Colonia Tovar

Colonia Tovar (Tovar Colony) is a mountain town of Venezuela, capital of the municipality Tovar in Aragua state. It is located about 65.5 km (41 mi) west of Caracas. It was founded on April 8, 1843, by a group of 390 immigrants from the then independent state of the Grand Duchy of Baden (later incorporated into Germany). It is characterized by the cultural imprint of its origin, so it is called "the Germany of the Caribbean". The economy depends primarily on agriculture and tourism. Colonia Tovar is known for its temperate crops (peaches, strawberries, beets, cauliflower, carrots, cabbage, chard, broccoli, lettuce, onions and potatoes) and their derivatives. Since 1990 it has experienced high population growth, rising from 3,373 to 21,000 inhabitants in 2016.

A colonizing company was formed, composed of colonel Agostino Codazzi and Ramón Díaz, and as guarantor Martín Tovar y Ponte (the Count of Tovar). Codazzi contacted residents of the Kaiserstuhl region in the Grand Duchy of Baden and selected an area for the colony, choosing a site with geographic and climatic similarities to the German region that should provide the majority of settlers in Colonia Tovar. The land belonged to the nephew of Count of Tovar, Manuel Felipe Tovar, who donated it for the creation of the colony.^{[citation needed]}

On October 14, 1841, the territory was founded as Palmar del Tuy and construction of infrastructure was begun. Once completed, the colonizing company went to the town of Endingen in Kaiserstuhl to select settlers. Contracts between the company and immigrants were signed at the inn Der Pfauen, a few meters from the entrance to the city. According to Alexander Benitz, the immigrants who embarked the Havre ship to Venezuela numbered 389: 239 men and 150 women, most from Kaiserstuhl. They departed for Venezuela on December 18, 1842.

They travelled along the Rhine, embarked at the port of Le Havre (France) on January 19, 1843, and arrived at the La Guaira on 4 March aboard the French ship Clemence piloted by Captain Malverin. The ship was scheduled to land on the Puerto Maya coast, north of La Victoria, but given that no previous journeys had followed the path mapped by Codazzi, the ship was forced to turn to Choroní on an alternate path. This path was also designed by Codazzi and opened by engineer Inder Pellegrini, leaving La Victoria to the place assigned for the new population. However, they could not disembark immediately in Choroní because of a smallpox epidemic on board. The passengers and crew quarantined in Choroní from March 13.

On March 31, they headed to the city of Maracay and La Victoria where they were received by President of Venezuela Carlos Soublette. Settlers arrived in Palmar del Tuy on April 8, 1843, 112 days after leaving Baden. That day is considered the foundation day of Colonia Tovar, which took the last name of the donor. The first residents included scientists, naturalists, writers and painters, such as Carl Ferdinand Appun, Hermann Karsten, Karl Moritz, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Anton Goering, Augustus Fendler, Ferdinand Bellermann (a painter who was sponsored by Humboldt), some buried in the city cemetery.

Initially, the village was organized around the production of coffee. As "los colonieros" were thriving, production spread to new lands and activities such as growing vegetables and fruits, sent to markets in Caracas or La Victoria. The manufacture of barrels became another income source.

For many years the colony was connected with Caracas by a river. The difficulty of communication, isolation and the environmental setting so different from the mountains of Germany kept the people relatively isolated, with slow or even negative population growth, due to rural exodus.

That trend reversed in the 1960s, when Colonia Tovar took up tourism, which led to significant economic development and population growth. It became one of the richest towns in the country measured by population and one of the highest in terms of quality of life.