Venezuela is a country located in the northern tip of South America and which has a rich and complex history. The region that is now Venezuela was originally inhabited by various indigenous peoples, such as the Wayuu, Timoto-Cuicas, Kariña, Warao and Yanomami. The territory of Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522, even though Christopher Columbus arrived to the Gulf of Paria, and amazed by the great offshore current of freshwater which deflected his course eastward, he thought he had arrived to the Garden of Eden.[1]
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The regions of Venezuela
Venezuela is divided into 23 states, a capital district corresponding to the city of Caracas, and the Federal Dependencies. Venezuela is further subdivided into 335 municipalities, which are these are subdivided into over one thousand parishes. The states are grouped into 9 administrative regions, which were established in 1980 by presidential decree.[2]
History of Venezuela
During his third voyage, Christopher Columbus, upon observing the rich variety of flora and fauna of the Orinoco delta in the Gulf of Paria, called the area "Land of Grace", in clear allusion to the biblical Eden, which he mentioned to the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Fernando in a letter.[1] Most of the initial attempts to colonize Venezuela, either by Spanish and Portuguese conquerors or the latter Augsburg-based Welser banking family, which received a concession to locate El Dorado, a mythical city in which people covered themselves in gold,[3] received intense resistance from indigenous peoples. Later, the Spanish settlers brought slaves from Subsaharan Africa in order to develop plantations of sugarcane, coffee and cocoa to supply the motherland. Despite that and due to the smaller size of the gold mines found in the territory, the Captainship of Venezuela received less attention from the crown than the gold and silver-rich Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru.
The Napoleonic Wars inspired seven of the ten provinces of the Captaincy General of Venezuela to declare their independence on 5 July 1811, which was achieved in 1821 after a long Independence War led by the Venezuelan Simón Bolívar, who also liberated Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, as well as Panama and Bolivia, who separated themselves from Colombia and Peru, respectively.
Geography of Venezuela
Due to its location, Venezuela can be considered a Caribbean country, as well as an Amazonian and Andean one, with Pico Bolívar, the nation's highest point at 4,979 meters above sea level, the Lake Maracaibo, a brackish lake rich in oil deposits, Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall and Los Roques, a rectangular-shape atoll archipelago, unique in the Caribbean and considered the second most important spot in the world for the Bonefish fishing.[4]
Researching family history in Venezuela
- Venezuelan genealogy
- Immigration to Venezuela
- Venezuelan emigration
- Venezuelan archives
- Vital records in Venezuela
- Birth records in Venezuela
- Death records in Venezuela
- Marriage records in Venezuela
- Census records in Venezuela
- Civil registrations in Venezuela
- Church records in Venezuela
- Newspaper records in Venezuela
- Voters lists in Venezuela
- Military records in Venezuela
Venezuelan ethnicity
Venezuela is one of the two countries, together with Colombia, where the mixing of races was the most intense during the colonization; It is estimated that around 51% of the population is mestizo (white mixed with and indigenous and Subsaharan African); Europeans and Middle Easterners make up 43% of the population, Subsaharan Africans 3.6%, Indigenous people 2%, and other races (mostly East Asians) make up the remaining 1.2%.[5]
Venezuelan surnames
See also: Venezuelan surnames
While most surnames in Venezuela are of Spanish origin<ref>Most Common Last Names In Venezuela due to the Spanish colonization and conversion of indigenous people and African slaves into Christianity, a large number of individuals of these groups retained their ancestral clans names as their surnames. Additionally, the large immigration from Portugal and to a lesser extend, Italy, Corsica and Germany has made some surnames from these communities relatively common.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Zamora, Margarita (1993). Reading Columbus. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-08297-7
- ↑ Regional Planning in Venezuela: Recent Directions. Liverpool University Press
- ↑ Cartas de la Real Audiencia de Santo Domingo (1530-1546). Genaro Rodríguez Morel.
- ↑ Unique features that distinguish Los Roques from any other beach destination
- ↑ Censos de población y vivienda. Ine.gob.ve. Retrieved 3 October 2017.