José Leonardo Chirino

José Leonardo Chirino was born free in Curimagua, in the Falcón region of Venezuela, the son of an enslaved African father and an Indigenous mother, a status known as zambo. He worked as an assistant to a wealthy Coro merchant, José Tellería, and in 1794 accompanied him on a business voyage to Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti, where the enslaved population's revolution against French colonial rule was underway.

Witnessing the Haitian uprising directly transformed Chirino's political outlook, and upon returning to Venezuela in early 1795 he began organising alongside fellow revolutionary José Caridad González, a formerly enslaved man who had studied the ideas of the French Revolution. On May 10, 1795, they led an uprising of enslaved and free Black and Indigenous people in the Coro region, calling for the abolition of slavery, the end of discriminatory colonial taxes, and the establishment of an independent republic modelled on French revolutionary principles.

The rebellion's attempt to capture the city of Coro itself failed, and Spanish colonial forces swiftly suppressed the uprising, capturing many participants. Chirino evaded capture until August 1795 but was ultimately caught, tried, and executed in Caracas in December 1796, his body dismembered and displayed as a warning to others. He is remembered today as one of Venezuela's earliest revolutionary figures, with an airport named in his honour.