1.
Monagas
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Monagas State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. Monagas State covers a surface area of 28,900 km² and. The capital of the state is Maturín, the former Indian town of Uyapari was the centre of a splendid kind of pottery admired by some European explorers as Diego de Ordaz. Scholars, who studied this pottery, gave the culture which designed it the name of Barrancoide Culture, after a probable arrival of Columbus to the coast of Monagas State during his third voyage in August 1498 many explorations were done to this land. Some of the most famous Spanish explorers were Diego de Ordaz, Diego de Lepe, Juan Bono de Quejo, apart from that, some hunters of Indians from the islands of Cubagua and Margarita sail around Monagas state looking for slaves in some Indians towns. The colonization of this state was slow, for the resistance made by the Caribs. These Indians defended their freedom, families and lands against the Spanish conquerors who wanted to hunt and this situation began to change when Franciscan missioners arrived from Spain in order to evangelize the Indians. The Franciscans are the responsibles of the establishment of missions which became in towns later. Some of these towns founded by the Franciscans are San Antonio, Guanaguana, Caicara, Caripe, Santa Bárbara, Maturín, Barrancas, however these foundations were not so easy. At the beginning some Indians, especially the Caribs, attacked the group of missioners, some Franciscans died for the attacks, others died for the tropical sicknesses or for the rude conditions they were living. The lands of Monagas were the scene of battles during the fight for the independence of Venezuela. The most famous took place in Maturín. During the period of the republic, Monagas state had a slow growth because of the frequent civil wars which destroyed possessions and killed cattle, another cause of this problem was the increment of deaths produced by tropical sicknesses as the yellow fever. The landscape change when oil fields were discovered in this land, the new petroleum activity stimulated industrial and commercial activities which attracted persons from other states and countries. Punta de Mata, El Tejero, Temblador are examples of towns which were born around the oil fields, Maturín became in an important commercial and banking centre in the east of Venezuela. In 1856 Monagas was raised to the level of province with the name of province of Maturín, in 1864 was ratified the new Maturín state. But in 1879 these lands lost their autonomy and formed part of the east state, in 1891 Monagas was added to the great Bermúdez state, which was composed by Sucre, Anzoátegui, Monagas, Bolívar states. Monagas got again the autonomy in 1901 with the name of Maturín state, however Monagas lost this condition in 1904 when it was added to the Bermúdez state
2.
Venezuela
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Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a federal republic located on the northern coast of South America. It is bordered by Colombia on the west, Brazil on the south, Guyana on the east, Venezuela covers 916,445 km2 and has an estimated population of 31775371. The territory now known as Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples and it gained full independence as a separate country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments. This new constitution changed the name of the country to República Bolivariana de Venezuela. Venezuela is a presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District. Venezuela also claims all Guyanese territory west of the Essequibo River, oil was discovered in the early 20th century, and Venezuela has the worlds largest known oil reserves and has been one of the worlds leading exporters of oil. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports. The recovery of oil prices in the early 2000s gave Venezuela oil funds not seen since the 1980s, the Venezuelan government then established populist policies that initially boosted the Venezuelan economy and increased social spending, significantly reducing economic inequality and poverty. However, such policies later became controversial since they destabilized the economy, resulting in hyperinflation, an economic depression. According to the most popular and accepted version, in 1499, the stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of Venice, so he named the region Veneziola Piccola Venezia. The name acquired its current spelling as a result of Spanish influence, where the suffix -uela is used as a term, thus. The German language 16th century-term for the area, Klein-Venedig, also means little Venice, however, Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew, gave a different account. In his work Summa de geografía, he states that they found people who called themselves the Veneciuela. Thus, the name Venezuela may have evolved from the native word and it is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the Spanish conquest, it has been estimated at around one million. In addition to indigenous peoples known today, the population included historic groups such as the Kalina, Auaké, Caquetio, Mariche, the Timoto-Cuica culture was the most complex society in Pre-Columbian Venezuela, with pre-planned permanent villages, surrounded by irrigated, terraced fields. They also stored water in tanks and their houses were made primarily of stone and wood with thatched roofs. They were peaceful, for the most part, and depended on growing crops, regional crops included potatoes and ullucos
3.
Havana
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Havana is the capital city, largest city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city extends mostly westward and southward from the bay, which is entered through a narrow inlet, the sluggish Almendares River traverses the city from south to north, entering the Straits of Florida a few miles west of the bay. King Philip II of Spain granted Havana the title of City in 1592, walls as well as forts were built to protect the old city. The sinking of the U. S. battleship Maine in Havanas harbor in 1898 was the cause of the Spanish–American War. Contemporary Havana can essentially be described as three cities in one, Old Havana, Vedado and the suburban districts. The city is the center of the Cuban government, and home to various ministries, headquarters of businesses, the current mayor is Marta Hernández of the Communist Party of Cuba. In 2009, the city/province had the third highest income in the country, the city attracts over a million tourists annually, the Official Census for Havana reports that in 2010 the city was visited by 1,176,627 international tourists, a 20% increase from 2005. Old Havana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, the city is also noted for its history, culture, architecture and monuments. As typical of Cuba, Havana also features a tropical climate, in May 2015, Havana was officially recognized as one of the New7Wonders Cities together with Vigan, Doha, La Paz, Durban, Beirut, and Kuala Lumpur. Most native settlements became the site of Spanish colonial cities retaining their original Taíno names, an alternate theory is that Habana is derived from the Middle Dutch word havene, referring to a harbour, etymologically related to the English word haven. All attempts to found a city on Cubas south coast failed, however, an early map of Cuba drawn in 1514 places the town at the mouth of this river. The town that became Havana finally originated adjacent to what was then called Puerto de Carenas, the quality of this natural bay, which now hosts Havanas harbor, warranted this change of location. Pánfilo de Narváez gave Havana – the sixth town founded by the Spanish on Cuba – its name, the name combines San Cristóbal, patron saint of Havana. Shortly after the founding of Cubas first cities, the served as little more than a base for the Conquista of other lands. Havana began as a port, and suffered regular attacks by buccaneers, pirates. The first attack and resultant burning of the city was by the French corsair Jacques de Sores in 1555, ships from all over the New World carried products first to Havana, in order to be taken by the fleet to Spain. The thousands of ships gathered in the bay also fueled Havanas agriculture and manufacture, since they had to be supplied with food, water. On December 20,1592, King Philip II of Spain granted Havana the title of City, later on, the city would be officially designated as Key to the New World and Rampart of the West Indies by the Spanish Crown
4.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
5.
Costa Rica
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It has a population of around 4.5 million, of whom nearly a quarter live in the metropolitan area of the capital and largest city, San José. Costa Rica was sparsely inhabited by people before coming under Spanish rule in the 16th century. Since then, Costa Rica has remained among the most stable, prosperous, following a brief civil war, it permanently abolished its army in 1949, becoming one of only a few sovereign nations without a standing army. Costa Rica is a member of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. The country has consistently performed favourably in the Human Development Index, placing 69th in the world as of 2015 and its rapidly developing economy, once heavily dependent on agriculture, has diversified to include sectors such as finance, pharmaceuticals, and ecotourism. Costa Rica is known for its environmental policies, being the only country to meet all five UNDP criteria established to measure environmental sustainability. Costa Rica officially plans to become a country by 2021. In 2012, it became the first country in the Americas to ban recreational hunting, historians have classified the indigenous people of Costa Rica as belonging to the Intermediate Area, where the peripheries of the Mesoamerican and Andean native cultures overlapped. More recently, pre-Columbian Costa Rica has also described as part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. The oldest evidence of occupation in Costa Rica is associated with the arrival of various groups of hunter-gatherers about 10,000 to 7,000 years BCE in the Turrialba Valley. The presence of Clovis culture type spearheads and arrows from South America opens the possibility that, in this area, agriculture became evident in the populations that lived in Costa Rica about 5,000 years ago. They mainly grew tubers and roots, for the first and second millennia BCE there were already settled farming communities. These were small and scattered, although the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture as the livelihood in the territory is still unknown. The earliest use of pottery appears around 2,000 to 3,000 BCE, shards of pots, cylindrical vases, platters, gourds and other forms of vases decorated with grooves, prints, and some modelled after animals have been found. The impact of indigenous peoples on modern Costa Rican culture has been small compared to other nations. Costa Rica was described as the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in all America by a Spanish governor in 1719, for all these reasons, Costa Rica was, by and large, unappreciated and overlooked by the Spanish Crown and left to develop on its own. Costa Rica became a democracy with no oppressed mestizo or indigenous class. It was not long before Spanish settlers turned to the hills, where they found rich volcanic soil, like the rest of Central America, Costa Rica never fought for independence from Spain
6.
Caracas
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Caracas, officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital, the center of the Greater Caracas Area, and the largest city of Venezuela. Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the part of the country. Terrain suitable for building lies between 760 and 910 m above sea level, the valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the coast by a steep 2, 200-metre-high mountain range, Cerro El Ávila, to the south there are more hills and mountains. Libertador holds many of the government buildings and is the Capital District, the Distrito Capital had a population of 2,013,366 as of 2011, while the Metropolitan District of Caracas was estimated at 3,273,863 as of 2013. The Metropolitan Region of Caracas has an population of 5,243,301. Businesses that are located in the city include service companies, banks and it has a largely service-based economy, apart from some industrial activity in its metropolitan area. The Caracas Stock Exchange and Petróleos de Venezuela are headquartered in Caracas, PDVSA is the largest company in Venezuela. Caracas is also Venezuelas cultural capital, with restaurants, theaters, museums. Some of the tallest skyscrapers in Latin America are located in Caracas, in 2015, Venezuela and its capital, Caracas, had the highest per capita murder rates in the world, with 119 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Most murders and other violent crimes go unsolved, at the time of the founding of the city in 1567, the valley of Caracas was populated by indigenous peoples. Francisco Fajardo, the son of a Spanish captain and a Guaiqueri cacica, fajardos settlement did not last long. It was destroyed by natives of the led by Terepaima. This was the last rebellion on the part of the natives, on 25 July 1567, Captain Diego de Losada laid the foundations of the city of Santiago de León de Caracas. The foundation −1567 – I take possession of land in the name of God. In 1577 Caracas became the capital of the Spanish Empires Venezuela Province under Governor Juan de Pimentel, during the 17th century, the coast of Venezuela was frequently raided by pirates. With the coastal mountains as a barrier, Caracas was relatively immune to such attacks, encountering little resistance, the invaders sacked and set fire to the town after a failed ransom negotiation. As the cocoa cultivation and exports under the Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas grew in importance, in 1777, Caracas became the capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela. José María España and Manuel Gual led a revolution aimed at independence
7.
Maracaibo
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Maracaibo is a city and municipality in northwestern Venezuela, on the western shore of the strait that connects Lake Maracaibo to the Gulf of Venezuela. It is the second-largest city in the country and is the capital of the state of Zulia, the population of the city is approximately 1,495,200 with the metropolitan area estimated at 2,108,404 as of 2010. Maracaibo is nicknamed La Tierra del Sol Amada, the name Maracaibo is said to come from the brave cacique Mara, a young native who valiantly resisted the Spaniards and died fighting them. Legend says that when Mara fell, the Indians shouted Mara kayó, thus originating the city name --although it would be strange for them to shout in Spanish. Other historians say that the first name of land in the local language was Maara-iwo meaning Place where serpents abound. The first indigenous settlements were of Arawak and Carib origin, around the main group were the Añu tribe who built rows of stilt houses all over the northern riviera of the Lake Maracaibo. The first Europeans arrived in 1499, the city was founded three times, the first time was during the Klein-Venedig period, when the Welser bankers of Augsburg received a concession over Venezuela Province from Charles I. of Spain. In August 1529 the German Ambrosius Ehinger made his first expedition to Lake Maracaibo which was opposed by the indigenous Coquivacoa. After winning a series of battles, he founded the settlement on 8 September 1529. Ehinger named the settlement New Nuremberg and the lake after the valiant chieftain Mara of the Coquivacoa, the city was renamed Maracaibo after the Spanish took possession. The lack of activity in the zone made Nikolaus Federmann evacuate the village in 1535 and move its population to Santa Marta near the capital of Venezuela Province. A second attempt by Captain Alonso Pacheco in 1569 suffered a setback when the city had to be evacuated in 1573 due to ferocious attacks by native local tribes. Nueva Zamora comes from Mazariegos place of birth, Zamora, in Spain, since its definite foundation, the town began to develop as a whole. It is based on the side of Lake Maracaibo, the dominant feature of the oil-rich Maracaibo Basin. Favoured by prevailing winds and a harbour, the city is located on the shores of the lake where the narrows. The Dutch corsair Enrique de Gerard plundered Maracaibo in 1614, in 1667, lOlonnais with a fleet of eight ships and a crew of six hundred pirates sacked Maracaibo and Gibraltar. En route, lOlonnais crossed paths with a Spanish treasure ship, a few weeks later, when he attempted to sail out of the lake, Morgan found an occupied fort blocking the inlet to the Caribbean, along with three Spanish ships. These were the Magdalena, the San Luis, and the Soledad and he destroyed the Magdalena and burned the San Luis by sending a dummy ship full of gunpowder to explode near them, after which the crew of the Soledad surrendered
