Valencia Carabobo Venezuela

The contract between the house of Welser and the Spanish crown is terminated in 1556.

The group has grown tired of its vain search for a mountain of gold to match what the Spanish had discovered in Peru and Mexico, and the Spanish have become equally weary of the behavior of their German concessionaires, which is ruthless even by the ignoble standards of the conquerors. 

Spanish explorers, in the meantime, have pushed eastward from El Tocuyo, founding Valencia in 1555.

Not many more than two thousand Europeans live in the region of present Venezuela by the middle of the sixteenth century. People in the agriculturally productive central highlands belong mostly to Arawak groups; hunters and gatherers who also fish and grow maize and cotton.

Their houses are built on artificial mounds in valleys that are often flooded by water from Lake Valencia, the third largest lake in Venezuela, exceeded in size only by Lake Maracaibo and Lake Guri.

Southwest of the lake, Spaniards under Captain Alonso Díaz Moreno establish Valencia as the first Spanish settlement in central Venezuela; its official name is Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Nueva Valencia del Rey.

The encomiendas put the Indians living in the region under the control of the Spanish settlers.

They begin to displace the native population from the most fertile land, but they also start intermarrying with them.

Today the capital of Carabobo, the city is an economic hub that contains Venezuela's top industries and manufacturing companies.

The population of Valencia reached some one and a half million in the year 2003, and it is expected to grow dramatically in the years to come.