VENEZUALA
Land and People
Geographically Venezuela is a
land of vivid contrasts, with four major divisions: the Venezuelan
highlands, the coastal lowlands, the basin of the Orinoco River, and
the Guiana Highlands. An almost inaccessible and largely unexplored
wilderness south of the Orinoco, the Guiana Highlands occupy more than
half of the national territory and are noted for scenic wonders such as
Angel Falls. Iron ore, gold, diamonds, and other minerals are found near Ciudad Bolívar
and Ciudad Guayana. The dense forests of the region yield rubber,
tropical hardwoods, and other forest products. The boundary with Brazil
is mostly mountainous; its rain forests are home to thousands of
indigenous inhabitants. The Orinoco, one of the great rivers of South
America, has its source in this region. The Orinoco basin is a great
pastoral area. North of the Orinoco and about the Apure River and its
tributaries are the llanos, the vast, hot Orinoco plains, where there
is a great cattle industry.
The term Arawak (from aru, the Lokono word for cassava flour), was used
to designate some of the peoples encountered by the Spanish in the West
Indies in 1492 and thereafter. These include the Taíno, who occupied
the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas (Lucayan) and Bimini Florida, the
Nepoya and Suppoyo of Trinidad and the Igneri, who were supposed to
have preceded the Caribs in the Lesser Antilles, together with related
groups (including the Lokono) which lived along the eastern coast of
South America, as far south as what is now Brazil. The group belongs to
the Arawakan language family and they were the natives Christopher
Columbus encountered when he first landed in the Americas. The Spanish
described them as a peaceful people.
Early History and the Colonial Era
The Arawaks
and the Caribs were the earliest inhabitants of Venezuela, along with
certain nomadic hunting and fishing tribes. Columbus discovered the
mouths of the Orinoco in 1498. In 1499 the Venezuelan coast was
explored by Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci.
The latter, coming upon an island off the Paraguaná peninsula (probably
Aruba), nicknamed it Venezuela (little Venice) because of native
villages built above the water on stilts; the name held and was soon
applied to the mainland. Spanish settlements were established on the
coast at Cumaná (1520) and Santa Ana de Coro (1527).
The major task of the conquest was accomplished by
German adventurers—Ambrosio de Alfinger, George de Speyer and
especially Nikolaus Federmann—in
the service of the Welsers, German bankers who had obtained rights in
Venezuela from Emperor Charles V. During part of the colonial period
the area was an adjunct of New Granada.
Cocoa cultivation was the mainstay of the colonial economy. From the
16th to the 18th cent. the coastline was attacked by English
buccaneers, and in the 18th cent. there was a brisk smuggling trade
with the British islands of the West Indies.
pearls, gold, and spices in the New World were a powerful stimulus for
Spain to expand into the Americas. Samples of these resources, which
Christopher Columbus and later crews brought back to Spain, so aroused
public enthusiasm in Spain that navigators, explorers, and adventurers
began to organize
