Guaicaipuro Biography

Guaicaipuro

(Los Teques, present day Venezuela, c.1530-Paracotos, 1568) Cacique de los teques, an aboriginal people settled in the current region of Caracas (Venezuela), who offered long resistance to the Spanish conquest in the second half of the 16th century.Considered by the history of Venezuela as the greatest symbol of native bravery and ingenuity, on numerous occasions it thwarted the attempts of the conquerors to subdue the region, where gold mines had been discovered.

Guaicaipuro

Guaicaipuro managed to form a powerful confederation of tribes, with which it faced the Spanish for control of the Caracas valley.He directed the war operations against Pedro de Miranda, whom he forced to leave the territory.The governor of the region, Pablo Collado, sent Juan Rodríguez Suárez to subdue him, who achieved his goal.However, shortly after, Guaicaipuro led an indigenous uprising that ended the lives of Spanish settlers who exploited the mines in the area.

Rodríguez Suárez once again led a punitive campaign against the Teques, in the course of which he founded the town of San Francisco (1560), before dying in combat.Francisco Fajardo went on to command the Spanish military troops.In January 1562, Governor Collado sent a host of one hundred men, under the command of Luis de Narváez, to support him, but they were defeated before joining the bulk of the troops; the Spanish, faced with the violence of the indigenous attacks, were forced to take refuge on Margarita Island.

Collado was replaced by Bernáldez, but neither was he able to help Fajardo, who was defeated by Guaicaipuro and, later, assassinated by Alonso Cobos (1564).Both the town of Collado and that of San Francisco were sacked by the Teques, who continued to control the region despite various Spanish attempts to evict them.But Guaicaipuro could not repeat this success against Diego de Losada in his attempt to seize the city of Caracas, founded by Losada himself, who counterattacked and defeated Guaicaipuro in the San Pedro Valley on March 25, 1567.