It is descended from the Colonial Spanish horse, gradually introduced from the 16th century onwards, and is closely related to other Criollo and Paso Fino breeds.

[3] Horses were extinct in South America around 10,000 BC, and the species only reappeared with the arrival of the crews of Christopher Columbus's second voyage in 1493.

[6] The Venezuelan breed is descended from the Colonial Spanish horse, introduced by settlers and conquistadores from the 16th century onwards[3] – the same origin as the neighboring Trote y galope.

[6] In 1528, King Charles V of Spain commissioned the Welser governors to import horses from Hispaniola, San Juan and Santiago de Cuba to Venezuela.

[6] It seems that horses abandoned by Don Pedro de Mendoza in 1535 near Buenos Aires also played a special role in the founding of the breed.

[1] The majority of these founding horses came from the Antilles, but a not inconsiderable number, acquired by the Welsers or by settlers, are thought to have come directly from Spain.

[8] Similarly, in 1545, Cristóbal Rodríguez, a settler in the Llanos, brought ten mares and two foals of the Andalusian breed directly from Jerez de la Frontera.

[13] Hendricks' book (University of Oklahoma, 2007)[1] and the Delachaux guide (2014,[3] which probably uses the latter's data) cite an average height of 1.42 m. The breed is close to the Argentine Criollo, but lighter in pattern, the result of the influence of the climate in its native region.

[17][18] A parasitological study carried out on two Venezuelan ranches shows that infestations with Trypanosoma evansi (7.3%), Babesia equi (1.4%) and Anaplasma phagocytophilum (32.9%) are possible, and are responsible for significant losses in farm horses.

[21] Several particularly rare alleles, although not very frequent, were detected in the 214 Venezuelan Criollo horses analyzed for the purposes of the study by E. G. Cothran and his team in 2011.

[21] The Venezuelan Criollo was the subject of a study to determine the presence of the DMRT3 gene mutation responsible for extra gaits: the study of 21 subjects failed to detect the presence of this mutation in 16.7% of the horses tested, and the existence of horses with extra gaits was confirmed among the breed.

According to the Delachaux guide (2014), awareness is growing of the large number of crosses made in the breed[3] (which contradicts information from Venezuelan studies).