Venezuela, a country classified as one of the largest oil exporters in the world and with the highest number of beauty titles, today shows a different reality, but do you know its history? There are many interesting things to discover and here we will approach them through a series of articles up to the present time. Keep reading.
Currently the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, located in the northern part of South America, its capital is Caracas, and its official currency is the Bolívar (VES). It is made up of 23 states and inhabited by a population of approximately 28 million people.
Because it is located in the intertropical zone, it has a variety of warm and rainy climates, generally, with a fairly high biodiversity, which places it in the 7th place on the planet with the greatest variety of birds and the 9th in the greatest diversity of animals, plants and ecosystem, the latter being quite varied, giving us a setting of snow, desert, beautiful beaches and jungle throughout the year.
In 1498 Venezuela was discovered on Columbus's 3rd voyage to America. Many stories revolve around this since it is said that Columbus arrived mainly on the Island of Trinidad, from there he approached in front of the Orinoco Delta and headed towards the Gulf of Paria, exactly to "Macuro" where the Europeans first set foot on land. firm in South America. There a group of natives, with whom they exchange some gifts of which they were especially attracted to brass, offers to guide them to the west and when they reach the coast of the country, Columbus feels particularly attracted to discover some pearl fishermen who approached their boats in canoes. An native young woman wore a pearl necklace around her neck, and a European sailor who had a plate from Valencia breaks it into pieces and offers it to her in exchange for a pile of pearls. Columbus seeing this, ordered to destroy all the dishes that they carried with them in the boats to exchange it with the natives, who gave them many more pearls.
The next thing was to name the place, that is why Columbus called it "Land of Grace", it is said that Columbus resembled that landscape as the "Earthly Paradise", however the name Land of Grace made him express in a few words not only the beauty of the place but the particular charm of those who received it, especially the women.
But "Land of Grace" didnt trascended, so in 1499 Alonso Ojeda arrived, accompanied by the Spanish cartographer Juan de la Cosa and the Florentine cosmographer Américo Vespucio, they scouted the coasts and saw natives living in very curious houses built on the sea, reminding them to Italian Venice, which is why Vespucci called the place "Little Venice", and hence the name that has been attributed to our land from the diminutive of the word Venezziola> (Venezia in Italian) to later become Venezuela and so on the name was written in the first known cartographic description of America, made by Juan de la Cosa.
So briefly begins part of our history and then give way to our independence, but i will be talking about that in the next "Venezuela between the lines".
Ana Karina L.
