One of the black box flight recorders from the McDonnell-Douglas MD-82 jet was found as rescuers started recovering bodies of the 152 passengers and eight Colombian crew from the hillside in Zulia state, on the frontier with Colombia, officials said.
"A great quantity of bodies have been evacuated," said Major Javier Perez Pacheco, the head of Venezuela's Search and Rescue Service. "There is no evidence that people are alive."
The bodies were to be taken by helicopter to the city of Maracaibo in north-western Venezuela where a makeshift morgue was set up in a university.
It was the second accident in five months involving the Colombian airline. The crash was also one of four plane accidents in the last two weeks that have killed at least 297 people, making August the worst month for commercial jet disasters since May 2002, when 422 people died in four crashes.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said the West Caribbean jet crashed between 3:30 am and 3:45 am, after the pilot had reported trouble with both engines.