Caracas, Venezuela
Santiago de León de Caracas is the capital and largest city of Venezuela. It is located in the Caracas Valley of the Venezuelan coastal mountain range. Caracas has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world, with 111. 19 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. PDVSA is the largest company in Venezuela, with a turnover of more than $20 billion.
About Caracas, Venezuela in brief
Santiago de León de Caracas is the capital and largest city of Venezuela. It is located in the Caracas Valley of the Venezuelan coastal mountain range. Caracas has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world, with 111. 19 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The city is also Venezuela’s cultural capital, with many restaurants, theaters, museums, and shopping centers. It has some of the tallest skyscrapers in Latin America, such as the Parque Central Towers. The Caracas Stock Exchange and Petróleos de Venezuela are headquartered in Caracas. PDVSA is the largest company in Venezuela, with a turnover of more than $20 billion. The center of the city is still Catedral, located near Bolívar Square, though some consider the center to be Plaza Venezuela, Located in the Los Caobos area. In 1577, Caracas became the capital of the Spanish Empire’s Venezuela Province under the province’s new governor, Juan de Pimentel. In the 1580s, Caraqueños started selling food to the Spanish soldiers in Cartagena, who often docked in the coastal city when collecting products from the empire in South America. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the coast of Venezuela was frequently raided by pirates, but Caracas was relatively immune to such attacks, compared to other Caribbean settlements. In the 1620s, English privateers, including George Somers, discovered that Caracas farmers could be sold for beans.
In 1620, the first Cacao beans could be found in the city, selling them for as little as $20 a bag. The town was sacked and set on fire by the English, who used a little-used pass to guard the town while the town’s defenders were guarding the more frequently used pass. The first town to be destroyed by fire was Caracao, which was set ablaze after a failed ransom negotiation after the city’s defenders failed to sell the beans for a ransom. In 17th century, the city was the site of the Battle of Caracas, when the Spanish defeated the rebels and took control of the town. The battle was the first of the so-called “Caracao Wars” (Caracas War) which saw the Spanish defeat the rebels in battle and capture the city of Caracas. The Battle was followed by the First Caracas War (Caracas War) (1715-1720). The city was founded in 1567 by Captain Diego de Losada, who was commissioned to capture the valley, and was successful by splitting the natives into different groups to work with, then fighting and defeating each of them. The eventual settlers came from Coro, the German capital of their Klein-Venedig colony around the present-day coastal Colombia–Venezuela border; from the 1540s, the colony had been de facto controlled by Spaniards. The valley had a good environment for both agricultural and arable farming, which contributed to the system of commerce but meant that it was initially sparse.
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This page is based on the article Caracas, Venezuela published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
