Exploitation and Conquest

When Christopher Columbus first traveled to the Americas, he brought with him greed, violence, and sickness. While he is remembered fondly within North American history, he had a devastating effect on entire populations. During Columbus’s third trip to the Americas, he visited Venezuela for the first time. He was immediately entranced by the natural beauty of the region, especially the bodies of clear fresh water as well as the vast supply of pearls. Alongside Columbus was the famous mapmaker named Amerigo Vespucci. The pristine lakes in the region reminded Vespucci of the lakes in Venice, earning the area the name Venezuela for the first time ever. However, the crew quickly got to work at devastating this region they initially held in such high esteem.

Recognizing that Venezuela had no precious minerals to exploit, they realized they could only rely on profiting off of precious pearls found in the region. Once the Europeans had extracted all of the pearl-bearing oysters from the bodies of water of Venezuela, they looked to other forms of gaining economic advantage. The clear answer to the Europeans was to enslave the Venezuelans and put them to work processing gold and silver in the Caribbean. Unlike other regions, Venezuela had no real centralized authority such as the Aztecs. Because of this, the Europeans had no singular civilization to conquer, resulting in the enslavement of Venezuelans to be shipped to other regions. These slave raids were met with intense resistance, something that the Europeans were not accustomed to due to the ease of dominating regions such as Mexico. This brought about intense hatred for Europeans in the region for years. In an area described as incredibly beautiful, it is a shame that the Europeans only brought war and slavery instead of peace and prosperity.