Serbian Venezuelans

Serbian Venezuelans or Serb Venezuelans refer to Venezuelans of ethnic Serb descent, mostly with partial or distant Serb ancestry, i.e. second- or third-generation of immigrants.

Serbian Venezuelans

Venezolanos Serbios Српски Венецуеланци Srpski Venecuelanci
Foreign-born population in Venezuela
Total population
<1,000 (est.)
Regions with significant populations
Caracas, Maracaibo, and Maracay
Languages
Venezuelan Spanish
Religion
Predominately Catholicism, minority Eastern Orthodoxy (Serbian Orthodox Church)
Related ethnic groups
White Venezuelan

History

Serbian immigration to Venezuela dates back to the mid-XX century and consisted mainly of political emigrants i.e. opponents of newly-established communist regime in Yugoslavia, that settled in Venezuela after the World War II.

In 1955, they founded the Serbian Orthodox Christian Community in Caracas. Later they built the Serbian Orthodox church in 1966, where the consecration was attended by King Peter II of Yugoslavia. The Serbian Social Club of Aragua State was founded in 1965 by a group of Serb immigrants in order to preserve and promote Serb customs, religion, culture and folklore, with all the community based in the country without distinction of race or creed, sharing in the same space with the activities of the St. John the Baptist Church which belonged to the newly founded Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Buenos Aires and South America.^[1]

Demographics

By the late 1960s, population of Serbian-Venezuelans reached 2,000 and has been in constant decline ever since, with current estimates in low hundreds.^[2]

Notable people

• Aleksandar Janković (1921–2019) – Chetnik voivode
• Miguel Socolovich (born 1986) – baseball player
• Veruska Ljubisavljević (born 1991) – model and beauty pageant titleholder

See also

• Immigration to Venezuela
• European Venezuelan
• Serbian diaspora
• Serbia–Venezuela relations
• Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Buenos Aires and South America