Aruba, officially the Country of Aruba, is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, situated in the south of the Caribbean Sea. Aruba is located approximately 29 kilometres (18 mi) north of the Venezuelan peninsula of Paraguaná and 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Curaçao.
Bonaire is a Caribbean island in the Leeward Antilles, and is a special municipality of the Netherlands. Its capital is the port of Kralendijk, on the west (leeward) coast of the island. Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao form the ABC islands, 80 km off the coast of Venezuela. The islands have an arid climate that attracts visitors seeking warm, sunny weather all year round, and they lie outside the Main Development Region for tropical cyclones. Bonaire is a popular snorkeling and scuba diving destination because of its multiple shore diving sites and easy access to the island's fringing reefs.
The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1500s and phased out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began hunting and prosecuting pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful was from the 1650s to the 1730s. Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of pirate seaports such as Port Royal in Jamaica, Tortuga in Haiti, and Nassau in the Bahamas. Piracy in the Caribbean was part of a larger historical phenomenon of piracy, as it existed close to major trade and exploration routes in almost all the five oceans.
The Lesser Antilles are a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. They are distinguished from the large islands of the Greater Antilles to the west. They form an arc which begins east of Puerto Rico and swings south through the Leeward and Windward Islands almost to South America and then turns west along the Venezuelan coast as far as Aruba. Barbados is isolated about 100 miles east of the Windwards.
The Nueva Esparta State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. It comprises Margarita Island, Coche, and the largely uninhabited Cubagua.
The Sucre State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital is Cumaná city. Sucre State covers a total surface area of 11,800 km2 (4,600 sq mi) and, as of the 2011 census, had a population of 896,921. The most important river in the state is the Manzanares River.
The Spanish treasure fleet, or West Indies Fleet, was a convoy system of sea routes organized by the Spanish Empire from 1566 to 1790, which linked Spain with its territories in the Americas across the Atlantic. The convoys were general purpose cargo fleets used for transporting a wide variety of items, including agricultural goods, lumber, various metal resources such as silver and gold, gems, pearls, spices, sugar, tobacco, silk, and other exotic goods from the overseas territories of the Spanish Empire to the Spanish mainland. Spanish goods such as oil, wine, textiles, books and tools were transported in the opposite direction.
Isla de Aves, or Aves Island, is a Federal Dependency of Venezuela. It has been the subject of numerous territorial disputes with the United States, neighboring independent islands, such as Dominica, and European states controlling the surrounding dependent islands, such as the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Margarita Island is the largest island in the Venezuelan state of Nueva Esparta, situated off the northeastern coast of the country, in the Caribbean Sea. The capital city of Nueva Esparta, La Asunción, is located on the island.
The Federal Dependencies of Venezuela encompass most of Venezuela's offshore islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Venezuela, excluding those islands that form the State of Nueva Esparta and some Caribbean coastal islands that are integrated with nearby states. These islands, with a total area of 342 square kilometres, are sparsely populated – according to the preliminary results of the 2011 Census only 2,155 people live there permanently, with another hundred from Margarita Island who live there seasonally to engage in fishing. Local government is officially under the authority of Central government in Caracas, although de facto power is often held by the heads of the sparse and somewhat isolated communities that decorate the territories.
Araya is a town located on Venezuela's Caribbean coast, on the westernmost extremity of the Araya Peninsula.
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island countries and 19 dependencies in three archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago.
The history of Curaçao starts with settlement by the Arawaks, an Amerindian people coming from the South American mainland. They are believed to have inhabited the island for many hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans.
The Venezuelan Coastal Range, also known as Venezuelan Caribbean Mountain System, is a mountain range system and one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela, that runs along the central and eastern portions of Venezuela's northern coast. The range is a northeastern extension of the Andes, and is also known as the Maritime Andes. It covers around 48,866 km2, being the 4th largest natural region in Venezuela.
European Venezuelans or White Venezuelans are Venezuelan citizens who self-identify in the national census as white, tracing their heritage to European ethnic groups. According to the official census report, although "white" literally involves external issues such as light skin, shape and color of hair and eyes, among others, the term "white" has been used in different ways in different historical periods and places, and so its precise definition is somewhat confusing.
Andrés Rodríguez de Villegas (1580–1631) was a Spanish soldier who served as governor and captain-general of the Province of Isla Margarita, Venezuela (1619–1626) and as governor of Spanish Florida (1630–1631).
German interest in the Caribbean involved a series of unsuccessful proposals made by the Imperial German Navy during the late-nineteenth century to establish a coaling station somewhere in the Caribbean. The German Empire was rapidly building a world-class navy, but coal-burning warships needed frequent refueling and could operate only within range of a coaling station. Preliminary plans were vetoed by Otto von Bismarck.
The Attack on Saint Martin was a failed attempt by the Dutch Republic to recapture the island and former base of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) from the Spanish. In 1633 the Spanish had invaded Saint-Martin and Anguilla, driving off the French and Dutch inhabitants. The French and Dutch banded together to repel the Spanish and it was during a 1644 sea battle that the Dutch commander Peter Stuyvesant, later the governor of New Amsterdam, unsuccessfully besieged Fort Amsterdam and was forced to retreat with the loss of hundreds of men. A stray Spanish cannonball shattered his leg, which had to be amputated. But luck was on the Dutch side, and when the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Netherlands ended, the Spanish no longer needed a Caribbean base and just sailed away in 1648.
The Araya and Paria xeric scrub (NT1301) is an ecoregion in Venezuela that stretches along the Caribbean coast to the west of Trinidad, and that includes Margarita Island and some smaller islands. The ecoregion includes dune herbs, dry thorn scrubs and deciduous forests. The mountains on Margarita Island hold montane forests similar to those in the mainland coastal range. The beaches are used for breeding by sea turtles. Some endemic bird species are threatened with extinction by illegal capture for the pet trade. Deforestation and over-grazing by goats are also problems.
Luis Fajardo y Ruíz de Avendaño,, known simply as Luis Fajardo, was a Spanish admiral and nobleman who had an outstanding naval career in the Spanish Navy. He is considered one of the most reputable Spanish militaries of the last years of the reign of Philip II and the reign of Philip III. He held important positions in the navy and carried out several military operations in which he had to fight against English, Dutch, French and Barbary forces in the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. He is known for the conquest of La Mamora in 1614.
