340 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1957 



day wealth of the Guajiros is based) . In this harsh and hostile desert 

 environment a nomadic or seminomadic people, widely disseminated, 

 has evolved and maintained a society with a highly developed group 

 consciousness, though lacking, to be sure, many of the features 

 characteristic of modern life. Although this land and this people 

 have had an international boundary superimposed upon them, the 

 people nevertheless continue to be Guajiros, speaking their own 

 language, wearing their own dress, thinking of themselves, not as 

 Venezuelans or Colombians, but as Guajiros. The Venezuelan and 

 Colombian Governments, despite the political boundary line, have 

 been forced to recognize local laws and customs and to grant a high 

 degree of local cultural autonomy. The observer cannot but wonder 

 how such tenacity of cultural traits has been possible. A succinct dis- 

 cussion of the physical and historical background, supplemented by 

 observations in the field, may provide a basis for understanding 

 some of the cultural forces that have been operative in the evolution 

 and the cohesion of Guajira society, in spite of — or perhaps because 

 of — extremely unfavorable physical factors. 



Not so long ago, geologically speaking, the northeastern part of the 

 Guajira Peninsula, La Alta Guajira, was probably an island, cut off 

 from the mainland by a downfaulted block or graben, one side of 

 which ran from the Cabo de la Vela south past Cerro La Teta and 

 into the Gulf of Venezuela. Gradually, during Quaternary times, 

 the shallow water covering this graben has been filled in with sedi- 

 ments deposited largely by the Rio Rancheria and the Rio Paragua- 

 chon as they eroded the Sierra Nevada and the Montes de Oca. Large 

 sectors of the peninsula north and east of Paraguaipoa and Maicao 

 and almost as far north as Cerro La Teta, are inundated even today 

 during the wet season ; the mountains from which most of the waters 

 come can sometimes be seen as dark spots on the distant southern 

 horizon. Most of this area is a vast plain of recent alluvium, covered 

 with fine, fertile silt, and during pronounced droughts almost devoid 

 of vegetation of any kind. It would be a garden spot if it could be 

 irrigated rationally. A small amount of filling in has been carried 

 on by the flash floods from the Serrania de Cocinas, at the base of 

 which alluvial fans of coarse, unconsolidated debris have been formed. 



The coastline along this area of alluvial fill, from Rio Hacha to 

 Cabo de la Vela in Colombia, and from Cojoro to Sinamaica in 

 Venezuela, consists for the most part of sandbars flanked either by a 

 fringe of sand dunes or by lagoons into which sea water is allowed 

 to enter in order to be evaporated for salt. Dune formation is ex- 

 tremely active on the windward Venezuelan coast, from slightly west 

 of Castilletes to Paraguaipoa. The dunes are moving inland at vary- 

 ing rates, depending on the strength of the wind locally. Scenes remi- 



