion.
As international companies grew their operations, Maracaibo welcomed many foreign oil workers.
During the mid-century, Venezuela welcomed migration from Europe and the US.
As the oil industry expanded, Venezuela attracted foreign oil workers and immigrants, including Europeans during and after World War II. These arrivals helped shape the culture of the country's major cities.
"Oil exploration brought cultural influence, but Venezuela also became a destination for immigrants from Europe and across Latin America," Velasco said.
While cities grew, other regions remained rural.
Not every part of Venezuela was reshaped evenly during the expansion of the oil industry. As cities expanded, many rural areas continued to rely on agriculture, fishing, and local trade throughout the mid-century.
Daily life looked very different for families in other neighborhoods in Caracas.
"On the surface, the country had a veneer of progress," Tinker Salas said. "Venezuela had the highest standard of living in Latin America, but it also had the highest cost of living."
Informal settlements around Caracas offered a different standard of living.
While modern high-rises emerged in Caracas and other major cities, slums and informal settlements — or barrios — surrounding urban centers often told a different story from the luxurious, store-lined streets.
"The city was expanding and growing dramatically," Tinker Salas said, "but alongside and in the shadow of those high-rise buildings were poor shacks where people lived in poverty."
Some parts of the city lacked access to basic necessities.
In many neighborhoods, access to reliable water, sanitation, and other basic services remained limited even as other parts of the city modernized. Rapid urban growth during the oil era often outpaced infrastructure and long-term planning, leaving families to manage everyday shortages on their own.
For many, informal neighborhoods served as a transitional space between rural and urban life.
The growth of informal neighborhoods surrounding major cities was a marker of internal migration patterns, where families from rural areas came to the city.
"Before the 1950s, barrios served as a kind of transitional space — people were in the city, but not fully of the city," Velasco said. "There was a sense of gradual upward mobility: moving from the countryside into a barrio, then into a rented room, then eventually into a house or apartment."
Life in the barrios was much different from the cosmopolitan life of the upper classes.
"Even at the height of the so-called golden era, there was tremendous social, cultural, and economic disparity," Tinker Salas said.
The oil boom also coincided with Venezuela's fight toward democracy.
Between the late 1940s and the 1950s, the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez ruled Venezuela after rising to power during a period of political instability.
His military government utilized growing oil revenues to fund major infrastructure and modernization projects, even as political and civil freedoms were tightly restricted, reflecting a long-standing pattern of strongman rule that has shaped Venezuelan politics during the country's push toward democracy.
Public housing was central to the state's vision of modernization under the military dictatorship.
Under Pérez Jiménez, large public housing projects — or superblocks — were constructed in an effort to modernize the capital and reshape its working-class population. During this effort, informal settlements and barrios were razed, and their residents were forcibly relocated into high-rise complexes designed to reshape their way of life.
"People were suddenly expected to become modern residents in new spaces, and that transition was difficult," Velasco said.
Daily life in the complexes was regulated by strict rules of conduct and state oversight. The model relied on the control of an authoritarian state, Velasco said, which ended as Venezuela moved toward democracy.
"The failure of that project produced a paradox where you have superblocks and barrios right next to each other," Velasco said.
The dictatorship's focus on public works also resulted in the creation of national landmarks.
Linking the capital to the mountaintop Hotel Humbold, the Caracas Aerial Tramway symbolized how the state used large-scale public works to project progress, visibility, and national pride in an era that emphasized monumental infrastructure as proof of modernization.
A push for tourism also became part of the state's modernization effort.
Opened in 1953 as part of a government effort to increase tourism, the Hotel Tamanaco was a key component of a broader initiative to present Venezuela as a modern, international destination.
The fall of the dictatorship ushered in a fragile transition to democracy.
The military dictatorship ended in early 1958, but the transition to democracy was marked by unrest, strikes, and internal divisions within the armed forces. In the months that followed, a new civilian-led government struggled to stabilize the country and respond to popular demands amid lingering uncertainty.
"The 1960s, when democracy began in Venezuela, are not a period of abundance," Velasco said. "They're a period of crisis."
In a democratic Venezuela, foreign relations created a myth of exceptionalism.
During the early days of its democracy, Venezuela was widely perceived abroad — and promoted at home — as a stable democracy at a time when military rule was common in Latin America.
High-profile diplomatic engagements, like the visit of US President John F. Kennedy, promoted the myth of Venezuela as an "exceptional democracy," as Tinker Salas described it, even during a time when democratic regimes struggled internally.
"The myth of Venezuela as the exceptional democracy persisted because Venezuela provided the contrary example to what was happening in Cuba," Tinker Salas said.
The government utilized oil revenue to fund energy infrastructure.
Construction of the Guri Dam began in the early 1960s and continued in phases through the 1980s, reflecting a long-term effort to channel oil revenues into large-scale development projects.
The hydroelectric complex was part of a broader effort to diversify Venezuela's economy and modernize the country through investments in industry, energy, and infrastructure, extending beyond oil itself.
Although an American import, baseball became a cornerstone of Venezuelan national identity.
Introduced through US oil companies and foreign workers, baseball spread first through oil camps and industrial towns before taking root across the country.
Over time, the sport moved beyond its foreign origins and became a shared cultural language, eventually emerging as one of Venezuela's most powerful symbols of national identity.
Pageantry became a dominant expression of national pride.
Launched in the early 1950s, the Miss Venezuela pageant grew alongside the spread of television and mass media, turning beauty competitions into nationally shared events.
Over time, the pageant evolved into a symbol of national pride, representing how Venezuelans presented themselves to one another and to the world.
During the expansion of the oil industry, people experienced the country's prosperity in different ways.
Decades of rapid growth reshaped daily life in Venezuela, affecting everyone from rural migrants who moved into expanding cities to foreign immigrants who arrived as the country experienced unprecedented prosperity.
For those who remained in Venezuela — and for the millions who have since left — the past paints a complex picture of ambition, luxury, and inequality.
