Venezuela

by Leonard V. Dalton

Here we must go back for a year or two to follow the course of events in the east and south. In 1591 Don Antonio de Berrio y Oruña was appointed Governor of Trinidad and the Orinoco, and very shortly after his arrival he gave evidence of his energetic spirit by crossing to the mainland and founding there the city of San Thomé de la Guayana, east of the mouth of the Caroni, where the castle of Guayana Vieja stands to this day.[5] In 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh first visited these regions of Guayana or Guiana, described so fully in his famous book. On his way he took Berrio prisoner in Trinidad, but afterwards released him.

BARQUISIMETO.

Both men, clever and energetic as they were, rapidly became fascinated by the stories of Manoa, the city of El Dorado, which were being handed on from one narrator to another, and losing nothing, by repetition; the fabled wealth of the Golden Inca was eventually the cause of the death of both. In 1615 Berrio led an expedition southward from San Thomé, but he at length returned unsuccessful, with only thirty of his three hundred men, and himself died of fever shortly afterwards. His son, Don Fernando de Berrio, took charge temporarily, but was soon removed to Santa Fé de Bogotá, as Viceroy of the New Kingdom of Granada, into which Venezuela was now incorporated.

Raleigh’s final expedition in 1618 captured the fortress of San Thomé, but this and other encounters with the Spanish colonists, who, owing to a misunderstanding, appear to have commenced the attacks, led to his execution by the poltroon James I. to appease the wrath of Spain. Thus the fable of Manoa remained alive for two centuries more till finally exposed by Humboldt.

The province of Venezuela by this time was completely conquered, but New Andalusia, or Cumaná, which again had a Governor of its own, still continued to be the scene of strife; and Vides, as Governor, did not improve matters by his encouragement of the slave trade. At length, in 1652, the suggestion of one Francisco Rodriguez Liete to the bishops of Puerto Rico, made four years previously, was adopted, and, all military operations against the Indians were forbidden, with a view to carrying out organised attempts to civilise them through the missions, and in 1656 a station was again founded at Barcelona by Franciscan monks. As an indication of the success of these new methods it may be observed that within 150 years (before 1799) the Franciscans founded 38 towns with 25,000 Indian inhabitants, while the previous equal period of aggression and oppression had effected no settlement of a lasting nature. In 1686 missions were established round Cumaná and south of the Delta by the Capuchins, while the Jesuits undertook to civilise the Orinoco. The latter were obliged on account of ill-health to abandon their first stations within a very short time, but returned again in 1725 to meet with increased success. The inhuman cruelty which their creed allowed some of them to practise towards the pagan Indians undid much of the good they may have at first accomplished, and in the nineteenth century their missions became deserted, with one or two exceptions, while the last of the missionaries after the revolution seem to have been as licentious and lazy as their predecessors had been cruel and energetic.

The founding of the University of Carácas by Philip V. in 1721 seemed to promise development of the colony on sound lines, but three years later a monopoly of trade was granted to the Compañía Guipuzcoana, a step which probably did more than any other single act to bring about disaffection towards Spain. The province was separated from New Granada in 1731, when the whole of what is now Venezuela (with the exception of the Maracaibo region, incorporated in 1777) was included in a new Capitania-General of that name. The first Captain-General was Colonel Don Sebastian Garcia de la Torre.

As a result of the evident discontent among the colonists the privileges of the Guipuzcoana Company were taken away from them in 1778, but the disregard by the mother country of Venezuela’s best interests could not be atoned for by a negative act only, and nineteen years later, in 1797, occurred the first definite attempt at revolt. Under the influence of the French Revolution, some of the colonists banded themselves together with the purpose of forming an independent Republic of Venezuela; the leading spirits appear to have been Don Manuel Gual and Don José Maria España, but one of the other leaders in his zeal to multiply adherents disclosed the schemes to his barber, who straightway communicated the fact to the authorities, Carbonell being Captain-General. Six of the leaders were hanged, drawn, and quartered, many having voluntarily given themselves up as their best hope of safety. Gual and España fled, but the latter, returning from Trinidad in 1799 to visit his wife in La Guaira, was captured, executed, and his body mutilated by order of the new Captain-General, Manuel Guevara Vasconcelos.

The revolution of Gual and España thus being ended, nothing of special note occurred in Venezuela for six years, but in the meantime a Venezuelan, Don Francisco Miranda, who had relations in Europe and had travelled in many lands, fighting in the American War of Independence, and for France in the wars with Prussia in 1792-5, was conferring with Pitt in England. From the British statesman he obtained promises of help, but finally got practical assistance in America, and at last invaded the colony at Ocumare oh March 25, 1806. Vasconcelos had been warned of his arrival, and repulsed him without difficulty; Miranda retired to Trinidad, but continued to work for his purpose there, and made an unsuccessful landing in Coro some five months later. His resources were exhausted, however, and he finally returned to Trinidad and thence to Europe.

In the following year Vasconcelos died, and the interim Captain, Juan de las Casas, recognised Prince Murat as regent in place of Charles IV., the Prince’s commissioners reaching La Guaira in July, 1808. The colonists, however, compelled him to swear allegiance to Prince Ferdinand as Ferdinand VII., then captive in Bayonne. In May of the following year Vicente Emparan arrived as new Captain-General, appointed by the Supreme Junta of Spain, but finding the people unwilling to acknowledge that authority, he was easily led by Madariaga, a Chilian, then canon of the cathedral of Carácas, to appeal to them as to whether they wished him to carry out his duties as Governor. It is said that Emparan came out on a balcony to put the question to the crowd, and Madariaga, behind him, signed to them to reply to him in the negative, “No lo queremos” (“We do not wish it”), in answer to which Emparan said, “Yo tampoco quiero mandar” (“Nor do I wish to command”), and so retired from the captaincy, which he was the last to fill. He was finally deposed by a local Junta formed to act in the name of Ferdinand VII. on April 19, 1810.