484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
Guajiro finds it more congenial first to settle in a caserto such as La 
Gloria, which forms an intermediate step between life in the country 
and life in a village such as Paraguaipoa or in a city such as Maracaibo. 
La Gloria is neither an organized village nor just a group of houses 
dispersed at random. Except for the store of the Carvajals, the only 
urban function performed by the settlement is that its members visit 
back and forth to exchange gossip and to perform household tasks 
together. The houses generally are from a hundred yards to a half 
mile apart; occasionally two are set close together. In only a single 
instance is there a large cluster of houses (pl. 3, fig. 1) in which lives the 
extended family of the Carvajals (who will be discussed in detail 
later), together with their servants. In their compound the family also 
operates a store in which basic food staples may be purchased and in 
which produce from the interior may be sold or bartered. Here the 
transient Guajiro, after his long trek from the interior, is sympathet- 
ically received by people who understand his problems as well as his 
language. It might be weeks or months before he would have the 
moral strength to enter any of the (to him) imposing edifices in Para- 
guaipoa, full of impersonal strangers speaking only Spanish. 
MYTHS, MATRILINY, AND MIXED MARRIAGES 
The matrilineal character of Guajiro culture meets us at once in the 
myths of the Guajiros about the origin of man and of the social order. 
In a remote epoch, goes the legend, the goddess of the Guajira married 
Mensh, Time, and had several daughters, one of whom married Para, 
god of the sea. Of this marriage were born a son and a daughter, 
Juyap, or Winter (ie., the rainy season), and Igua, or Spring. 
Igua married the god of the winds, Jepirech, and from this union 
sprang all the Guajiros.2 In this myth are represented the natural 
elements that are of importance to the Guajira: the actual rain, with- 
out which life is impossible, and the northeast trade winds that bring 
or deny the rain. And the rainy season, Juyap, is the maternal uncle 
of all; the one who, in the prevailing order, is the member of the 
family with the greatest power and the highest social rank. ‘Thus 
the legend is molded to fit the existent social realities of the culture, 
at the same time that the transcendental role of the natural elements 
in Guajiro economy is recognized. 
The gradual, present-day conquest of the Guajira is being effected 
in part by the process of mixed marriages, i1.e., between Indian women 
and men from outside who are carriers of modern culture, be they 
white, Negro, or mestizos. Temporary marriages are entered into 
with Indian women by civil and military authorities or by tradesmen, 
who buy their wives in accordance with Guajiro law and adapt them- 
2 Chaves, M., La Guajira, una region y una cultura de Colombia, Rev. Colombiana 
Antrop., vol. 1, No. 1, p. 182, June 1953. 
