| Popis: |
This chapter discusses Venezuela’s constitutional history. Venezuelans were eager drafters of constitutions in the nineteenth century. The first Venezuelan constitution was published in December 1811. It was also the first constitution written in Spanish. The first constituent assembly declared Venezuela an independent federal republic on 5 July 1811. The decades of 1850 and 1860 were of political turmoil and declared civil war between 1859 and 1864 (the so-called ‘Federal War’). The 1864 Constitution reorganized Venezuela with a very weak central government. In the 1990s, a political crisis led to the election of Hugo Chavez as President of the Republic, a former military man who had twice attempted to overthrow the government and assassinate the President via coup d’état. Chavez was able to call for a national constitutional assembly that enacted the Constitution of 1999 and establish a so-called ‘revolution’, which will be analysed. |
