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REPUBLICA BOLIVARIANA DE VENEZUELA |
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Jungle ÷ Plains ÷ Costa ÷ Mountain |
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History
Independence
Venezuela Today
Venezuelans
Venezuelan Cuisine
Venezuelan Sport
Beneath the Waves
The Boom Years
Miss Venezuela
Parties
Climate
Nightlife
Communications
Education
Vegetation
Animals
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HISTORY
Most histories of Venezuela commence in the year 1498, when the navigator Christopher Columbus first laid eyes on the Orinoco River and declared that it must flow directly from Eden, the biblical paradise. Of course, Columbus was the first European to visit South America, but it was hardly a "discovery" -native Americans had been living here for some 10,000 years, ever since the great migrations following the last Ice Age. Dozens of unique cultures inhabited the vast region of mountains, desert, plains and jungle that the invading Spaniards would eventually bring together under the name of "Venezuela". Convinced to his dying day that he had found the Orient, Columbus called these inhabitants "Indians", and the misnomer has stuck (although, in Spanish, native Venezuelans now prefer to be referred to as indígenas, or "indigenous people"). These Indian groups did not build the sort of magnificent civilizations or glittering cities later found in Mexico or Peru. Instead, they lived in semi-nomadic, hunting and gathering societies, or small agricultural villages. Although Europeans would dismiss their societies as primitive, the pre-Columbian world was in fact highly complex: each society had its own language, mythology and cultural traditions, its long history of warfare and survival. Some, like the Caribe Indians, were fierce and warlike, descending on their enemies in canoes and turning their bones into flutes; others, like the Aruaks, were sedentary, spending more time cultivating small fields than fighting. With no knowledge of writing, these pre-Columbian societies kept no records, and little is known about dozens of ancient cultures. Remote groups like the Goajiras around modem-day Maracaibo and the Piaroas in the Amazon managed to survive the murderous onslaught of Europeans, but the majority were simply wiped out. Their exotic-sounding names, like Mixtecas, Goyones and Taironas, would soon only crop up in the disjointed chronicles of the conquerors.
First contact: Yet when Columbus's tiny caravelles weighed anchor in the gulf of Paria on his third voyage, there was little indication of the wholesale devastation that European contact would bring. The navigator decided that this new fruit -laden land was "the loveliest in all the world" and its people surprisingly open and friendly. Canoes full of Paria Indians came out to great the newcomers, and Columbus eagerly noted that they wore jewellery made of gold and pearls. The virtual flood of explorers that followed soon abandoned Columbus' s idea that the New World was Asia. After sailing up and down Venezuela's beach-lined coast, they were also decidedly unimpressed with what it had to offer in the way of riches. Apart from a few small baubles, the Caribbean yielded no quantities of precious metal, silk or spices. One of these first explorers, the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, gave Venezuela its name -literally, "Little V enice" when his sailors commented, no doubt ironically, that the native villages on stilts in Lake Maracaibo reminded them of the canals of Venice. But this growing suspicion that the Americas were hardly worth bothering about. Vinced that the Aruaks plotted to steal their pigs and began a fight in which the whole village was burned. At another village, Ordaz put hundreds of unarmed lndians to the sword because they refused to give food (and then burned the village to make sure none escaped by feigning death). Only some 200 Spaniards were still alive when the expedition stumbled into the endless flat plains of the Venezuelan Llanos. They wandered this near-deserted country, still following the Orinoco, until Ordaz finally agreed to turn back. The only good news was from an obviously terrified Indian prisoner, who announced under questioning that vast gold could be found in the nearby empire of Meta, ruled by a one-eyed prince. The German conquistadors: Although Ordaz himself died on the way back to Spain, the myth of Meta would inspire dozens more expeditions into Venezuela' s inhospitable interior. Before long, Meta would blend with the enduring fantasy of "El Dorado," a fabulously wealthy land where an Indian king was covered daily with gold dust. Dozens of expeditions set off into the Venezuelan interior, often to disappear with out trace in the steaming jungles of the Amazon or succumb to starvation in the Llanos. Strangely, many of these ill-fated groups were led by Gerrnans. Forming a unique chapter in the history of the Spanish conquest, the whole of Venezuela was temporarily granted in the 1500s to the German banking house of Welser, a group of merchant adventurers who had interests from India to Africa, patronized the artist Albrecht Dürer and to whom the Spanish king Charles I owed thousands of ducats in debt. Historians have been fascinated by the German expeditions mainly because of their cruelty, stunning even by the callous standards of the day, and their almost total futility. A wealthy young cloth merchant from Ulm, Ambrosius Dalfinger, ledhundreds of finely equipped soldiers to the sandy wastelands near Lake Maracaibo, losing a third of his force without finding even a single gold earring. When he finally did find gold on another trip, the soldiers sent to transport it became 10st, turned to cannibalism, then all died of starvation. Another German captain, a calculating 24 year old named Nicolaus Federmann, became convinced that the Pacific Ocean lay not far south of Coro. He tricked tribe after Indian tribe into offering his men help before turning on them and either slaughtering or enslaving them as porters. These were chained up by the neck so that if one collapsed or died of exhaustion, the body could be quickIy discarded by simply chopping off the head. Typical was his treatment of the Guaicari Indians, who came to meet Federmann' s men in an apparently peaceful fashion. "While I distracted them with words," the Teutonic conquistador proudly recorded, "I arranged that they should be surrounded by the horses, which would attack them. "We took them by surprise and killed five hundred. The horsemen charged into the thick of them, knocking down as many as they could. aur footsoldiers then slaughtered these like pigs... In the end they tried to hide in the grass, or the living hid beneath the dead, but these were found and many of them beheaded after we finished with those who were fleeing." In the end, Federmann found a race of dwarfs -only 76 cm (30 inches) tall, he reported, but perfectly proportioned -and even some golden trinkets, but little else. After about 20 years of similarly atrocious depradations, the Spanish Crown ordered an inquiry and revoked the German lease. With poetic justice, many of the Germans came to sticky ends: Federmann wasted the rest of his life searching for El Dorado, Dalfinger fell riddled with Indian arrows in Colombia, and several others were executed by Spanish conspirators. The frontier secured: Although no cities paved with jewels were ever found, these misdirected quests did attract the manpower needed to secure much of Venezuela for the Spanish Crown. Giving up on El Dorado in the 1540s, colonists turned to securing more towns and routes through the Andes to the rest of the empire. It was an uphill struggle: the scattered groups of Venezuelan Indians were now aware of the Spaniards' cruelty and put up tenacious resistance to, their advance, in many areas halting it completely. The town of Caracas, later to become Venezuela's colonial capital, was founded several times, only to be wiped out again and again by hostile tribes.
In fact, Spanish colonists bitterly expected the struggle to go on
for decades and ruefully looked at other American provinces like Peru and
Bolivia where silver mines, were making penniless adventurers into grandees
overnight. Then an unexpected European
The small outposts at Cumaná, Caracas, Mérida and Maracaibo grew to be muddy villages and then established towns as colonists began arriving in numbers from Spain. Still marking Venezuela' s towns and cities is the original monotonous grid-iron street plan, spreading out from the cabildo (town council) and cathedral as a symbol of rational empire-building. Houses were mostly of adobe mud, although a few of the richest settlers built in brick; most were set around a whitewashed patio and garden, and were kept one story high to avoid damage in case of earthquakes. Attempts were made to create genteel enclaves of Hispanic style in this tropical setting: children were still married off at age 14, heavy imported wine went down with meals and a long siesta after lunch was de rigueur. Pirates soon replaced Indians as the main threat to Venezuela' s new towns. Prowling the Caribbean coastline were packs of English, Dutch and French corsairs waiting for gold-Iaden galleons but not above pillaging a whole town for its wealth. On one occasion in 1595, Sir Francis Drake even attacked Caracas: taking 500 men on a secret night march through the mountains, he surprised the town and burned it to the ground. According to the chroniclers, most of the inhabitants fled, leaving a single old man to confront the invaders. In true Don Quixote fashion, he took a lance and charged Drake's men on horseback, only to be felled by a volley of arquebus fire.
Cattle and cacao: After building towns as bases, the Spaniards
claimed the countryside. in the grand colonial plan, Venezuela become half
plantation, half ranch. Across the warm valleys of the coast spread haciendas, semi-feudal plantations growing mostly the native South American plant cacao. With Indians dying out, the Spaniards brought in boatloads of black African slaves as laborers, adding a new and lasting racial element to Venezuelan society. Slavery lasted here long after it was abolished in Europe: as late as 1840 travelers were appalled to find every Venezuelan town had its covered slave market. Blacks up for sale had coconut oil rubbed into their skin to make it shiny and, as if they were horses, had their teeth checked by prospective buyers to confirm their age and health. Conditions on the plantations werepitiless, and regular slave revo1ts were repressed quickly and ferociously. Meanwhile, the fertile grasslands of the Llanos were opened up to cattle. Hatos, or ranches, began to dot this remote area and, as in the pampas of Argentina, half-wild herds were soon wandering the empty plains, unrestricted by fencing. Since beef was near impossible to transport, llaneros -the breed of skilled horsemen, usually drawn from the fringes of society, who worked the Llanos would slaughter steers just to eat the tongue and take the hide, leaving the carcasses to rot in the wilderness. While there were chronic shortages of almost every other domestic item in colonial times, leather was abundant and used for almost anything: it made the backing for tables and chairs, replaced glass for windows, and, when used in thongs, could be substituted for rare iron nails.
The shape 01 colonial society: The majority of initial settlers
were young unmarried men, and coaxing Spanish women to brave the
uncertainties of an Atlantic crossing and rough life in the New World would
long remain a problem. Those that did come were somewhat horrified to find
that they might have to share their new husbands with one or more Indian or
black slave mistresses, and even accept a collection of bastard children.
As the colonial era progressed, the
blancos became divided between a small group of Spanish-bom newcomers and
the vast bulk of creoles -as whites who were born in the New World were
called. Both groups emulated the styles and manners of far-away Madrid. The
visiting German scientist Alexander von Humboldt would record of Venezuela
that "in no other part of Spanish America has civilization assumed a more
European character," with blancos holding elegant soirées, playing cards,
dancing and earnestly discussing the latest French farce or Italian opera.
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