– VTV CHANNEL 8 (@ VTVcanal8) October 18, 2020
The square, formerly known as Plaza Alonso de Ojeda, will now have the name of Paraute, one of the largest villages of the Añú people established on the eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo, which also repeatedly fought against the European occupation. Its best known caciques, Tomaenguola and Nigale, died in the different insurrections against the Spanish Crown.
Apart from the authorities of the Bolivarian Mayor’s Office of Lagunillas, representatives of the Wayuu people participated in the act, who carried out a symbolic trial against Ojeda “for the crimes of genocide, dispossession, land theft, slavery, rape, among others. charges “.
The Paraute cultural group, the architect of this measure, has other projects to rescue the cultural heritage of the native peoples, among which is the creation of a museum and the placement of a statue of “an indigenous brother.”
This is not the first tribute to this añú town. In January 2019, the Alonso de Ojeda parish, located in the Lagunillas municipality, changed its name to Ciudad Paraute parish.
Alonso de Ojeda embarked on the second voyage of Christopher Columbus to what would later be known as the American continent. After this journey, he personally asked the kings for permission to make a solo trip, without the company of Columbus.
Ojeda inaugurated the Andalusian travel, as it is known in historiography to the explorations carried out between 1499 and 1502 that left the ports of Andalusia by the route established by the Genoese on his third voyage.