Guaquire

Guaquire recalls the Guaiquires, one of the Indigenous peoples brought to the mission settlement later known as El Baúl. In 1744 Capuchin missionaries established San Miguel at the mouth of the Tinaco River, moving Guaiquires, Güires and Achaguas from the Apure and Orinoco country. The site on the Cojedes waterway served as a base for further missionary expeditions into the Llanos.

The settlement occupied a strategic point on a river network used by canoes travelling between the interior plains and the Orinoco. Missionaries sought to gather dispersed Indigenous communities there, while the people moved from their own territories had to adapt to the new settlement. In the early nineteenth century commerce along the Cojedes linked El Baúl with the river towns of Apure and the wider Orinoco basin.