Venezuela: Colonial Period

Spanish contact with the region that became Venezuela began in 1498, when Christopher Columbus sighted the coast during his third voyage. The following year, Alonso de Ojeda explored the area and, struck by indigenous stilt houses built over Lake Maracaibo, named it Venezuela, or “Little Venice.” Spain established its first mainland settlement at Cumaná in 1502, followed in 1536 by Coro, which became the first permanent Spanish town in the territory and served briefly as an early administrative center.

Colonial development proceeded unevenly. Early wealth came from pearl fisheries off the islands of Cubagua and Margarita, which drew settlers and Crown revenue through the 1520s and 1530s before the beds were depleted. Spanish landowners later relied on the encomienda system to organize indigenous labor across the plains, or llanos, where cattle ranching took hold. By the eighteenth century cacao had become the colony's most valuable export, cultivated on plantations along the coastal valleys and increasingly worked by enslaved Africans as demand grew in Europe.

In 1728 the Spanish Crown granted the Real Compañía Guipuzcoana a monopoly over Venezuelan trade, an arrangement that boosted cacao exports but provoked resentment among local planters and smugglers, including a 1749 revolt led by Juan Francisco de León. Administrative fragmentation persisted until 1777, when Charles III created the Captaincy General of Venezuela, unifying the provinces of Caracas, Cumaná, Maracaibo, Guayana, and Margarita under a single government based in Caracas.