Qualla: La Orchila Island

La Orchila Island: Introduction

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GilPe, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name comes from a plant. Orchilla is the Spanish word for the lichen once harvested across the island in such quantities that the 16th-century explorer Alonzo de Santa Cruz described it as the defining feature of the place -- "there is a lot of Orchilla, of which we speak long in the islands of Canaria." Today, La Orchila Island sits 150 kilometers north of Caracas in the Caribbean Sea, and the lichen is long gone. What replaced it tells the story of Venezuela itself: colonial claims and counter-claims, guano fortunes, military installations, presidential luxury, a coup, and the shadow of great-power rivalry.

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Image: GilPe | CC BY-SA 2.0

La Orchila Island: Claimed by Everyone, Settled by No One

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Dilankf assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. In 1589, Spanish governor Diego de Osorio formally took possession of La Orchila along with Los Roques and other offshore islands. The Dutch disagreed. Writing in 1836, M.D. Teenstra listed "Orchilla" among the islands belonging to Curacao, though he admitted the place was "of to...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Dilankf assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

La Orchila Island: The General's Retreat

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Dilankf assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Until the 1950s, roughly 121 people lived on La Orchila. General Marcos Perez Jimenez, who ruled Venezuela from 1952 to 1958, changed the island's character entirely. The inhabitants were evicted. Military installations rose on the cleared ground, along with about thirty small ho...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Dilankf assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

La Orchila Island: A Coup and a Prison

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Dilankf assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. In April 2002, a coup briefly removed President Hugo Chavez from power. The military officers who overthrew him needed a place to hold the deposed president away from his supporters and the press. They chose La Orchila -- remote, restricted, and controlled entirely by the armed f...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Dilankf assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

La Orchila Island: Bombers and Geopolitics

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Dilankf assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. La Orchila made international headlines twice more in the 21st century. In March 2009, Russian Air Force Major General Anatolii Zhikharev announced that Venezuela had offered Russia the use of the Antonio Diaz Naval Air Station on the island to base strategic bombers. Chavez deni...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Dilankf assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain