496 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
to tribal law, with many wives—a desideratum, to be sure, of many 
men in divers cultures—and are certainly as possessive of their fe- 
males and as intent upon being a he-man, a macho, as those of Span- 
ish American culture. Perhaps it could be stated that in general 
the greater the number of values held in common by two cultures 
effecting fusion, the more gradual the process of acculturation. 
EMIGRATION AND ACCULTURATION 
The Guajiro has supplied a current of migration to other sectors 
of the Republics of Colombia and Venezuela—male relatives or those 
already established in the vicinity of Paraguaipoa visit their kin- 
folk in La Gloria, sometimes for a period of several months, before 
continuing on to the Perijé area in search of work. Those who have 
absolutely nothing often walk the whole long way from Maracaibo— 
sometimes even from Paraguaipoa—to the ranch area, looking for 
work on the way. This they do not consider an unusual hardship, ac- 
customed as they have been since early childhood to walking great 
distances as they followed their flocks back and forth across their 
homeland, the Guajira Peninsula. By whatever means they arrive at 
the ranch, it is a fact that the labor force on the new ranches that have 
been and still are being opened up southwest of Maracaibo, in the foot- 
hills of the Perij4 Mountains, consist almost 100 percent of Guajiros, 
many of whom spend some time in a kind of “proving ground” or zone 
of cultural transition, such as La Gloria. 
Many Guajiros unfortunately are plunged into the foreign Latin 
culture instead of gradually absorbing it, and being absorbed in it, 
as are those in zones of acculturation like La Gloria. In the upper 
Guajira, hundreds of Guajiros are packed each week into old beaten- 
up trucks, transformed into buses by the simple expedient of placing 
heavy planks crosswise in the body of the truck to serve as seats; 
Thursdays and Fridays these lumbering trucks move their human 
cargo over the rocky, bumpy trails to Paraguaipoa, and thence over 
the paved highway to Maracaibo; there the Guajiros are thrust into 
the very thick of life in a modern metropolis, with all its pitfalls 
for the unwary who do not speak the official language; all too often 
they absorb only the less desirable features of modern urban life, 
perhaps beginning with overdrinking and all too often ending up in 
fights and brawls that may even land them in jail. 
CONCLUSIONS 
Will the modern improvements now being incorporated in Guajiro 
society change it root and branch, or will they merely strengthen the 
tough fibers of this vital, long-lived culture that has successfully 
withstood the impact of new races and new elements of material cul- 
