When the town was officially founded on 7 April 1594 by Francisco de Vides, a Spanish adventurer who came from the Province of Huelva, there was already a Palenques Indian village there. The town was named after Our Lady of Los Clarines, the patron saint of Beas in Huelva, Andalusia. In 1650 when the Franciscan friars arrived, Clarines was still essentially an Indian village. It was not until the oil boom of the 1960s that Clarines began to change. In 1852, the population of Clarines was 4,289, including 72 people identified as white and 3,321 people identified as indigenous.