Veroes Municipality
Veroes Municipality | |
|---|---|
| Municipio Veroes | |
 Flag  Coat of arms | |
 Location within Yaracuy | |
| Coordinates: 10°28′N 68°33′W / 10.467°N 68.550°W | |
| Country | Venezuela |
| State | Yaracuy |
| Established | 5 November 1993 |
| Capital | Farriar |
| Parishes | 2 (El Guayabo, Farriar) |
| Government | |
| • Mayor | Leonardo Machado (PSUV) |
| Area | |
• Total | 1,059 km2 (409 sq mi) |
| Population (2011)[1] | |
• Total | 29,065 |
| Website | veroes-yaracuy |
Veroes, officially the José Joaquín Veroes Municipality, is one of the 14 municipalities of Yaracuy state, Venezuela.[2] It lies in the northwest of the state, and part of its territory is claimed by Falcón state. It is the only Yaracuy municipality with direct access to the sea, through a narrow corridor about 5 km long. Its capital is the town of Farriar.
The municipality covers about 1,059 km2, making it the second largest in the state, and had a population of 29,065 at the 2011 census.[1][3] It is divided into two parishes, El Guayabo and Farriar.[2] The municipality is known for its Afro-Venezuelan communities, sometimes called the "Zona Negra" (Black Zone) of Yaracuy, and for the Saint John the Baptist drum festival held in its towns.[4] In 2019 Veroes was declared the first Afro-descendant municipality of Venezuela.[5]
Geography
[edit]
Veroes extends along the banks of the Yaracuy River and the southern slope of the Sierra de Aroa, in the low-lying part of Yaracuy.[6] The Yaracuy River runs through the centre of the municipality, in the lower part of its basin, and reaches the Caribbean Sea near the boundary with Carabobo state.[7] The valley floor along the river is prone to periodic flooding and slow drainage, and parts of the southern municipality show colline (piedmont) relief.[7] Because several of its towns lie on the low banks of the river, they are subject to recurring floods.[7]
Besides the capital, the municipality's towns include El Chino, Agua Negra, Palmarejo, Taría, and La Pica del Chino.[6] The climate is warm; the lower Yaracuy valley in the Veroes area records some of the highest average temperatures in the river basin, around 26–26.5 °C.[7]
Climate
[edit]The municipality has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen Aw).[8] The average annual temperature is 24 °C. The warmest month is March, at 26 °C, and the coolest is November, at 22 °C.[9] Average annual rainfall is 1,590 mm. The wettest month is May, with 222 mm of rain, and the driest is January, with 24 mm.[10]
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Demographics
[edit]Veroes had 23,269 inhabitants at the 2001 census and 29,065 at the 2011 census, for a population density of about 27 inhabitants per km2.[1][3] The great majority of the population is of African descent, and community organisations in the municipality identify as Afro-descendant or Afro-Venezuelan.[11][5]
History
[edit]Since the colonial period most of the area's inhabitants have been of African descent, brought to the region through the slave trade to work on the cocoa and sugar-cane plantations.[6][11]
Between 1730 and 1733 the zambo Andresote (Andrés López del Rosario) led a revolt in the valley of the Yaracuy River, together with enslaved and free black people, mestizos and Indigenous people of the area.[12] The uprising was directed against the Guipuzcoan Company, which held a monopoly on trade between Venezuela and Spain and cracked down on the contraband trade in cocoa and tobacco with the Dutch at Curaçao; Andresote had the backing of Creole planters and Dutch smugglers who wanted that trade to continue.[12] After Spanish officers failed to defeat him, the governor of the Province of Venezuela, Sebastián García de la Torre, took command in person and reached Yaracuy on 11 February 1732; Andresote evaded him and escaped by ship to Curaçao, where he later died.[12] The revolt is regarded by Venezuelan historians as a forerunner of the country's independence movement, and is the subject of Carlos Felice Cardot's monograph La rebelión de Andresote (1957).[13]
The community that became the municipal capital was founded around 1875 under the name La Rosita, by Afro-descendant families—among them the Parra, Barboza, Ilarraza, and Bolívar families—who had come from the nearby community of Agua Negra.[6] The Veroes municipality was constituted in 1909, after Yaracuy state was definitively established, and was administered within the then District of San Felipe. The municipal capital was originally the town of El Chino, but in 1935 it was moved to the community of La Rosita, which was renamed Farriar. On 5 November 1993 Veroes was granted full autonomy as a municipality.[2]
The land history of the 20th century shaped the present communities. In 1925 the state granted more than 20,000 hectares of communal lands (tierras comuneras) to the communities of Agua Negra and Palmarejo; between the 1940s and 1970s much of this land and the surrounding smallholdings (conucos) were displaced by the expansion of sugar-cane estates and commercial agriculture; and from the late 1990s land committees in the municipality began a cycle of struggles against landowners to reclaim territory.[11]
In 2019 the mayor and municipal council declared Veroes the first Afro-descendant municipality of Venezuela. That October the municipality hosted a National Afro-descendant Assembly, which drew up a sector plan (Plan Sectorial Afrodescendiente) for inclusion in the national development plan for 2019–2025.[5][14]
2026 earthquakes
[edit]On 24 June 2026, two large strike-slip earthquakes struck northern Venezuela with epicentres in Veroes municipality: a magnitude 7.2 foreshock at 18:04 local time, followed 39 seconds later by a magnitude 7.5 mainshock.[15][16] The earthquakes struck on a public holiday, when many people were taking part in the Saint John the Baptist drum festivities held that day.[17] They caused widespread destruction across the country; by 1 July officials reported at least 2,295 dead, more than 10,500 injured, and nearly 50,000 people unaccounted for nationwide.[18][19]
In the municipality itself, a surface fracture more than 300 metres long opened in farmland at Palmarejo, reaching 2.2 metres wide and 2.2 metres deep at its largest points; the crack ran through cultivated plots (conucos) rather than the residential area, but buildings in the town suffered serious structural damage.[19] Residents reported constant aftershocks in the days that followed, and security and rescue services continued assessing damage across Veroes a week after the earthquakes.[19]
Toponymy
[edit]The municipality is named after José Joaquín Veroes (1789–1855), a Venezuelan soldier of African descent who took part in the Venezuelan War of Independence and rose to the rank of colonel in the army of the Liberator; his remains were transferred to the National Pantheon of Venezuela on 16 December 1942.[20]
Economy
[edit]The Yaracuy River makes the land very fertile, and much of the sugar cane produced in Yaracuy comes from Veroes.[6] Industry in the municipality has included the Central Azucarero Veroes sugar mill (no longer operating), a plant processing bitter cassava (Manihot esculenta), and a dairy plant in the nearby town of Pueblo Nuevo. Plantains and cassava are staple crops, and local crafts include the making of wooden mortars (pilones).[6]
From the early 2000s, Afro-Venezuelan communal organisations became active in the municipality. The Movimiento Comunero Afrodescendiente, formed in 2002, brought together 39 agricultural cooperatives on the communal lands of Agua Negra and Palmarejo, and between 2002 and 2006 the organisations recovered about 2,000 hectares of land. Another body, the Unión de Cooperativas Afrodescendientes José Leonardo Chirino, grouped around 40 cooperatives around Farriar.[11]
Culture
[edit]
Veroes is one of the main centres of Afro-Venezuelan culture in Yaracuy; its towns of El Chino, Farriar, Palmarejo, and Agua Negra are collectively known as the state's "Zona Negra".[4][11] The Roman Catholic religion has long been part of community life, blended with practices rooted in the region's African heritage.[6]
The best-known tradition is the drum festival for Saint John the Baptist (parranda or parrandón de San Juan Bautista). The celebration begins on 1 June in Agua Negra and builds through the month with drumming and sangueo singing until 23 June; on the feast day of 24 June the area draws visitors from other communities.[4][21] Local performers use drums known as the tambor afroyaracuyano and sing genres such as the cantos de sirena and loangos.[22] Veroes hosts the state's Encuentro Estadal de la Parranda de San Juan Bautista, and a municipal decree established a local Day of the Tambor Luango, a drum treated as a symbol of Afro-Yaracuyan identity.[23][21] Other observances in the municipality include the festivals of Saint Peter, Our Lady of Lourdes (patroness of Farriar), and the Velorio de la Cruz de Mayo.[6]
Chapel at Palmarejo
The Abigaíl Lozano secondary school in Farriar
Estrellas de Veroes baseball stadium, Farriar
Government
[edit]The municipality is governed by a mayor and a municipal council. Directly elected mayors of Veroes have included:
| Term | Mayor | Party |
|---|---|---|
| 1995–2000 | José Antonio Rojas | AD |
| 2000–2008 | Santos Aguilar | MVR |
| 2008–2021 | César Silva | PSUV |
| 2021–2025 | Leonardo Machado | PSUV |
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 3 "Resultados por entidad federal y municipios del Estado Yaracuy" (PDF). Censo nacional de población y vivienda 2011 (in Spanish). INE. December 2014. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
- 1 2 3 "División Político Territorial de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela" (PDF) (in Spanish). INE. September 2013. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 March 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
- 1 2 "Densidad poblacional según municipio de Yaracuy". Censo nacional de población y vivienda 2011 (in Spanish). INE. December 2014. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
- 1 2 3 "Yaracuy y sus manifestaciones culturales" (in Spanish). Folkloreando. March 2010. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- 1 2 3 "Veroes, tierra cimarrona, historia viva de la resistencia afrovenezolana". Página/12 (in Spanish). 13 July 2025. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Municipio Veroes: Desarrollo de la cultura" (in Spanish). Enterate Municipio Veroes. June 2014. Archived from the original on 2 July 2026. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- 1 2 3 4 "Caracterización general de la cuenca del río Yaracuy, Venezuela" (in Spanish). Monografías.com. August 2015. Archived from the original on 8 July 2026. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- ↑ Peel, M. C.; Finlayson, B. L.; McMahon, T. A. (2007). "Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification". Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. 11 (5): 1633–1644. doi:10.5194/hess-11-1633-2007. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
- 1 2 "NASA Earth Observations Data Set Index". NASA. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
- 1 2 "NASA Earth Observations: Rainfall (1 month – TRMM)". NASA/Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Camacho, Carmen Yadira (2014). ""Somos Afro-Socialistas": Marcos de acción colectiva y activismo afrodescendiente en el municipio Veroes (Venezuela)". Memorias: Revista Digital de Historia y Arqueología desde el Caribe (in Spanish) (23): 139–166. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- 1 2 3 "Rebelión de Andresote". Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela (in Spanish). Fundación Empresas Polar. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- ↑ Felice Cardot, Carlos (1957). La rebelión de Andresote: valles de Yaracuy, 1730–1733 (in Spanish) (2nd ed.). Bogotá: Editorial ABC.
- ↑ "Declaran a Veroes en Yaracuy, primer municipio afrodescendiente de Venezuela". Aporrea (in Spanish). 9 October 2019. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- ↑ "Terremoto mayor magnitud 7.2 – 23 km SE of Yumare, Venezuela, miércoles 24 jun 2026" (in Spanish). VolcanoDiscovery. 24 June 2026. Retrieved 2026-07-02.
- ↑ "Venezuela Earthquake Response 2026". PAHO/WHO. June 2026. Retrieved 2026-07-02.
- ↑ Singer, Florantonia (25 June 2026). "En el epicentro del terremoto de Venezuela: "Una máquina, por favor. Necesito a mi hermana que está ahí abajo"". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 2026-07-02.
- ↑ Shapiro, Emily (1 July 2026). "Venezuela earthquakes latest: Nearly 50,000 unaccounted for as death toll climbs". ABC News. Retrieved 2026-07-02.
- 1 2 3 "Reportan fractura de más de 300 metros en Palmarejo, Yaracuy, tras los terremotos". El Nacional (in Spanish). 1 July 2026. Retrieved 2026-07-02.
- ↑ "Veroes, José Joaquín". Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela (in Spanish) (2nd ed.). Fundación Empresas Polar. 1997.
- 1 2 "Yaracuy vibra al ritmo de San Juan con más de 1.900 cultores". Últimas Noticias (in Spanish). 22 June 2026. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- ↑ "Yaracuy: Ritmo y raíces en Veroes" (in Spanish). Alfa Yaracuy. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
- ↑ "Misión Cultura Yaracuy celebró el Día del Tambor Luango en Encuentro estadal de la Parranda de San Juan Bautista" (in Spanish). Ministry of Popular Power for Culture (Venezuela). 27 June 2025. Retrieved 2026-07-01.
External links
[edit]
Media related to Veroes Municipality at Wikimedia Commons
