Maracay calls itself the Cradle of Venezuelan Military Aviation, and the claim is literal. The museum sits on the grounds of the former Aeropuerto Nacional Florencio Gómez, the city's first airport, adjacent to the Air Force officer graduation school. When the Ministry of Defense moved its air base from downtown Maracay to the outskirts at Palo Negro in the early 1960s, the old hangars stood empty. A high-ranking officer named Luis Hernán Paredes saw their potential. His proposal for an aeronautical museum was immediately approved, and on December 10, 1963, President Rómulo Betancourt inaugurated the collection. The museum was later named after Paredes himself - the colonel who understood that empty hangars could hold history.

Over 40 aircraft fill the museum, spanning the full arc of Venezuelan aviation. A French-made Caudron G.3 biplane from the 1910s holds a special distinction: it was the first airplane the Venezuelan Air Force ever owned. Nearby sits a Douglas DC-3 from the 1930s, once piloted by Paul Vachet during the era of Aeropostal, the airline nationalized in 1934 by President Juan Vicente Gómez. The collection moves forward through World War II-era trainers like the Boeing-Stearman PT-17 and combat aircraft like the Republic P-47D Thunderbolt and North American B-25J Mitchell. Cold War jets follow - F-86 Sabres, a Dassault Mirage 50, an F-16 Fighting Falcon. There are helicopters dating from the 1920s through the 1950s, a gyroplane, and transport aircraft that carried troops and cargo across a country shaped by its mountains and coastlines.

El Río Caroní remains the museum's most storied artifact, even though the aircraft no longer resides here. When Jimmie Angel landed atop Auyantepui on October 9, 1937, none of his passengers - his second wife Marie, Gustavo Heny, and Miguel Angel Delgado - were injured, but the plane was stuck. For three decades it sat on that flat summit, battered by wind and sun, parts slowly disappearing. The 1970 recovery was a feat of logistics: the monoplane had to be disassembled on the mountaintop and airlifted by military helicopters to Maracay for an aviation fair. Reassembly proved especially challenging, with several components missing after their long exposure. The aircraft was later moved to Ciudad Bolívar's airport, where it stands in front of the passenger terminal. Sections of the Venezuelan military still argue it belongs back in Maracay.

Among the collection sits a plane nicknamed La Vaca Sagrada - the Holy Cow - the aircraft in which dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez fled Venezuela in 1958 when his regime collapsed. It is one of those objects where history concentrates into something you can touch. In 1976, a Hall of Fame was added to the museum, gathering military memorabilia dating back to the wars of independence. Medals, maps, photographs, documents, and paintings arrived from across the country, transforming the museum from an aircraft collection into something broader: a record of what it meant to build an air force in a nation still defining itself. Maracay's two major Air Force bases anchor the city's identity, and this museum - with its quiet hangars full of aluminum and memory - anchors the story of how Venezuelan aviation began.