Caracas

Caracas, the capital of Venezuela as well as that of the municipality of Libertador and the Federal District. The city lies in a narrow valley some 15 miles from east to west. Its northern boundary is a spur of the Coastal Range, whose most famous peak, El Ávila (7,100 feet), dominates the center of the metropolitan area, and whose tallest peak, Naiguaitá (9,000 feet), stands at the eastern end of the valley. The name Caracas honors one of the indigenous peoples of the area.

The Federal District, created in 1909, included the municipalities of Libertador (Caracas) and Vargas (La Guaira). About 12 miles by road from Caracas, La Guaira was until recently the major port of the country. The Metropolitian Area of Caracas was created in 1950 and includes five municipalities (Libertador, Sucre, Baruta, El Hatillo, and Chacao). The city, at an average altitude of 3,400 feet, has a balmy climate. The valley is subject to seismic activity, and Caracas has suffered a number of earthquakes, notably in 1641, 1812, and 1967.

FOUNDATION AND COLONIAL PERIOD

The forbidding coastline of central Venezuela and the resistance of local tribes, particularly under the leadership of Guaicaipuro, delayed the process of Spanish conquest and colonization of the valley. Diego de Losada founded Santiago de León de Caracas in mid-1567. The site, at the western end of the valley, consisted of a central plaza and twenty-four blocks. The first Cabildo (municipal council) to which there is written reference was held in 1568, and the lands and peoples of the valley were divided as booty among the Spaniards who accompanied Losada.

Caracas became the capital of the province of Venezuela in 1578, with a Spanish population of 60 vecinos (entitled residents), corresponding to some 300 persons, and some 7,000 Indians among the encomiendas of the valley. The town received a royal patent as a city in 1591.

By the early 1600s, the economy was based on the production of cacao, corn, and wheat as well as cattle and mules, all of which were traded through the port of La Guaira; the valley also produced sugar, beans, fruit, and other agricultural items for local consumption. In 1636 the bishopric was officially transferred from Coro to Caracas, where the bishops had been resident since 1613. The seventeenth century was one of slow growth, retarded severely by the earthquake of 1641. Estimated population by the end of the century was only some 350 vecinos, or about 1,750 people who could claim to be of Spanish origin.

In the eighteenth century there were important changes in the activities of the city. The Royal and Pontifical University of Caracas was founded in 1725, and in 1728 the Caracas Company (Compañía Guipuzcoana) began its monopoly of the commerce between Spain and Venezuela. In the last quarter of the century, Caracas became the seat for fiscal matters with the creation of the intendancy (1776); for military and political matters with the creation of the captaincy-general of Venezuela (1777), which included the provinces of Cumaná, Guayana, Maracaibo, Margarita, and Trinidad; for judicial and administrative matters with the creation of the audiencia Real (1786); and for commercial and agricultural affairs with the creation of the Consulado Real (1793). In 1804 an archbishopric was established in Caracas and the city became the official religious administrative center. In 1808 it received the first printing press in the colony.

By the end of the colonial period Caracas had an estimated population of 42,000 inhabitants and a very prosperous economic base and had become the administrative center of the colony, but the city itself did not reflect this importance. Its most distinguished public building was the recently constructed San Carlos military barracks. The Plaza Mayor was used as an open-air market. Water flowed down the center of the streets, and sidewalks were unknown, in part because there was no wheeled transport. Although foreigners praised the city for its climate and magnificent geographical setting, its clean streets and pleasant inhabitants, a fellow colonial from Mérida, Antonio Ignacio Rodríguez Picón, said of Caracas in 1803 that only the central streets, where the rich and aristocratic lived, were well paved and pleasing of aspect; that the city was full of blacks, mulattoes, and Canary Islanders; and that it had little more than cockfights as public entertainment. There was no public lighting, and the city retired for the night at nine.

THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES

Independence was declared in Caracas on 5 July 1811, and between the long years of warfare and the devastating earthquake of 1812, the city suffered damages that were not fully repaired for more than fifty years. Between 1870 and 1888, however, Antonio Guzmán Blanco held effective power in Venezuela and made a concerted effort to beautify and dignify the capital city. The center of the city received particular attention: the Plaza Bolívar (Mayor) was redesigned, the Capitol was built, and El Calvario became an elegant park. Churches, theaters, aqueducts, boulevards, and the new cemetery General del Sur, which became a monument to mortuarial art, were all constructed. The streets were lighted by gas, a telephone system was installed, and the Caracas-La Guaira railroad was opened in 1883. Railroad connections were extended to Puerto Cabello and Valencia by 1895. This was the last face-lift Caracas would receive for sixty years.

CONTEMPORARY CARACAS

After 1936, improved public-health measures and the development of the petroleum industry combined to increase the population of Caracas at a rapid rate. As can be seen in the accompanying table, the metropolitan area is growing faster than Caracas itself, but attempts to design an overall plan for urban growth have not had much success. The military government of the 1950s built, extended, and improved streets and highways, facilitating the city's expansion and improving connections with the port and airport on the coast. It also continued the urban renewal in the center of the city that was begun by the government of Isais Medina Angarita in the 1940s.

Caracas remains the administrative, commercial, and cultural center of Venezuela. The petroleum revenues that are distributed by the national government tend to stay close at hand, and many companies locate in Caracas because of the ease of communications. Caracas has a number of public and private universities, numerous publishers and newspapers, various theater and ballet groups (both public and private), and several orchestras and ensembles. Cultural life tends to coalesce in the environs of the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex in the sector of Los Caobos. Nearby are the Ateneo, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Sofia Imber, and the Children's Museum.

In the last few decades of the twentieth century new buildings sprung up to such an extent that the valley is completely urbanized; Caracas has passed from being an overgrown town characterized by one- and two-story buildings with red-tiled roofs to a city more defined by skyscrapers. Although the Sierra del Ávila was declared a park, most of the other hillsides have been built up, and the two extremes of the valley are characterized by ranchos (slum housing). The Caracas metropolitan area as of 2007 suffers greatly from inadequate public services, particularly with regard to water and sewage systems. The complex terrain, the rate of growth, and the complications of various local jurisdictions in the metropolitan area are having a devastating effect on the city.

Since the Bolivarian presidency of Hugo Chávez began in 1999, the city has become the site of demonstrations by the working classes in his support and by traditional elites, his detractors, who control most of the media outlets. Juan Barreto, elected mayor in 2004, has forged a sister-city project with London, England, has declared the expropriation of Caracas's most exclusive golf courses to build new housing for the city's underclass, and has declared the capital a "homophobia-free zone." The Caracas Metropolitan District is made of five subdivisions, each with its own mayor—some for and some against Chávez's presidency—so the direction Caracas will eventually take remained unclear.

See alsoCaracas Company; Chávez, Hugo; Colonialism; Indigenous Peoples.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The most comprehensive study of Caracas is the multi-volume collection produced by the Universidad Central De Venezuela, Estudio de Caracas, 8 vols. in 15 pts. (1967–1973). One classic study of the city, also published in commemoration of its 400th anniversary, is José Antonio De Armas Chitty, Caracas: Origen y trayectoría de una ciudad, 2 vols. (1967).

Almandoz Marte, Arturo, ed. Planning Latin America's Capital Cities, 1850–1950. New York: Routledge, 2002.

De Sola Ricardo, Irma. Contribución al estudio de los planos de Caracas: La ciudad y la provincia, 1567–1967 (1967). Among the hundreds of books describing the city and its customs, a frequently cited one is Arístides Rojas, Crónicas de Caracas: Antología (1962).

García Ponce, Antonio. Los pobres de Caracas, 1873–1907: Un estudio de la pobreza urbana. Caracas: Instituto Municipal de Publicaciones, Alcaldía de Caracas, 1995.

López Bohórquez, Alí Enrique. La Real Audiencia de Caracas: Estudios. Mérida, Venezuela: Ediciones del Rectorado de la Universidad de Los Andes, 1998.

Mago de Chópite, Lila, and José Jesús Hernández Palomo. El Cabildo de Caracas (1750–1821). Caracas: Cabildo Metropolitano de Caracas: Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador, 2002.

Márquez, Patricia C. The Street Is My Home: Youth and Violence in Caracas. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Martín Frechilla, Juan José. Diálogos reconstruidos para una historia de la Caracas moderna. Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, Consejo de Desarrollo Científico y Humanístico, 2004.

Moreno, Antonio Arellano. Caracas: Su evolución y su régimen legal, 2d ed. (1972). A specialized book of interest is Marco Aurelio Vila, Área Metropolitana de Caracas (1965).

Myers, David J., and Henry A. Dietz, eds. Capital City Politics in Latin America: Democratization and Empowerment. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002.

Núñez, Enrique Bernardo. La ciudad de los techos rojos: Calles y esquinas de Caracas, 4th ed. (1973).

Paiva, Antonio. Relevance of Metropolitan Government in Latin American Cities: Inter-institutional Coordination in Caracas, Venezuela and Monterrey, Mexico. Delft, Netherlands: Eburon, 2003.

Sanoja, Mario, and Iraia Vargas Arenas. El agua y el poder: Caracas y la formación del estado colonial caraqueño, 1567–1700. Caracas: Banco Central de Venezuela, 2002.

                                          Susan Berglund