Italian Venezuelans

Italian Venezuelans
Italo-venezuelani (Italian)
Ítalo-venezolanos (Spanish)
Juan Germán Roscio was a Venezuelan lawyer and politician of Italian ancestry who was the main editor of the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence,[1] and the chief architect of the Venezuelan Constitution of 1811
Total population
c. 30,000 (by birth)[2]
c. 5,000,000 (by ancestry, about 16% of the total Venezuelan population)[3][4][5]
Regions with significant populations
Greater Caracas, Valencia, Maracay, Barquisimeto, Maracaibo, Barcelona-Puerto La Cruz, Margarita Island, Ciudad Guayana, Acarigua-Araure and Mérida
Languages
Venezuelan Spanish · Italian and Italian dialects
Religion
Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups
Italians, Italian Americans, Italian Argentines, Italian Bolivians, Italian Brazilians, Italian Canadians, Italian Chileans, Italian Colombian, Italian Costa Ricans, Italian Cubans, Italian Dominicans, Italian Ecuadorians, Italian Guatemalans, Italian Haitians, Italian Hondurans, Italian Mexicans, Italian Panamanians, Italian Paraguayans, Italian Peruvians, Italian Puerto Ricans, Italian Salvadorans, Italian Uruguayans

Italian Venezuelans (Italian: italo-venezuelani; Spanish: ítalo-venezolanos) are Venezuelan-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italian descent, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to Venezuela during the Italian diaspora, or Italian-born people in Venezuela. Italians were among the largest groups of European immigrants to settle in the country. Approximately 5 million Venezuelans have some degree of Italian ancestry, corresponding to about 16% of the total population of Venezuela,[3][4][5] while there were around 30,000 Italian citizens in Venezuela.[2]

Italians began arriving in Venezuela in massive numbers in the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. 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.

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. Italians also influenced the Venezuelan accent, given its slight sing-songy intonation.[6] 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.[7]

  1. ^ "Juan Germán Roscio" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 10 August 2007.
  2. ^ a b Gerencia General de Estadísticas Demográficas (2011). Censo de Población y Vivienda 2011 (PDF). Gobierno de Venezuela. p. 41. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 October 2019. Retrieved 10 May 2021.
  3. ^ a b "Italianos celebran en Venezuela los 150 años de la Unificación". El Universal. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
  4. ^ a b Notargiovanni, Caterina (2017). "Por qué tantos en Venezuela están eligiendo Italia para huir de la crisis" (in Spanish). BBC. Retrieved 31 March 2021. "Estimamos que hay 2 millones de descendientes de italianos en Venezuela", le explica a BBC Mundo el primer secretario Lorenzo Solinas, encargado de prensa de la Embajada de Italia en Caracas.
  5. ^ a b Scalzotto, Davide (3 February 2020). "Noi veneti del Venezuela, siamo i nuovi profughi fantasma". Retrieved 10 May 2021. I veneti in Venezuela sono invece 5 milioni: un quinto della popolazione.
  6. ^ Grau, Pedro Cunill (1994). "7: Italian Presence in Modern Venezuela: Socioeconomic Dimension and Geo-cultural Changes, 1926–1990". Center for Migration Studies Special Issues. 11 (3): 152–172. doi:10.1111/j.2050-411X.1994.tb00759.x.
  7. ^ Notargiovanni, Caterina (16 August 2017). "Por qué tantos venezolanos están eligiendo Italia para huir de la crisis en su país" (in Spanish). BBC News Mundo. Retrieved 22 February 2022.