Discovery and conquest of the Caribbean Sea by the Spanish, 1492-1595.
« Westermann Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte », 1997
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus reached San Salvador in what is now the Bahamas archipelago, then he discovered the northeast coast of Cuba and Haiti (La Española). During a second expedition, he discovered Dominica and Guadeloupe, then he explored the south coast of Cuba and discovered Jamaica (Santiago). His brother Bartolomé founded Santo Domingo in 1498. In 1508, Ponce de León named a harbor on the island Puerto Rico, which took its name, then he founded San Juan in 1511.
During his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus reached the island of Trinidad and discovered the mouths of the Orinoco River: the flow of the river indicated that the hinterland was much larger than the islands previously discovered. So, the idea of “mainland” began to emerge. In 1499, Alonso de Ojeda, accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci, explored the coast from east to west, starting from Guyana. On the shores of Lake Maracaibo, upon seeing Indians living in huts on stilts, he named this region “Venezuela”, meaning little Venice.
Rodrigo de Bastidas discovered the mouth of the Magdalena River and was the first to land on the Isthmus of Panama in 1500. During his fourth voyage, Columbus sailed along the coast of the isthmus from present-day Honduras (1502). Vasco Nuñez de Balboa founded Santa María la Antigua del Darién in 1510, the first permanent colony on the mainland, then he discovered the “South Sea” in 1513. Pedrarias Dávila founded Panama in 1519.
In 1528, Charles V granted the exploitation of Venezuela to Augsburg bankers, the Welsers. The expedition of Nicolás de Federmán reached the land of the Muiscas in the Andes in 1539.
The first European to ascend the Orinoco was Diego de Ordaz in 1531 (he was also the first European to reach the summit of the Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico). Where the Orinoco narrows the most, Antonio de Berrío founded the town of Santo Tomás de Guayana in 1595.
In the Andes, Benalcázar founded the Spanish Quito in 1534, then Popayán in 1537, and Jiménez de Quesada founded Santa Fe de Bogotá in 1538.