El Hatillo Municipality
El Hatillo Municipality is an administrative division of the State of Miranda, Venezuela; along with Baruta, Chacao, Libertador and Sucre, it is one of the five municipalities of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. It is located in the southeastern area of Caracas, and in the northwestern part of the State of Miranda.
The seat of the municipal government is El Hatillo Town, founded in 1784 by Don Baltasar de León, who was instrumental in the area's development. Although the town had its origins during the Spanish colonisation, the municipality was not established until 1991. In 2000 – the year after a new constitution was enacted in Venezuela – some of the municipality functions were delegated to a consolidated mayor's office called Alcaldía Mayor, which also has some authority over the other four municipalities of Caracas.
El Hatillo has some of its colonial architecture, including an 18th-century parish church and a unique Romanian Orthodox Church. The municipality also has a rich artistic culture, with at least two important musical festivals celebrated yearly, and numerous holiday celebrations reflecting the heritage of El Hatillo. The culture, the pleasant temperature, the rural landscape, and the gastronomy of the municipality have made it a place of interest for visitors to the city, and a desirable place to live. The municipality receives a part of its income from tourism, an activity that is promoted by the government.
Although commercial areas are growing rapidly, agriculture remains a foundation of the economy in the rural areas of the southern part of El Hatillo. The business sector remains mostly underdeveloped, causing heavy employee movement in and out of the municipality – a problem that has made the transportation infrastructure of El Hatillo very congested.
History
In the 16th century, when the Spanish colonisation in the area began, El Hatillo was inhabited by the Mariches, a tribe of indigenous people possibly related to the Kalina. Cacique Tamanaco was the leader of these tribes, known for resisting the Spanish colonisation. As the colonisation developed, the indigenous inhabitants were killed; by order of Caracas's founder Diego de Losada, Tamanaco was also murdered.In 1752, Don Baltasar de León García arrived to El Hatillo from Cádiz, Spain, having just completed a prison term at La Carraca, Spain, for opposing the monopoly rules of Guipuzcoana Company, which was in charge of maintaining exclusive trade between Spain and Venezuela. Don Baltasar founded El Hatillo Town, becoming one of the most significant contributors to its early development. Don Baltasar focused on making El Hatillo a strong, united and independent community, aiming to establish the area as a distinct parish from Baruta, on which El Hatillo depended. He accomplished this on June 12, 1784, when the governor and the bishop agreed to declare El Hatillo autonomous and under the direction of Don Baltasar, in front of 180 Canary-descendant families; this date is accepted as the foundation date of El Hatillo Town.
That same year, Don Baltasar and his brother-in-law donated their properties to the town, and an engineer assisted in the urban planning, which included grid streets and a parish church. The church was built to honor Santa Rosalía de Palermo, who Baltasar believed had saved him from a plague that killed his father in prison. In 1803, at the age of 79, Don Baltasar was unexpectedly killed in a horse accident.
In 1809, landlord and Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Escalona achieved the separation of El Hatillo from Petare, another suburb of Caracas, making it a different Tenientazgo de Justicia – a type of administrative division at the time. On April 19, 1810, Escalona enjoined the town to the movement of independence under Simón Bolívar, becoming another important person in the history of the municipality.
Ana Francisca Pérez García, Don Baltasar's wife, was a noteworthy woman in El Hatillo, attending to community children, elders and ill citizens. She donated a considerable amount of money for the construction of a hospital in Petare after the 1812 earthquake; this hospital is currently known as the Pérez de León de Petare Hospital.
One of the most ambitious urbanisation projects in El Hatillo since its founding was the neighborhood called La Lagunita. In the 1950s and 1960s, La Lagunita S.A. constructed a "functional, futuristic and comfortable" residential zone. To encourage people to settle in the area, each parcel included a membership to Lagunita Country Club, which was officially opened in 1964. Brazilian landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx contributed to this project, constructed on the 4.3 million m2 hacienda that once belonged to former Venezuelan president Eleazar López Contreras. La Lagunita has since become a wealthy neighborhood of El Hatillo.
Although El Hatillo has been independent from Petare since 1809, it later became part of Sucre Municipality, where Petare is located. On November 19, 1991, Miranda's Legislative Assembly gave El Hatillo full autonomy, making it an independent municipality; this decision was issued in Gaceta Oficial on January 17, 1992. In 1993, Mercedes Hernández de Silva was elected the first mayor of El Hatillo. Since 2000, the Alcaldía Mayor manages some of the functions of the municipality.
The municipality was the target of airstrikes by the United States Air Force during the 2026 United States intervention in Venezuela. One of the strikes killed a Colombian woman who lived with her daughter on a rural house. The woman, Yohana Rodríguez, was one of the two civilian casualties during the attacks.
Geography
El Hatillo Municipality lies at the southeast area of the city of Caracas and at the northwest corner of the State of Miranda; it is one of the state's 21 municipalities. El Hatillo is also within the jurisdiction of the Alcaldía Mayor, which has power over three adjacent municipalities of Miranda, and over Libertador Municipality in the Capital District. These five municipalities make up the city of Caracas. El Hatillo has a land size of – the third largest municipality in the capital.The municipality's natural southern boundary is the Turgua range, spanning east to west and separating El Hatillo from the Baruta and Paz Castillo municipalities. Parallel to Turgua in the north is the Sabaneta range; the Prepo stream runs between the two ranges. North of the Sabaneta range, the Prepo stream feeds into the Tusmare stream, which ends in the Guaire river.
La Guairita stream flows into the Guaire in northeastern El Hatillo. The Guaire river is the eastern limit of the municipality, separating it from Sucre and Paz Castillo in the southeastern sector of El Hatillo. La Guairita serves as the northern boundary between El Hatillo and the municipalities of Baruta and Sucre. Limiting Baruta to the west, the boundaries of the municipality follow El Volcán, Pariaguán, La Mata and other peaks until they meet Turgua range in southeastern El Hatillo.
The tallest peak in El Hatillo is Picacho de El Volcán, at 1,490 meters above sea level, from where radio, television and telecommunication antennas serve Caracas. Despite its name, the mountain has had no recorded volcanic history. Other significant mountains in El Hatillo are Gavilán at, Topo de El Paují at and Topo de Piedras Pintadas at.
Environment
El Hatillo, at a higher altitude than the neighboring municipalities of Caracas, has slightly cooler weather than nearby downtown Caracas. The average temperature is between 21 and 24 degrees Celsius. At the highest elevations, the temperature can decrease to 18 °C and the atmosphere may have constant fog. The mean precipitation is 997.3 millimeters a year ; annual values can range from 800 to 1,500 millimeters. The average humidity index is 75%; similar to the rest of Venezuela, the rainy season is May through November, while all other months are considered the dry season. The winds are north alizé trade winds.Concentrated near water bodies, the vegetation in most of El Hatillo is dense forests, occupying around 30% of the surface. Smaller plants like shrubs take around 9% and herbs occupy a similar percentage. In 1972, the forests of El Hatillo were declared a protected zone of the metropolitan area of Caracas.
The municipality is home to a wide range of bird species, with more than two hundred registered, including sparrowhawks, eagles, falcons, and owls. Birdwatching in the area is promoted by the authorities of Miranda, who have also supported conservation of these species.
Demographics
In the 16th century, the indigenous Mariches were killed by the explorers; when the development of El Hatillo began, Spaniards from the Canary Islands settled in the area. Families from Madeira, Portugal also immigrated to El Hatillo, working largely in agriculture in La Unión neighborhood. As of 2001, 86% of the inhabitants of El Hatillo were born in Venezuela; the largest group not born in Venezuela was from Colombia with 4.2% of the population, followed by Spain with 2.0%, Italy with 1.0%, the United States with 1.0%, and Portugal with 0.8%.In the 2001 National Institute of Statistics census, El Hatillo Municipality had 54,225 inhabitants, but demographics show a rapidly rising population. With the progressive demographic increase, El Hatillo's population is no longer exclusive to any particular ethnic group. In 2001 there were 997 births in El Hatillo, equivalent to a rate of 18.4 births per one thousand citizens. The death rate for that same year was 2.9 per one thousand citizens. 2001 data shows that there is an average of 21.3 years of potential life lost. The main cause of death according to 1999 data was cancer, followed by heart disease and murder.
Data for 2000 shows that the largest age group to be 15- to 19-year-olds, representing 9.5% of El Hatillo's population; for every 100 females there are 94.2 males. The unemployment rate in 2001 was 6.1%, ranking fourth lowest among the twenty-one municipalities in Miranda.
As of 2001, there were 18,878 homes in El Hatillo, of which 13,545 were occupied; the remaining homes were either unoccupied, occasionally used, under construction, or for sale. An average of four people made up each household. Regarding wealth, 74.7% of the population were above poverty level, 21.5% were poor, and 3.8% were extremely poor. According to the 2001 census, each household in the municipality received an average of 1,316,906 Venezuelan bolívares per month, equal to US$1,832 at the time, or US$21,984 per year.