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Central University of Venezuela
Universidad Central de Venezuela
Motto:	La Casa que Vence la Sombra (Spanish, "The House that defeats the Shadows")
Established	1721 (Universidad de Caracas)
Type:	Public
Rector:	Antonio París
Faculty:	8,000 (approx.)
Students:	57.569 (approx.)[1]
Location	Caracas and Maracay, Venezuela
Campus:	World Heritage Site, Urban, 164.2 ha
Website:	ucv.ve

The Central University of Venezuela (or Universidad Central de Venezuela in Spanish) is a premier public University of Venezuela located in Caracas. Founded in 1721, it is the oldest university in Venezuela and one of the first in Latin America.

The university campus was designed by architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000. The Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, as the main Campus is also known, is considered a masterpiece of architecture and urban planning and it is the only university campus designed by a single architect in the 20th century that has received such recognition by UNESCO.

The origin of the university goes back to Friar Antonio González de Acuña (1620-1682), a Peruvian Bishop who studied theology at the Universidad de San Marcos and founded in 1673 the Seminary Saint Rose of Lima after the first Catholic Saint born in the Americas. In the following years, Friar Diego de Baños y Sotomayor, broaden the scope of the seminary by creating the School and Seminary of Saint Rose of Lima in 1696. Yet, despite of the creation of the seminar, students who wished to obtain university degrees had to travel great distances to the universities located at Santo Domingo, Santa Fe de Bogotá or México. Given such harsh circumstances, the Rector of the Seminary, Francisco Martínez de Porras and the people of Caracas requested the royal court in Madrid the creation of a university in Venezuela. As a result, on 22 December 1721, Philip V of Spain emitted in Lerma a Royal Decree that transformed the School-Seminary into the "Universidad Real y Pontificia de Caracas". The Royal Decree was concurred by Pope Innocent XIII with a Papal bull in 1722. The university offered degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Canon law and Medicine. Until 1810, when the Seminary of Saint Bonaventura located in Mérida became the Universidad de Los Andes, the "Universidad Real y Pontificia de Caracas" was the only university existing in the country.

The old campus in 1911. It was located at the former Saint Francis Convent which also served as the location for the National Library since its creation in 1833. The building is currently known as the "Palacio de las Academias"

Until the end of the 18th century, the official papal and royal censorship on books was largely ignored in Venezuela, a situation which allowed the smuggling of the works by Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Locke, Helvetius, Grotius in the ships belonging to the Compañía Guipuzcoana. This might have helped to educated an enlightened generation of Venezuelans such as Simón Rodríguez, Francisco de Miranda, Simón Bolívar and Andrés Bello who composed the forefront of ideas of self-determination and independence from Spain in Latin America by Fr. Baltasar de los Reyes Marrero and other faculty members at the University. Until 1812, the University supported the republican cause. However, between 1814 and 1821 the stage was set for a violent ideological prosecution against all of those within the university, students and professors, who collaborated with the independence movement. The Rector José Manuel Oropeza y Torre, a defender of the monarchical rule, exhorted all in the academic environment to defend the Spanish King and ordered religion over revolution as the official ideological doctrine of the University. However, this all ended with the triumph of the independence movement and from 1826 the "Universidad de Caracas" adopted the name of "Universidad Central de Venezuela" by separating itself from the Saint Rose Seminary and moving to the Saint Francis Convent. The Royal constitution was displaced by the Republican Statutes proclaimed by Simón Bolívar on June 24, 1827. The new statutes gave the institution a secular character and transferred the main authority to the Rector.

In May 1827 José María Vargas becomes Rector and begins the development of a complete economical (based on the Haciendas Chuao, Cata and La Concepción donated by Bolívar) and ideological autonomy that could guarantee freedom of speech and the end of discriminations of incoming students based on race, faith or economical status. During the middle of the 19th century the University suffered from the same power-driven disputes that lead to the Federal War until 1869, when the University was intervened by President Antonio Guzmán Blanco as part of his program modernizing the country. A commission to reorganized the university and its library was formed by the Rector Carlos Arvelo, Juan José Aguerrrevere, a mathematician, Joaquín Boton, professor of philosophy, Adolfo Ernst, distinguished Prussian scientist and the political scientist Lucio Siso. Yet, President Antonio Guzmán Blanco also ordered in 1883 the sale of all the land and Haciendas donated by Bolívar, taking away Vargas' hope of economical autonomy and making the University -until this day- dependent exclusively on the National Budget.

View of the Ciudad Universitaria from the library.

On December 1908, Juan Vicente Gómez comes into power with a coup d'état against the government of Cipriano Castro. Gómez will stay in power until his death in 1935, and during this time the Dictator, having ambivalent feelings about the purpose of educating free minds when he could hired foreigners to exercise any technical requirements for the Nation, decided to close the University from 1912 to 1922. When the University reopened, the Rector Felipe Guevara Rojas had reorganized the traditional division of only a few Schools and separated them accordingly into modern Departments.

1928 became a very important year for the University since a group of students, known as the Generation of 1928, organized a series of events during the "Students Week" protesting the Dictatorship which culminated in an attempt to overthrow Gómez on April 7 of that year. This heterogeneous group, which shared a common front against Gómez, was conformed by people like Rómulo Betancourt, Miguel Otero Silva, Juan Oropeza, Isaac Pardo and Rodolfo Quintero. Most of them were jailed after the events or went into exile without being able to finish their studies.

The University continued to be at the forefront of the democratization of the country when in 1936, during the Presidency of Eleazar López Contreras a decree suspended the Constitutional rights and declared general censorship of the press because the oil workers decided to start a strike (an unprecedented deed), the Rector of the University, Francisco Antonio Rísquez, guided the protest that followed through the streets of Caracas. By 1942, the student population had been growing steadily for decades without any significant expansion of the University. Instead several Schools, like Medicine, were moved to other buildings around the city. The administration of President Isaías Medina Angarita felt the need to move the University to a larger and more modern location where it could function as coherent whole. The government bought the Hacienda Ibarra and the responsibility of the main design was given to the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva after a visit to the University of Bogotá convinced the authorities of the Ministry of Public Works that, in order to avoid constructing a group of heterogeneous buildings, the design should be under one architect that could develop one consistent complex.

Central Library

The new campus was going to become a vast urban complex of about 200 ha. and included a total of 40 buildings. Villanueva worked closely with 28 of the most important avant-garde artist of time, from both Venezuela and the rest of the world, to build what continues to be one of the most successful applications of Modern Architecture in Latin America. Villanueva's guiding principle was the creation of a space where art and architecture cohabited in harmony in a "Synthesis of Arts". Among some of the most important pieces present in the University are the "Floating Clouds" by Alexander Calder, murals by Victor Vasarely, Wifredo Lam, Fernand Léger and sculptures by Jean Arp and Henri Laurens. The Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas was declared World Heritage by UNESCO, and it is the only modern University campus to received such high honor.

In 1958, after the fall of the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, a government commission established a new law for the universities. The new law came into place on Dec 5th and it guarantee a principle of autonomy that would allow both faculty and students to study and work in an environment of freedom and tolerance for all currents of thought. This very important legal foundation was however abused during the 1960s when guerrilla rebels, supported by Fidel Castro took refuge inside the University campus to escape prosecution from the government. This tense situation came into a stalemate in 1969 when students asking for reform took over the University. Finally, on October 3, 1970, the administration of President Rafael Caldera ordered the University to be raided by the military and the Rector Jesús María Bianco was forced to resign. The University reopened in 1971 with a new Rector and a new plan for renovation.

In terms of the academic development of the modern university, the second half of the 20th century was a time when the Central University's faculty body benefited greatly from the influx of European immigrants. Many intellectuals settled in Venezuela after the end of the Spanish Civil War and World War II and found jobs at the University. Those scientist and humanist helped develop the current lines of research and teaching at the University and educated many of the present generation of faculty members.

The University is currently organized in 11 Schools (Facultades) which are subdivided in 40 Departments (Escuelas) according to specific areas of study.

All Schools offer undergraduate degrees at the level of Licenciatura (5 years) and graduate degrees at the level of Master's degree (2 years) and PhD (3-4 years) from the Graduate School^[2]. The Graduate School, founded in 1941, offers 222 different specializations, 109 Master's degrees and 40 PhDs^[3].

• Architecture and Urban planning^[4]
• Agronomy ^[5]
• Engineering ^[6]

• Humanities and Education^[7]

• Law and Government^[8]

• Medicine^[9]

• Social Sciences and Economy^[10]

• Odontology^[11]
• Pharmacy^[12]
• Sciences^[13]

• Veterinary^[14]

See also UCV alumni

Francisco de Miranda

Andrés Bello

José María Vargas

First promotion of engineers of the Central University of Venezuela (1893-1899)

• Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) General, political thinker; fought in the main three revolutionary wars of the 18th century, American, French and South American.
• Andrés Bello (1781-1865) Poet, lawmaker, philosopher, educator and philologist.
• Andrés Eloy Blanco (1896-1955) Poet.
• Miguel Otero Silva (1908-1985) writer, journalist and co-founder of the newspaper El Nacional.

• Lisando Alvarado (1858-1929) ethnologist, linguist.
• José Gregorio Hernández (1864-1919) physician.
• Eduardo Röhl (1891-1959) naturalist, founder of the brewery "El Águila" in 1927.
• Alfredo Jahn (1867-1940) engineer, anthropologist.
• José González-Lander (1933-2000) engineer, chief designer of the Caracas Metro.
• Tobías Lasser (1911-2006) botanist, founder of the Botanical Garden of Caracas, the School of Sciences and the Department of Biology of the Central University of Venezuela.

• Alfredo Peña (b. 1944) journalist, member of the constitutional assembly which drafted the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution, mayor of Caracas (2000).
• Teodoro Petkoff (b. 1932) congressman, co-founder of the political party MAS and current chief editor of the newspaper "Tal Cual".
• Ali Rodriguez (b. 1937) secretary-general of OPEC (2000) and chairman of Petroleos de Venezuela PDVSA.
• Irene Sáez (b. 1961) mayor of Chacao, governor of Nueva Esparta, Miss Universe 1981.

• Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury (1897-1969) founder of Empresas Polar, a prize in his name honors scientific research.
• Eladio Lárez (b. ) president of Radio Caracas Television.
• Miguel Enrique Otero (b. 1950) (also faculty for five years) chairman and owner of the newspaper El Nacional.

• José María Vargas, (also Rector, faculty and alumni) scientist (1835-36)
• Andrés Narvarte, lawyer (1836-37)
• Pedro Gual, lawyer (1859, 1861)
• Guillermo Tell Villegas, lawyer (1868-69, 1870, 1892)
• Antonio Guzmán Blanco, lawyer (1879-1884)
• Raimundo Andueza Palacios, lawyer (1890-1892)
• Juan Bautista Pérez, lawyer (1929-1931)
• Rómulo Betancourt, (not finished) (1945-1948)
• Rómulo Gallegos, (not finished) writer (1948)
• Germán Suárez Flamerich, (also Faculty) lawyer (1950-52)
• Edgar Sanabria, (also Faculty) lawyer (1959)
• Raúl Leoni, (not finished) (1964-1969)
• Rafael Caldera, (also Faculty) political scientist (1969-1974), (1994-1999)
• Carlos Andrés Pérez, (not finished) (1974-1979), (1989-1993).
• Luis Herrera Campins, (not finished) (1979-1984)
• Jaime Lusinchi, physician (1984-1989)
• Ramón José Velásquez, (also Faculty) historian (1993-94).

José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Carlos Raúl Villanueva

Arturo Uslar Pietri

• Lorenzo Campins y Ballester (1726-1785) Spanish born scientist, founder of the studies of medicine.
• Fr. Baltasar de los Reyes Marrero (1752-1809) (also alumni) began the teaching of modern science and philosophy based on the theories of Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Copernicus, Georg Stahl, Antoine Lavoisier, John Locke, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Leibniz and Christian Wolff. In 1789 he was convicted by the Crown as an infidel for teaching doctrines forbidden by the King.

• José Rafael Acevedo (1800-1864) mathematician.
• Juan Manuel Cajigal y Odoardo (1803-1856) mathematician.
• Fermín Toro (1806-1865) politician and linguist.
• Alejandro Ibarra (1813-1880) scientist.
• Juan Vicente González (1810-1866) (also Alumni) writer.
• Cecilio Acosta (1818-1881) (also Alumni) writer, journalist.
• Adolf Ernst (1832-1899) Prussian born scientist, started the teaching of natural history based on Charles Darwin and Lamarck.
• Luis Razetti (1862-1932) (also Alumni) physician, began the teaching of modern surgery in Venezuela and wrote an influential code of ethics for the practice of medicine.

• Mario Briceño Iragorry (1897-1958) writer.
• Rafael Cadenas (b. 1930) poet.
• Manuel Caballero (b.1931) (also Alumni) historian, journalist.
• Jacinto Convit (b. 1913) (also Alumni) nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1988 for his research on the cure of Leprosy.
• Gaston Diehl (1912- 1999) French art historian, founded the modern school of arts.
• Humberto Fernández Morán (1924-1999) contributed to the development of the electron microscope and was the first researcher to introduce the concept of cryoultramicrotomy.
• Juan David García Bacca (1901-1992) Spanish born philosopher; translator of the complete works of Plato.
• Eugenio Imaz (1900 -1951) Spanish born philosopher.
• Fuad Lechín (b. 1928), nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the development of new treatments of bronchial asthma and myasthenia gravis discovered by his research group.
• Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla (b. 1925) (also Alumni) philosopher, rector of the Universidad Simón Bolívar.
• Juan Nuño (1927-1995) Spanish born philosopher.
• Manuel García Pelayo (1909-1991) Spanish born political Scientist, elected president of the Constitutional Tribunal of Spain in 1980.
• Manuel Pérez Vila (1922-1991) Spanish born historian.
• Pedro Antonio Ríos Reyna (1905-1971) classical musician.
• Marcel Roche (1920 - 2003) physician, winner of the Kalinga Prize, governor of the International Atomic Energy Agency (1958-1960) and founding member Third World Academy of Sciences.
• Angel Rosenblat (1902-1984) Polish born philologist.
• Augusto Pi Sunyer (1879-1965) Spanish born physician, started the studies of microbiology in Venezuela.
• Mariano Picón Salas (1901-1965) writer, cultural critic.
• José Antonio Ramos Sucre (1890-1930) (also Alumni) poet, writer.
• Arturo Uslar Pietri (1906-2001) (also Alumni) writer and historian, winner of the Prince of Asturias Award (1990) and Rómulo Gallegos Prize for Best Novel (1991).
• Marco Aurelio Vila (1908-2001) Spanish born geographer.
• Carlos Raúl Villanueva (1900-1975) architect, one of the great Modernists.
• Pedro León Zapata (b. 1929) artist and humorist.

• ÁVILA BELLO, JOSÉ. y CONVIT, JACINTO. 1992: “El Instituto de Biomedicina. Evolución reciente”. En: Ruiz Calderón, Humberto et. all. “La ciencia en Venezuela pasado, presente y futuro”. Cuadernos Lagoven. Lagoven, S.A. Caracas Venezuela pp:92-101.
• BARROETA LARA, JULIO. 1995: “"Nuestra y trascendente Universidad Central de Venezuela"”. Universidad Central de Venezuela, Dirección de Cultura. Caracas – Venezuela.
• CADENAS, JOSÉ MARÍA. 1994; “Relaciones universidad empresa: una aproximación a su situación en Venezuela”. EN: "Agenda Académica". Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas Venezuela.

• CUENCA, HUMBERTO. 1967: “"La universidad colonial"”. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas – Venezuela.

• HENRIQUEZ UREÑA, PEDRO. 1955: “"Historia de la cultura en la América Hispánica"”. Colección Tierra Firme. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Ciudad de México – México. 243p.

• HERRERA Z, HENRY. y ORTA, SOLANGE. 1995: “"Universidad Central de Venezuela"”. En: "Diccionario multimedia de Historia de Venezuela. Fundación Polar. Caracas – Venezuela.

• LEAL, ILDEFONSO. 1963: “Historia de la Universidad de Caracas (1721-1827) ”. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas – Venezuela.

• LEAL, ILDEFONSO. 1970: “El Claustro de la Universidad y sus Historia”. Tomo I (1756 - 1774) Estudio preliminar y compilación; Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas - Venezuela. 358p.

• LEAL, ILDEFONSO. 1971: “Universidad Central de Venezuela 1721 - 1971”. Ediciones del Rectorado de la Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas - Venezuela. 152p.

• LEAL, ILDEFONSO. 1979: “El Claustro de la Universidad y sus Historia II”. Tomo I (1721 - 1756) Estudio preliminar y compilación; Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas - Venezuela. 362p.

• LEAL, ILDEFONSO. 1981: “Historia de UCV”. Ediciones del Rectorado de la Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas - Venezuela. 544p.

• LEAL, ILDEFONSO. 1981: “Historia de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1721-1981”. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas – Venezuela.

• LEAL, ILDEFONSO. 1983: “La Universidad de Caracas en los años de Bolívar 1783-1830”. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas -Venezuela 2 volúmenes.

• MACHADO ALLISON, ANTONIO. 2005: “Memorias 40 años del Instituto de Zoologia Tropical”. Editorial Brima Color. Caracas – Venezuela. 155p.

• MÉNDEZ Y MENDOZA, JUAN DE DIOS. 1912: “Historia de la Universidad Central de Venezuela”. Tipografía Americana. Caracas. 2 volúmenes.

• PARRA LEÓN, CARACCIOLO. 1954: “"Filosofía universitaria venezolana 1782-1821"”. Editorial J. B. Madrid – España.

• TEXERA, YOLANDA. 1992: “La Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad Central de Venezuela”. En: Ruiz Calderón, Humberto et. all. “La ciencia en Venezuela pasado, presente y futuro”. Cuadernos Lagoven. Lagoven, S.A. Caracas Venezuela pp:50-63.

• UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DE VENEZUELA. 1990: “Instituto de Zoología Tropical (IZT)”. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas – Venezuela. 16p.

• UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DE VENEZUELA. 1978: “UCV prospecto de estudios Facultad de Ciencias. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas – Venezuela. 123p.

• USLAR PIETRI, ARTURO. 1961: “"La universidad y el país"”. Imprenta Nacional. Caracas – Venezuela.

• UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DE VENEZUELA. 1981: “"Plano de Ubicación de las obras de arte de la Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas"”. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas – Venezuela.

• Education in Venezuela
• List of universities in Venezuela

• Universidad Central de Venezuela-Official Site
• UCV Central Administration
• UCV Foundation
• Consejo Nacional de Universidades de Venezuela (Spanish)

• Aerial Photo from GoogleMaps