GUAJIRA PENINSULA — CRIST 343 



fenced in and cultivated. As long as the fence of organ cactus or 

 thorn brush is kept intact and the land is actually cultivated, the 

 usufruct thereof belongs to the cultivator. When the land is no longer 

 cultivated and fences fall into disrepair, it reverts to the community, 

 or goes to someone else who wants to work it. When the land is un- 

 fenced or unworked, the surface rights are assumed to belong to the 

 collectivity, for animals graze over long distances. The interna- 

 tional boundary is meaningless to the Guajiro; it is crossed by him 

 and his flocks at will in the never-ending search for pasture and 

 water. Indeed he takes no account of it in any of the phases of his 

 seminomadic life. It is, in short, as if it did not exist. 



Here, as in most arid regions, rights to water are more important 

 than rights to land. Those who have become wealthy, those who 

 own the largest flocks and herds, are those who have managed to get 

 control of a permanent supply of water. They have either enlarged 

 an old jaguey, or pond, or they have dug or drilled a well on which 

 a windmill is installed to lift the water, or they have appropriated, 

 and perhaps deepened, a casimba, or open, dug well. 



The federal governments are cognizant of the importance of pure 

 drinking water for people and for their animals, and the work 

 being done by the Venezuelan Ministry of Agriculture and Hus- 

 bandry — drilling wells, installing windmills, digging large jagiieys 

 and casimbas — is carried on with the idea that the water will be avail- 

 able at all times to the collectivity, on equal terms to all. (PI. 4, fig. 

 1.) In the Colombian Guajira, the federal government is making 

 extensive use of modern heavy equipment to build reservoirs — an im- 

 provement over the old-fashioned jaguey — which are filled when it 

 rains, and some of the old casimbas are being deepened and lined with 

 cement walls. Whether the water is lifted by wind power or by hu- 

 man brawn, these watering places are still among the most important 

 and the most colorful of the foci or community centers where Guajiros 

 congregate. 



In all probability the cultural factor of greatest significance in the 

 life of the Venezuelan Guajira of recent date has been the construc- 

 tion of the good, all-weather highway from Maracaibo to Paraguai- 

 poa. In many parts of the world, when highways have been built 

 into fertile, sparsely inhabited regions, settlement immediately 

 follows. 



One of the most notable examples of this phenomenon is to be found 

 along many kilometers of the newly constructed Carretera Pan- 

 americana south of Lake Maracaibo, where what was only a few years 

 ago dense tropical rainforest has already over vast stretches been 

 converted into cattle ranches. But a highway is for two-way traffic. 

 If it extends from a highly developed area to one which is poor, in 



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