Apure

Apure occupies the southwestern Llanos of Venezuela, where seasonally flooded plains extend toward the Orinoco. The Apure River gives the territory its name, and the Spanish form was already recorded by friar Jacinto de Carvajal in 1648. Across the region grass savanna alternates with gallery forest, lagoons and sandy dunes, and rivers such as the Arauca, Capanaparo and Cinaruco complicate the drainage.

During the colonial period the territory belonged in turn to the provinces of Mérida, Maracaibo and Barinas. Cattle ranches expanded in the early eighteenth century, and Franciscan missionaries and landowners pressed into Indigenous country inhabited by Arawak, Carib and other peoples. The plains hosted campaigns of the independence wars. In 1823 Apure was separated from Barinas, and cattle, fishing and river transport formed the core of its economy.

The later city of San Fernando de Apure lies here.