Ciudad Bolívar

The Spanish settlement of Santo Tomé de Guayana was a fortified river port that had to move several times under attack from Carib peoples and from Dutch and English rivals. First placed downstream near the confluence with the Caroní in 1576 and refounded in 1595, it was sacked in 1617 by one of Walter Raleigh's expeditions, in which Raleigh's son died, and destroyed again by Dutch and English raiders in 1629 and 1637. In 1764 Joaquín Moreno de Mendoza founded the present city at the first narrows of the Orinoco — the angostura — as Santo Tomé de Guayana de Angostura del Orinoco, and it became the capital of the province of Guayana.

During the independence war Angostura became the base from which Bolívar relaunched the struggle. The Congress of Angostura, convened by Bolívar, met here from February 1819 and in December of that year proclaimed the Republic of Colombia, the state historians call Gran Colombia; the Correo del Orinoco, printed in the town, was its newspaper. Angostura bitters were invented in the city in 1824, though the company that made them later moved to Trinidad and Tobago. In 1846 the city was renamed in Bolívar's honour.

The city remained a major river port for eastern Venezuela. In 1967 the Angostura Bridge, the first across the Orinoco, tied it to the rest of Venezuela, and in 1973 the Jesús Soto museum opened. In 1994 Canaima National Park to the south became a World Heritage Site, and the city became a base for trips there. In December 2016 two days of looting devastated its markets and shops.

Ciudad Bolívar's identity is bound up with the Orinoco and with Angostura's place in independence history. The colonial houses around the Plaza Bolívar, the congress building and the old newspaper house are points of civic pride, and the city's name is a reminder of Bolívar's years here.

It has produced a remarkable roll of artists and musicians. Jesús Rafael Soto, one of the leading figures of kinetic art, was born here, and his museum is the city's main cultural institution. The guitarist and composer Antonio Lauro, the cuatro virtuoso Cheo Hurtado and the singer Iván Pérez Rossi, founder of the folk group Serenata Guayanesa, are all from the city. The poet Luz Machado and the Olympic fencing champion Rubén Limardo are also natives.

The river feeds the city's legends: the Cabeza de la Sapoara, and the seven-headed serpent said to live beneath the Piedra del Medio, a story that spread after a ferry sank in the whirlpools there in 1955. Since 1971 the Feria del Orinoco has drawn visitors to a celebration of the river, and the city is the finishing point of an international river rally.

Ciudad Bolívar has roughly 400,000 people, on an undated estimate. It is the capital of Bolívar state, with the state government, an archbishop, several universities — the Universidad de Oriente's Bolívar campus, founded in 1960, and the Universidad Nacional Experimental de Guayana among them — and local television stations and newspapers.

The surrounding economy rests on farming and cattle and pig raising, with maize, cassava, mango, yam and watermelon among the crops, while tourism has grown more important, much of it tied to trips to Canaima. Industry is concentrated downstream in Ciudad Guayana, and gold mining, much of it illegal, dominates large areas of the state to the south.

Life in the city follows the river and the heat. The riverfront and markets are busiest in the morning, the old town is quiet in the afternoon, and people come out again in the cooler evening. Shortages of cash, fuel and power shape daily routines here as across Venezuela.

The Orinoco supplies the city's table. Its fish — sapoara, morocoto, dorado, palometa and curbinata — are fried, made into croquettes or cooked in soups, and the sapoara also gives its name to one of the city's best-known legends. The riverside fish market is known for its fish dishes, served in places to eat that overlook the water.

Cassava is the other foundation. The casabe, or cassava bread, made in the region is well known, and the juice of cassava is used to make catara, a spicy sauce that locals credit with aphrodisiac powers. Cashew is the city's sweet tooth: the nuts go into preserves and desserts or are eaten roasted with salt, and a marzipan made from the cashew seed is said to have been invented here by Nicolasa Railer.

The national staples are eaten here as everywhere — arepas, pabellón criollo of shredded beef, black beans, rice and fried plantain, empanadas and, at Christmas, hallacas — with strong black coffee through the day.