342 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1957 



land, where they collect a few hundred meters from the shore in the 

 form of dunes that gradually migrate farther landward. 



It is during the months when the low-pressure belt is over the 

 area — usually from October to December — that the Guajira gets its 

 scant precipitation from convectional rains. It seems to be generally 

 true that the less rainfall a region has the more irregular and un- 

 predictable it is, and the Guajira Peninsula is no exception to this 

 rule. When it does rain, however, the aspect of the landscape changes 

 almost overnight. The seemingly dry and dead roots, plants, and 

 shrubs at once begin to absorb the life-giving water and to send out 

 shoots; seeds of grasses and forage plants, long dormant, begin to 

 sprout, and many trees, long bare of leavas, are quickly covered with 

 a canopy of foliage. And many are the Guajiros who hurriedly re- 

 turn to the land of their birth, to plant their patches of millets and 

 corn, beans and melons. Then they enjoy a few months of compara- 

 tive plenty, before the lean months, or years, again force them to 

 migrate to Maracaibo, to the Perija foothills, or even farther from 

 their beloved homeland. 



To be sure, here, too, as in many parts of the world, is heard the 

 familiar lament for "the good old days" — in the land of the Guajira 

 it is for the good old days when the rain was more abundant than 

 now and people could grow more crops. One is told of certain areas 

 in which crops that were grown 20 years ago can no longer be grown, 

 because the climate has become drier during the past generation. 

 Perhaps the true reason is that the population, whose members are less 

 inclined than formerly to cultivate marginal crops on marginal lands, 

 is being siphoned off into other areas where economic opportunities 

 are greater or more attractive. Some lands have become economically 

 submarginal in an expanding national economy. Furthermore, the 

 intensive health campaigns which have provided pure drinking water 

 and diminished disease-bearing vectors, have resulted in a lowering 

 of the death rate, especially the rate of infant mortality, with a con- 

 sequent increase in population, which in turn increases the pressure 

 on the food supply. At the same time more attractive economic op- 

 portunities elsewhere in the Republic, and the improvement of roads, 

 coupled with the availability of motor vehicles, have helped to bring 

 about a strong current of migration away from the Guajira. The 

 net result is the same as if there had been an actual change in the 

 physical climate. 



Rights to real property, both surface and subsurface, are at the 

 present time vested in the nation. Title to land, on which to build 

 a house, in the vicinity of an urban agglomeration such as Para- 

 guaipoa, can be granted by the Concejo Municipal. Over most of 

 the Peninsula, however, land that can be used for agriculture is simply 



