Coro

Coro was founded on 26 July 1527 by Juan de Ampíes as Santa Ana de Coro, after an agreement with Manaure, chief of the Caquetío people of the region. In 1529 the Augsburg banking house of the Welsers, granted the province by Charles V, sent Ambrosius Ehinger as governor, and for nearly two decades the town was the base of a German colony from which expeditions set out in search of El Dorado. Coro became the first capital of the Spanish province of Venezuela and the seat of the first diocese in South America, created in 1531, but it lost the capital to Caracas in 1578, worn down by pirate raids and its harsh climate, and the bishop left in 1636.

After a hurricane and pirate raids in the 17th century, Coro recovered slowly, and its historic centre keeps the character of an 18th- and 19th-century town. In 1795 José Leonardo Chirino led a rising of enslaved and free people in the Sierra de Coro against slavery; it was crushed. In 1806 Francisco de Miranda landed at La Vela and unfurled the tricolour there, its first appearance on Venezuelan soil, but the town stayed loyal to Spain until 1821. The Federal War began in Coro in 1859.

Wars left the city deserted, and it recovered only in the 20th century, helped by the oil refineries on Paraguaná. It was declared a national monument in the 1950s, and in 1993 UNESCO listed "Coro and its Port" as a World Heritage Site. Heavy rain, notably in 2004–2005, 2010 and 2022, has damaged the earthen buildings, and the site has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2005.

Coro calls itself "la ciudad museo", the museum city, and its old houses hold collections of religious art, archaeology and modern painting. Its architecture is unusual for the Caribbean: earthen walls of adobe and bahareque built with Spanish Mudéjar techniques, a street plan that combines the Spanish grid with an irregular layout from the Welser period, and, in places, the influence of Dutch Curaçao, which lies just across the water.

That closeness to the Dutch islands shaped the town. Sephardic Jewish families from Curaçao began settling here in 1824, set up a synagogue and a cemetery, and despite an expulsion of the community in 1855 left a lasting mark; their cemetery is still in use. Ties of trade and family with Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao remain. The name Coro is traditionally said to come from a Caquetío word meaning "place of winds", and the wind off the dunes is part of local identity.

The town marks the start of Christmas on 30 November with the repique of the tambor coriano, its own drumming tradition, and early in December holds a fair of pesebres, or nativity scenes. Residents, called corianos, are known as proud of being the first capital of Venezuela and the place where the national flag was first raised on Venezuelan soil. The Francisco de Miranda National Experimental University, founded in 1977, gives the city a student population.

According to the national statistics institute, the urban parishes of Coro had about 265,000 people in 2020, and about 313,000 including La Vela and the neighbouring parishes that share its built-up area — around a quarter of Falcón's population. Most are mestizo, with Afro-Caribbean and Sephardic strands in the city's ancestry.

As the state capital, Coro depends heavily on public spending, along with commerce, construction, tourism and professional services. As across Venezuela, life is organised around scarcity: power and water cuts, a minimum wage worth very little, and prices paid in US dollars.

The old centre is quiet and partly given over to museums and posadas, while most people live in the newer neighbourhoods and the port. Evenings are spent on the promenades and plazas once the heat eases, and the strong winds and sun shape the rhythm of the day. Keeping the earthen colonial houses standing through the rains is a continuing struggle.

Falcón is goat country, and Coro's typical dishes are built on chivo, goat meat: chivo en coco, cooked in coconut milk; talkarí de chivo, a spiced stew; and escabeche, a vinegar marinade. Goat's milk gives queso de cabra, goat's cheese, and the town's dulce de leche, and suero and the arepa pelada are other local staples.

The coast adds fish and seafood: Falcón's fishing grounds have long supplied shrimp, octopus, squid, mullet and dogfish. The national staples are eaten here as everywhere: arepas split and stuffed with cheese or shredded beef, pabellón criollo of shredded beef, black beans, rice and fried plantain, empanadas and tequeños, fried sticks of cheese in pastry. At Christmas families make hallacas, cornmeal parcels of stewed meat wrapped in plantain leaf. Strong black coffee is drunk through the day, and papelón con limón, a lemonade sweetened with raw cane sugar, is the standard cooling drink in Coro's heat.