Apacuana

Background

The story of Apacuana is preserved in José de Oviedo y Baños' 1723 book The Conquest and Settlement of Venezuela, written nearly a century and a half after the events. Oviedo y Baños relied on Fray Pedro Simón's 1626 work Noticias historiales and on records from the Caracas town hall, which he consulted while serving as Alcalde de primer voto in 1710. Apacuana belonged to the Quiriquires, a branch of the Kalina people living in the Valles del Tuy, the valley around the Tuy River in north-central Venezuela.

Oviedo y Baños placed the Quiriquires in thick mountains on the banks of the Tuy River, which separated them from the Mariches, and noted their territory extended more than twenty-five leagues along the Tuy to the western boundary with the Tumusa tribe. They also bordered the Arbacos and Meregotos. These groups maintained political autonomy but allied against the Spanish.

Account

Apacuana's name has also been written as Apacuane, Apakuama, or Apakuana. Writer Emilio Salazar suggested that Apakuama derives from the Cumanagoto language, meaning beautiful mountain, from apak (mountain) and uama (beautiful). Oviedo y Baños introduced her as an elderly sorceress and herbalist, and she is considered a piache, or curandera. She is also described as a cacica, the feminine form of cacique.

She was the mother of cacique Guásema. Highly respected as a sorceress and political leader, she instigated an attack on the Spanish. In 1577, under her direction, the Quiriquires attacked encomenderos Garci-González and Francisco Infante while they traveled through Quiriquires territory. Garci-González, badly wounded, carried the injured Infante to Caracas, angering the town's mayors and residents.

In response, a force of 50 Spaniards and some Teques, led by Sancho García, was sent to punish the Quiriquires. García's mission faced constant ambushes but reached the settlement where the attack occurred. Finding it empty, García burned it and all other settlements in the valley.

The natives planned a surprise attack, but the Spanish learned of it by torturing an Indigenous man. The Spanish then attacked a gathering of caciques, including Acuareyapa, with about 500 warriors. The natives were scattered or killed, and many were taken prisoner, including Apacuana. Oviedo y Baños recounted her capture and subsequent death by torture and hanging in view of the Quiriquires, who then reportedly asked for peace.

Aftermath

Despite the peace that followed Apacuana's execution, the Quiriquires continued resisting the Spanish. According to Fray Pedro Simón, they abandoned their lands around the 1580s and relocated south of Lake Maracaibo, after which the lake could not be navigated without a military escort. In 1599, they attacked captain Domingo Lizona on Lake Maracaibo, stealing merchandise and killing the crew. On July 22, 1600, they assaulted the Spanish settlement of San Antonio de Gibraltar with 500 men and 140 canoes, looting and burning all its houses.

Legacy

Writer Luis Manuel Urbaneja Achelpohl included Apacuana in his 1909 short story Los abuelos. Playwright César Rengifo made her the subject of his dramatic poem Apacuana y Cuaricurián, premiered in 1975, which invented a fictitious son for her named Cuaricurán, an artist who refuses war. Since 2015, the Compañía Nacional de Teatro of Venezuela has given an annual playwright award named after her. On March 8, 2017, International Women's Day, the national government transferred her symbolic remains, along with those of African slaves Hipólita and Matea, to the National Pantheon of Venezuela, where the country's main historical figures rest.

In December 2018, the government of Caracas placed a seven-meter statue of Apacuana on the Valle-Coche highway, replacing the León de Caracas monument. The plaque states that her legacy shakes the patriarchal history of the West and fuels the spirit of rebellion. Historian Iraida Vargas Arenas noted that traditional Venezuelan historiography has hidden women's actions, including Apacuana's, as a byproduct of androcentric discourse. Apacuana is one of the few known female figures of Indigenous resistance, along with Urimare, and is often invoked in women's history research.