Mérida

War and culture comprise Mérida's historical backbone. Inevitably, the city's foundation was not established by means of books but by means of the sword. Coming from New Granada's city of Pamplona to "search for gold and subdue native Indians if necessary," Spaniard Juan Rodríguez Suárez (Xuárez), known as "The red caped captain," made his way through the Sierras Nevadas (Snowed Mountains), and arrived exactly in the village of Xamú or Jamú (nowadays San Juan de Lagunillas, located 19 miles south from today's Mérida). Without being authorized by anyone, he decided to found a city on October 9, 1558 by naming it Mérida, in memory of his native Mérida de Extremadura in Spain. But this foundation would not last for long since, due to the constant attacks by the neighboring natives, it had to be moved to El Punto in 1559 (a place known today as Zumba, in the city's south end) where Mérida was born for the second time, though it would not be the last.

Although October 9, 1558 has been recorded in history as the official date of Mérida's foundation and Juan Rodríguez Suárez as its founder, it was not deemed as such by New Granada's authorities who considered the foundation illegal for not being official. As a consequence, they sent Juan de Maldonado to legalize the new site's situation and to arrest Rodríguez Suárez. He complied with both orders: he moved the city to its present location, at a higher spot of the plateau, and renamed it Santiago de Los Caballeros de Mérida on June 24, 1560. Suárez was taken back to Bogotá for prosecution, with capital punishment as the sentence. Only the intervention of the Archbishop of Bogotá prevented the sentence from taking place, and friends helped him escape. He then returned to the Province of Venezuela and was welcomed and sheltered in Trujillo City, thus becoming America's first political refugee. However, these troubled early stages of the city resulted in a long history of fights between both Rodríguez Suárez's and Maldonado's parties and descendants, which lasted for two centuries.

If struggle--not only against the natives but among the Spaniards--characterized Mérida's foundation, the cultural vocation that has given it the nickname of "Venezuela's university campus" dates from pre-Hispanic times. This territory used to be the home for Tatuy or Mucumbache culture, considered the northernmost expression of the Inca culture. It is not surprising that San Francisco Javier Seminary, created by Jesuits in 1600, would be a seed sown in fertile land which two centuries later would bear its greatest fruit: the university, aim and bed of Mérida's arts and science, and second in seniority to that of Caracas.

After creating the Capitanía General de Venezuela in 1777, which separated these lands from Provincia de Pamplona in New Granada, Mérida emerged as an Episcopal See in 1778 and, in 1780, Brother Juan Ramos de Lora was appointed as the first bishop of Mérida and Maracaibo's diocese. Even though it took him five years to settle in Mérida, it only took him one month and three days to found in 1785 a study center which would later become Real Colegio Seminario de San Buenaventura de Mérida and, in 1810, it would turn into Pontificia Universidad de San Buenaventura de Mérida de Los Caballeros. Transformed in 1832, it acquired its present name of Universidad de Los Andes in 1883. The university has not only characterized Mérida's history and idiosyncrasy, but has also covered it geographically, since its faculties are spread around different urban areas.