The Land and People of the 

 Guajira Peninsula 1 



By Raymond E. Crist 



Research Professor of Geography 

 University of Florida, Gainesville 



[With 10 plates] 



Paraguaipoa, market town of the Venezuelan Guajira, only 90 

 kilometers from the bustling, modern, oil-rich metropolis of Mara- 

 caibo, is in time and historical evolution several thousand years away. 

 Beyond Paraguaipoa one enters a veritable cultural island, where 

 the mode of life today is in many respects similar to that depicted in 

 the Old Testament in the days of Abraham in the Old World desert 

 of Arabia. It is a land of marked contrasts and violent extremes, 

 where months-long droughts are followed by disastrous inundations ; 

 a land of shy but friendly people among whom the most violent 

 blood feuds still flare up, where the biblical injunction of an eye for 

 an eye and a tooth for a tooth is followed to the letter, unless retribu- 

 tion be made by the offender in the wealth of the land, namely live- 

 stock. Here also young women are frankly and openly acquired by 

 purchase, in accordance with Guajiran law, and a man may have 

 as many wives as his purse, his years, and his fancy will allow. 



What are the factors, physical and cultural, that have made pos- 

 sible the formation and the preservation of a distinct society and 

 culture in this little-known corner of South America? Already the 

 Spaniards found a vigorous culture flourishing there, with its own 

 language, institutions, and pattern of occupancy (though it was they 

 who introduced the domestic animals on which most of the present- 



1 The field and library work on which this paper is based was made possible 

 by a grant of the Creole Petroleum Corp. Various departments of the or- 

 ganization cooperated in every way to further the undertaking. Thanks are 

 due the ministries of the Venezuelan and Colombian Governments that helped 

 to facilitate fieldwork involving movement back and forth across the frontier; 

 also to Professor Lorenzo Monroy and Mr. E. J. Lamb, who were of assistance 

 at every step throughout the author's stay in Venezuela. To Drs. "Woodfin L. 

 Butte and Guillermo Zuloaga, directors of the Creole Corp., the writer is espe- 

 cially grateful. 



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