Diego de Losada y Cabeza de Vaca (1511 – 1569) was a Spanish

conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, ...

and the founder of

Santiago de León de Caracas Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...

, the current capital of

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

. Losada was born in

Rionegro del Puente Rionegro del Puente is a municipality located in the province of Zamora, Castile and León Castile and León ( es, Castilla y León ; ast-leo, Castiella y Llión ; gl, Castela e León ) is an autonomous community in northwestern Spain. I ...

, in what is now the

province of Zamora Zamora () is a province of western Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is bordered by the provinces of Ourense, León, Valladolid, and Salamanca, and by Portugal. The present-day province of Zam ...

. He reached Puerto Rico in 1533. Losada founded Caracas in 1567 after defeating ''

Tamanaco Tamanaco was a native Venezuelan chief, who as leader of the Mariches and Quiriquires tribes led (during part of the 16th century) the resistance against the Spanish conquest of Venezuelan territory in the central region of the country, specially ...

'', the

Mariche Mariche is the name of a former native Venezuelan tribe. Not much information from them as a tribe has survived to the present day. It is known that their descendants lived in what is now called Filas de Mariches, distrito Sucre, Estado Miranda an ...

chief. He died two years later, at

Borburata Borburata is a small coastal town in Carabobo state, Venezuela, located on the Caribbean Sea. It was long a destination of indigenous peoples, who would gather salt at the sea. It was colonized by the Spanish in the 16th century, but suffered so m ...

References

1511 births 1569 deaths People from the Province of Zamora Colonial Venezuela Spanish explorers Spanish city founders 16th-century Spanish people Spanish conquistadors {{Venezuela-bio-stub