Attracted by the reports of the first expedition, various merchants and adventurers had settled in the Coro country, and lived on good terms with the Caiquetia nation of Indians. Now, however, some of these colonists, losing taste for a civilised life, made attempts to commence the nefarious trade which was at that time disgracing all the countries of the Old World in Africa and America. Having learned wisdom from the disasters in Nueva Andalusia, the audience of Santo Domingo dispatched a splendid man in Juan de Ampies to nip the evil in the bud; as a first step he founded the city of Santa Ana de Coro on that Saint’s day in 1527, and in his administration sought steadily to foster the spirit of amity between the Caiquetias (under their cacique Manaure) and the Europeans. His good work was soon, however, destined to be ignored and frustrated by the selfish policy of the King of Spain.
Charles V. had at various times raised heavy loans from the Welser, the bankers of Augsburg, and now in part payment he handed over to them the administration and exploitation of the newly-acquired province of Venezuela. Ambrosius Alfinger was appointed first Governor of Coro, with jurisdiction over all the country between the Gulf of Coquibacoa and the western end of the Peninsula of Paria. He arrived at the seat of his government with three hundred Spaniards, many of them of noble blood, and fifty German miners, and found Juan de Ampies too patriotic to raise difficulties on account of the ingratitude of a worthless king. The man who had founded Coro and started administration on sound lines spent the remainder of his days in retirement in Santo Domingo, though at a later date the barren island of Curaçao was given to him as some return for his services.
The following year saw Nueva Andalusia constituted a definite province, under Don Diego de Ordaz as first Governor, who was given authority to explore and conquer all the territory to the south. Sedeño was appointed Governor of Trinidad, but as yet the Orinoco region was ignored or by implication included in New Andalusia, and it was therefore Ordaz who, upon his arrival, journeyed up the Orinoco as far as the rapids of Carichana, near the mouth of the Meta, where he heard stories of the gold and emeralds to be found in the country whence that river flowed. The success of the voyage proved his death, however, for Sedeño was jealous of his fame and in league with Matienza, then commander-in-chief in Cubagua, managed to poison Ordaz in Nueva Cadiz on his return.
In the west Alfinger undertook a long journey of discovery towards what is now Colombia, and in his greed for gold and precious stones committed all manner of atrocities on the Indians who had none, or who refused to be robbed. Making a permanent camp in the country to the west of the Lake of Maracaibo, after founding the city of that name in 1529, he sent a party of Spaniards and Germans to Coro for fresh supplies and reinforcements. The party lost themselves in the forest-clad mountains at the south end of the lake, and in their privations some of the members turned cannibals, killing and eating their Indian servants. Apparently the taste for human flesh, once acquired, was not easily overcome, for the survivors, when given food by some Indians on the banks of the Chama, fell upon their benefactors and devoured them! The few that reached Coro found that Alfinger had been killed in his camp in 1531, and his expedition had accomplished nothing beyond outraging the Indians.
Georg von Speyer (Jorge de Spira) was the next Governor, appointed in 1533, and with him came Alonso de Pacheco, and ancestors of many of the modern Venezuelan families. Before his death, in 1540, von Speyer and his equally energetic lieutenant, Nicolaus Federmann, carried out extensive journeys in western and southern Venezuela, and the former reached the banks of the Guaviare, which were never again visited by Europeans until the middle of the nineteenth century. In the meantime Coro was made the seat of a bishopric, and Don Rodrigo de Bastidas arrived as first occupant of the see in 1536. The Bishop acted as interim Governor after Speyer’s death until the new Governor, Philip von Huten (Felipe de Urre), arrived in 1541. The latter also made extensive journeys into the Llanos in search of El Dorado, but was killed in 1545 by Juan de Carvajal, the founder of Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de el Tocuyo. With his death the rule of the Welsers practically came to an end, though the King of Spain only finally removed all claim to power on their part in 1558. Their energy in exploration is indisputable, but their dominion was marked throughout by cruelty and extravagance.
In Nueva Andalusia the new Governor after Ordaz, Gerónimo Ortal, and after him Sedeño, Governor of Trinidad, were also exploring the Llanos and endeavouring to settle that region, but the previous evil deeds of the Cubaguans had made the task very difficult, if not impossible. Before long these received a just reward for their crimes, in a succession of natural catastrophes, which ultimately drove the remnant from the island. In 1530 an earthquake shook the town and destroyed many buildings, not without loss of life, and in 1543 earthquake and hurricane together wrought so much havoc to life and property that only a few lingered on, persisting in the slave trade, for which New Cadiz was notorious, until at last the population decreased to nil in 1550; even the exact site of the city is now unknown. One important man appears on the scene from Margarita, about 1555, in Francisco Faxardo, the son of a Spaniard of noble birth who had wedded a princess of the Guaiquerias. Crossing to the coasts of the Carácas, he established friendly relations with the Teques and other Indians, and in 1560 built the Villa de San Francisco, approximately where the capital of Venezuela now stands, together with the Villa de El Collado (Pablo Collado being the Governor in Coro), afterwards Caraballeda, about eight miles east of La Guaira.
Under the Spanish Governors who succeeded the Welsers, the already evident tendency to leave the barren plains of Coro for the more fruitful territory to the east and south became more marked. Mérida had been founded in 1542, Borburata (Puerto Cabello) in 1549, Nueva Segovia (Barquisimeto) in 1552, and Nueva Valencia, on the shores of Lake Tacarigua, in 1555, with Trujillo in 1556, while the mines of San Felipe and Nirgua had been known and worked for some years.
In 1561 occurred the rebellion of the mad “traitor” Lope de Aguirre. After journeying down the Amazon from Peru, he sailed up to Margarita, and there robbed the treasury. With his booty he crossed to Borburata, sacked the port, and climbed the mountain road to Valencia, from which town he wrote his famous letter to Philip II. In this he upbraided the monarch for his lack of practical interest in the colonists’ welfare, in lands won by Spaniards for his father, while the latter lived at his ease in Castile; the officials and priests sent out to guide them sought, he said, only their own ends. The monkish historian Oviedo y Baños, incensed by the reference to the laziness of the Churchmen, calls him aquel bruto (“that brute”), but it is probable that most of his complaints were fully justified, though he was hardly fitted to found a new and better order of things. He marched on Barquisimeto and took it, and, hearing that the Governor was approaching with troops from the direction of Tocuyo, wrote him a letter, the humour of which can best be appreciated after reading the early writers’ accounts of the poltroonery of Pablo Collado, for which he was subsequently deposed by the Audience of Santo Domingo.
The letter opens: “Muy magnífico Señor,—Entre otros papeles que de V. md. en este Pueblo se han hallado, estaba una carta suya a mi dirigida, con mas ofrecimientos, y preambulos, que Estrellas ay en el Cielo.”[3]