 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2020) |
Guaicaipuro | |
|---|---|
 A statue of Guaicaipuro | |
| Born | c. 1530 |
| Died | 1568 (aged 37-38) |
Cacique Guaicaipuro was a legendary native (indigenous) Venezuelan chief of both the Teques and Caracas tribes. [1] Though known today as Guaicaipuro, in documents of the time his name was written Guacaipuro. [2]
Guaicaipuro formed a powerful coalition of different tribes which he led during part of the 16th century against the Spanish conquest of Venezuelan territory in the central region of the country, especially in the Caracas valley. He commanded, among others, Caciques (Spanish: Indian chief) Naiguatá , Guaicamacuto , Chacao, Aramaipuro, Paramaconi and his own son Baruta . Guaicaipuro is one of the most famous and celebrated Venezuelan caciques. The area occupied by the Teques was populated by several native groups each with its own cacique. Guaicaipuro's tribe, which was located in what is now San Antonio de los Altos, was the largest one. His son Baruta was himself a cacique. The names of two of his sisters are also known: Tiora and Caycape.
The Spaniards discovered gold in the area of the land of the Teques, and as they started to exploit the mines, Guaicaipuro attacked, forcing the Spanish to leave. Following the attack, the governor of the province of Venezuela sent Juan Rodríguez Suárez to pacify the area, which apparently he did after defeating Guaicaipuro in several engagements. Believing he had achieved his task, the Spanish commander and his soldiers left the area leaving behind miners and three of his sons. Once the Spanish soldiers had left, Guiacaipuro assaulted the mines killing all the workers as well as the sons of Rodríguez Suárez. Immediately thereafter, Rodríguez Suárez who was on his way to the city of Valencia, with a small contingent of only six soldiers, with the purpose of meeting Lope de Aguirre, another Spanish conquistador, was ambushed by Guaicaipuro and killed.
After these successes Guaicaipuro became the main and central figure in the uprising of all the native tribes in the vicinity of the Caracas valley, and managed to unite all the tribes under his command. In 1562 they defeated an expeditionary force led by Luis Narváez. Due to the fierce attacks, the Spanish retreated away from the area for several years.
In 1567 the city of Santiago de Leon de Caracas was founded in the Caracas valley. The Spanish worried about the nearby presence of Guaicaipuro and his men, and given his previous attacks, they decided not to wait for him to attack, and as a pre-emptive move Diego de Losada, (founder of Caracas) ordered the mayor of the city, Francisco de Infante to undertake Guacaipuro's capture. In 1568 Infante and his men were led by native guides to the hut where Guaicaipuro lived and they set it on fire to force the native cacique out. Guaicaipuro was then killed by the Spanish soldiers.
Guacaipuro is one of the main figures in Venezuelan spiritism, alongside María Lionza and Negro Felipe. [3]
The county of Guaicaipuro in the state of Miranda, Venezuela was named in his honor. Later the county became the Guaicaipuro Municipality.
Amidst the new policy started by former president Hugo Chávez of re-assessing and valuing the role of Venezuela's caciques and indigenous peoples in a historical narrative which has traditionally given greater prominence to the Spanish conquistadores, Guaicaipuro's remains were symbolically moved (his actual remains have never been found) under ceremonial pomp to the national pantheon on December 8, 2001.
Under the same policy, Chávez often mentioned Guaicaipuro and other native chiefs in his speeches with the purpose of inspiring Venezuelans to resist what he called the policies of American imperialists and interventionists directed towards Venezuela. Most notably, he did this every year during the October 12 holiday, which after being renamed several years ago Dia de la Raza (previously Americas Discovery Day), was renamed as Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance). [4] [ better source needed ] In 2015, a statue of Guacaipuro was unveiled in Plaza Venezuela in honor of this day. [5] [ better source needed ]
The Venezuelan government named as Mission Guaicaipuro one of its ongoing Bolivarian Missions; this specific program seeks to restore communal land titles and human rights to Venezuela's remaining 33 indigenous tribes.
Caracas, officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas. Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern part of the country, within the Caracas Valley of the Venezuelan coastal mountain range. The valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the coast by a steep 2,200-meter-high (7,200 ft) mountain range, Cerro El Ávila; to the south there are more hills and mountains. The Metropolitan Region of Caracas has an estimated population of almost 5 million inhabitants.
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Miranda State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela and the second most populous after Zulia State. As of the 2011 census, it had a population of 2,675,165 residents. It also has the greatest Human Development Index in Venezuela, according to the Venezuelan National Institute of Statistics. The most recent population estimate was 3,194,390 in mid-2016.
María Lionza is the central figure in one of the most widespread new religious movements in Venezuela. The cult of María Lionza began in the 20th century as a blend of African, indigenous and Catholic beliefs. She is revered as a goddess of nature, love, peace and harmony. She has followers throughout Venezuelan society, from small rural villages to Caracas, where a monumental statue stands in her honor. The Cerro María Lionza Natural Monument where an important pilgrimage takes place every October, was renamed in her honour.
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Los Teques is the capital of the state of Miranda, and the municipality of Guaicaipuro in north-central Venezuela. The city is about 25 km southwest of Caracas, and 1,169 metres (3,835 ft) above mean sea level. It lies in the Cordillera de la Costa, on the banks of the Río San Pedro. According to the European Commission, Los Teques had a population of 159,532 in 2015. The city is part of the agglomeration known as Greater Caracas.
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Alejandro Colina (8 February 1901–1976) was a Venezuelan sculptor.
Indigenous people in Venezuela, Amerindians or Native Venezuelans, form about 2% of the population of Venezuela, although many Venezuelans are mixed with Indigenous ancestry. Indigenous people are concentrated in the Southern Amazon rainforest state of Amazonas, where they make up nearly 50% of the population and in the Andes of the western state of Zulia. The most numerous indigenous people, at about 200,000, is the Venezuelan part of the Wayuu people who primarily live in Zulia between Lake Maracaibo and the Colombian border. Another 100,000 or so indigenous people live in the sparsely populated southeastern states of Amazonas, Bolívar and Delta Amacuro.
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Tundama or Saymoso was a cacique of the Muisca Confederation, a loose confederation of different rulers of the Muisca who inhabited the central highlands of the Colombian Andes. The city of Tundama, currently known as Duitama and part of the Tundama Province, Boyacá, were named after the cacique. Tundama ruled over the northernmost territories of the Muisca, submitted last by the Spanish conquistadores.
The Spanish conquest of the Muisca took place from 1537 to 1540. The Muisca were the inhabitants of the central Andean highlands of Colombia before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. They were organised in a loose confederation of different rulers; the psihipqua of Muyquytá, with his headquarters in Funza, the hoa of Hunza, the iraca of the sacred City of the Sun Sugamuxi, the Tundama of Tundama, and several other independent caciques. The most important rulers at the time of the conquest were psihipqua Tisquesusa, hoa Eucaneme, iraca Sugamuxi and Tundama in the northernmost portion of their territories. The Muisca were organised in small communities of circular enclosures, with a central square where the bohío of the cacique was located. They were called "Salt People" because of their extraction of salt in various locations throughout their territories, mainly in Zipaquirá, Nemocón, and Tausa. For the main part self-sufficient in their well-organised economy, the Muisca traded with the European conquistadors valuable products as gold, tumbaga, and emeralds with their neighbouring indigenous groups. In the Tenza Valley, to the east of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense where the majority of the Muisca lived, they extracted emeralds in Chivor and Somondoco. The economy of the Muisca was rooted in their agriculture with main products maize, yuca, potatoes, and various other cultivations elaborated on elevated fields. Agriculture had started around 3000 BCE on the Altiplano, following the preceramic Herrera Period and a long epoch of hunter-gatherers since the late Pleistocene. The earliest archaeological evidence of inhabitation in Colombia, and one of the oldest in South America, has been found in El Abra, dating to around 12,500 years BP.
Baltasar Maldonado, also written as Baltazar Maldonado, was a Spanish conquistador who first served under Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, and later in the army of Hernán Pérez de Quesada in the Spanish conquest of the Muisca.
The Battle of Maracapana was an important military engagement between the Spanish conquistadors and their allied indigenous people, and the coalition of Caribbean tribes who were led by Guaicaipuro and commanded by Chief Tiuna. The battle finished with the defeat of the Caribbean power in the Caracas Valley, Venezuela where Spanish intentions for colonization had been held at bay for 7 years.
María Lionza is a large statue depicting the titular goddess, María Lionza, riding a tapir. The original is located on Sorte mountain in Yaracuy, said to be the goddess' home. A replica is located between lanes of the Francisco Fajardo freeway next to the University City campus of the Central University of Venezuela, in Caracas. The original was created by Alejandro Colina in 1951 to sit outside the university's Olympic Stadium for that year's Bolivarian Games; it was moved to the highway in 1953 and, after several years in storage with the replica on display in its place, was illicitly relocated to Sorte in 2022. The replica is a cast made by Silvestre Chacón in 2004; it has received generally negative reactions, and its construction damaged the original. It remains on the highway, while another replica is also at Sorte.
Apacuana —also transliterated as Apacuane, Apakuama or Apakuana—was a 16th-century woman of the Quiriquires, a branch of the Carib people that inhabited the Valles del Tuy region, in present-day Venezuela, notable for her leading role in a failed indigenous uprising against Spanish colonization in 1577. Her story was presented nearly a century and a half later by writer José de Oviedo y Baños in his 1723 book The Conquest and Settlement of Venezuela, a foundational work on the country's history. Introduced by the author as an "elderly sorceress and herbalist", Apacuana is considered to have been a piache, that is, a curandera, a term used in Hispanic America to call a healer or shaman. She was the mother of Guásema, who served as cacique—a term used to designate indigenous tribal chiefs in Hispanic America—while several modern writers consider her to have been a cacica as well.