o learn new industry technology, but when they returned the industries never quite processed like their competitors abroad. The spending spree of the Perez government became so bad that they had to impose extremely high tariffs on imported goods. In 1971 Perez coordinated a conference to discuss the up coming conference of the Law of the Sea. Now that Venezuela had become rich over night because of its' oil wealth, all the Caribbean and Latin American nations became interested in oil developments off the coasts of their countries. Yet it was still unclear exactly where one draws the line of international waters and a countries private waters. Along this same line, many Caribbean and Latin American nations were competing fiercely with industrialized nations for rich fishing industry off their coasts. This was also a concern for Trinidad/Tobago with the coastline that they share with Venezuela. The conference concluded that the "Caribbean Position" was composed to be " a sovereign territorial limit of twelve miles but "patrimonial waters of up to 200 miles. In the 'patrimonial waters,' coastal states would have full sovereignty over natural resources in the sea and seabed, but they would have no jurisdiction over navigational rights beyond the twelve mile limit." It was of utmost importance to the developing third world Caribbean and Latin American countries because of "an estimated 1,500 billion barrels of oil under the sea floor and endangered fish stock that yields about $18 billion worth of high-protein food annually, an estimated $3 trillion worth of manganese and other minerals…" . The third UN Conference convened in Caracas in 1974 with some 5000 delegates. The Conference turned out to be unmanageable and an agreement was not reached. The US was against the 200 mile limit of mineral rights and was up against hard opposition because of the Oil Embargo in the previous year that sent oil prices through the roof and sent oil comp...
