Foundation
According to philosophynearby, the antecedents of the foundation of Caracas originate in the cattle herd of San Francisco, established in 1560 by the mestizo Francisco Fajardo. This foundation was made from another previous population founded on the coast of Caracas by Fajardo himself, and as a consequence of his attempts to populate the Toromaimas Valley (or San Francisco Valley), to support and defend the exploitation of mines. of gold discovered the previous year in the nearby area of Los Teques, where Cacique Guaicaipuro lived. Fajardo left twice, in 1555 and 1558, from Margarita, his native island, to found cities on the mainland, using his familiarity and friendship with the Indians that populated the north-eastern and north-central coasts of Venezuela, and taking advantage of the advantage of mastering the language of the Caracas Indians, his relatives from the coast.
When the Spanish conqueror Juan Rodríguez Suárez arrived at the San Francisco herd, the region was at war against the Spanish invaders, and the herd was attacked daily with the consequent loss of people and animals. In order to strengthen that facility and use it as a strategic base for the future conquest of the territory, Rodríguez Suárez turned it into Villa de San Francisco, appointed mayor and councilmen, and distributed land among the soldiers. However, this foundation did not survive the attack by the Indians of the Teques, Mariches, Toromaimas and other residents of the province confederated by Guaicaipuro.
In 1567 the Spanish conqueror Diego de Losada, following a “royal cedula” (king’s decree) issued in 1563 as a result of the depopulation of San Francisco, populated the place, ordered its rebuilding and formally re-founded the city in March 1568with the name from “Santiago de León de Caracas”, a name on which there is currently academic controversy, taking the toponym of Caracas from the name carried by the indigenous people who inhabited the region when the conquerors arrived.
Colonial period
Shortly after its foundation, the city would become the head of the Province of Venezuela, mainly due to its climate and its effective mountainous defense against corsairs and pirates. Around 1576, Governor Juan de Pimentel established it as his residence, which involved the third change of the administrative capital of the province of Venezuela, from Coro on the western coast of the country to El Tocuyo in 1545 and then to Caracas in 1578. Since then the city remained the capital of the Province of Venezuela and at the end of the 18th century, with the administrative changes made by the Spanish Empire, it would be the capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela. In 1577, Pimentel himself had drawn the first urban plan of the city, designed in accordance with the Ordinances of Felipe II that meticulously established the dimensions of the streets, squares, blocks or blocks and the orthogonal arrangement (that is, in a grid) of the entire city, indicating how it should widen over time. The Plan of Pimentel from 1578, the only one that is preserved from the layout of the city until 1760, shows a small Castilian city ordered by squares in a grid with 4 streets and 25 blocks around a Plaza Mayor, as was the norm in the Hispanic cities of Indies.
In 1595 there was in Caracas for the only time a failed invasion attempt by the British privateer Amías Preston, who, commanding 500 men, managed to assault and later burn the city.
Around 1600 the church of San Francisco, attached to the convent of the same name, made of calicanto and solid stone, already dominated the landscape of the city, dwarfing the old Iglesia Mayor, now the Cathedral of Caracas.
In 1641 the city was shaken by the destructive San Bernabé earthquake, which destroyed everything that was built, the reconstruction will be slow and laborious, many of the large buildings would be erected after several decades.
In 1678 a defensive wall of enclosure began to be manufactured, surrounding the city, this for fear of the French corsairs who more than once have tried to take it. The remains of this project of wall and military defenses that were never completed are the names of corners of Caracas that still remain, such as those of Luneta and the corner of the Redoubt.
At the beginning of the 18th century, a new neighborhood of Canarian islanders, La Candelaria, to the east of the city, was home to a large part of the Canarian immigrants who, as “shore whites”, did the tasks that the Mantuanos, or native whites, children of the descendants of the conquerors.
The 24 of July of 1783 was born in Caracas, the Liberator of Venezuela, Simon Bolivar, who was born in a birthplace of the Liberator Simon Bolivar in the center of the city. Currently the birthplace of Bolívar is considered a historical heritage of the city and a national monument, and is used as a museum. At the beginning of the 19th century the city had around 30 thousand residents.
