The city of Maracaibo is located northwest of Venezuela, on the shores of Lake Maracaibo (the largest in South America). It is the capital of Zulia State and namesake of the municipality with an area of 557 km2. Forms the main port and industrial center of the Basin Petroleum Maracaibo.

Founded in 1529 as a people by Alfinger Ambrosio, and as a city in 1569 by Alonso Pacheco, Maracaibo had an important role during the nineteenth century as a center the exporting coffee from the Venezuelan and Colombian Andes. This enabled it to count by then with a growth rate higher than that of its own capital, Caracas. Its development as oil enclave from the decade of 1910 to introduce the city in the circuits of international trade and reliance on U.S. companies.

Maracaibo was founded on three occasions. The first in the year 1529 by the German Ambrosio Alfinger (conqueror of the house Welser), who gave him the name of Villa Maracaibo. It was little activity, so Nicolas Federmann ordered to move its population to Cabo de la Vela, near Santa Ana de Coro in 1535.

After a second failed attempt by the year 1569 in which the city was founded as Ciudad Rodrigo by the master Alonso Pacheco, it was only in 1573 that the Governor Diego de Mazariegos decided to restore the population conferring the master Pedro Maldonado said encomienda. So for 1574 was founded the New Zamora Maracaibo, in honor of the governor Mazariegos, a native of the city of Zamora, Spain.