Venezuela

Who named "Venezuela", and what does that mean?

Venezuela Map

The pre-Hispanic Indian cultures of Venezuela, which arose from approximately 14,000 BC, did not form part of the better-known Andean or Central American civilizations, and were primitive in comparison. From around 2,000 C, the isolated tribes settled extensively in the coastal and Llanos (plains) regions, and developed into culturally distinct groups of different ethnic origin. Formerly nomadic, their now settled lifestyle brought about a significant increase in population, and on the eve of the Spanish conquest, it is estimated that about half a million Indians inhabited what we now know as Venezuela belonging to three principal ethno-linguistic groups – the Cariban, Arawak and Chibcha.

It was on his third voyage of discovery that Christopher Columbus sighted Venezuela, and, on discovering the mouth of the Orinoco River, realized he had come across something far greater than another island. The following year, the explorer, Alonso de Ojeda, sailed up to the western tip of the country and into Lake Maracaibo. There, observing Indian houses sitting on wooden stilts above the waters’ edge, he christened the land ‘Venezuela’, meaning ‘little Venice’. The first Spanish settlement on the mainland was established at Cumana in 1521.

The indigenous tribes put up a strong struggle against the colonial depredations of both the Spanish and the Germans, who left a swathe of the chimerical El Dorado. In the end, though, their resistance was subdued when many tribal communities fell victim to European diseases such as smallpox, which wiped out two-thirds of the population in the Caracas Valley alone.

However, the lack of lootable wealth in Venezuela soon led to colonial neglect, which in turn prompted dissatisfaction and resentment among the American-born Spanish elites. The Spanish rulers were eventually thrown out by the young Simon Bolivar, known locally as ‘El Libertador’. He seized Venezuela from Spain in 1821 with a decisive victory at Campo Carabobo, near Valencia, aided by British mercenaries and an army of horsemen from Los Llanos, Bolivar had already brought independence to Colombia, and went on, with his lieutenant Antonio Jose de Sucre, to liberate Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. His dream of a united state of Gran Colombia, which would unify Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, did not survive his death in 1830, when Venezuela declared full independence under a new constitution.

From 1830-1858, Venezuela found itself controlled by a succession for military dictatorships, and underwent a period of political strife and civil war. Internationally, too, there were problems. In the 1840s, Venezuela laid a claim o two thirds of British Guyana territory, giving birth to a long running border dispute that was to put a heavy strain on the relations between the two countries. Today, Venezuela still claims this land and modern Venezuelan maps mark his region as a ‘zona en reclamacion’ (territory to be reclaimed).

The post-independence period was marked by a succession of military dictators, political coups and economic instability, until the discovery of huge oil reserves in the Maracaibo basin in the 1920s brought some degree of prosperity to the country. By the late 1920s Venezuela had become he world’s largest oil exporter, but little of this newfound wealth found its way to the common people. With poverty rife and educational and health facilities in a deplorable state, a series of popular uprisings took place, culminating in the country’s first democratic elections in 1947.

Reference
Think Venezuela
Lonely Planet