to Tachira, Venezuela—Santandér del Norte, where it is 
ralled ‘‘chimu”. Reichel-Dolmatoff (pers. comm.) as- 
serts that it is ‘‘widely used by the peasants and lower 
classes’* and adds: **In the market of Cucuta, the capi- 
tal, one can buy finger-long bits of chimi wrapped in 
paper and even sealed with an official label of the national 
tobacco monopoly’*. Schultes (pers. comm.) indicates 
that chim6 is employed throughout the eastern and 
northern part of the Colombian Llanos. 
Venezuela and Colombia have today a long common 
frontier and their adjacent mountain regions have shared 
many culture traits, some dating from pre-Columbian 
times. 
Dupouy (27) states that the use of chimo is spreading 
rather than diminishing geographically. This seems 
probable, with the increased mobility of the rural popu- 
lation of Venezuela in the past twenty-five years, due to 
the construction of more and better roads. On the other 
hand, the appearance of chimo ina certain area need not 
mean that number of users has increased significantly : 
it may mean that users have moved trom one place to 
another, taking the habit with them. 
While chimo has relatively little competition in the 
Andean region, in Andes-bordering areas it must com- 
pete with two well established uses of tobacco: chewing 
and smoking. Whether or not chimo is spreading in 
terms of the acquisition of new users depends also on its 
advantages in comparison with those of these two rivals. 
It is true that in Caracas until about 1945, 1t was pos- 
sible to buy chim (paper-wrapped, the only type availa- 
ble) only in certain neighborhoods to which country 
people gravitated on arrival in the city. Recently, how- 
ever, Chimo has been stocked in most tobacco-stands and 
shops all over the city and is sold also in neighborhood 
“public markets”. (17; Dupouy pers. comm. ) 
[ 12 ] 
