GUAJIBA PENINSULA — OEIST 347 



terpreter, who manifested great interest in the fruits and in how they 

 were gathered. By his gentle demeanor and the distribution of candy 

 at a propitious moment, he gradually got the elder of the two — a 

 charming little girl, at first scared half to death — to pose in the act 

 of knocking the little fruits into the gourd, and to explain the whole 

 process of gathering them and of making chicha out of those not 

 consumed raw. (PL 7, fig. 1.) One's faith in humanity and its 

 future is immeasurably strengthened by observing these children, 

 conditioned from their tenderest years to assist uncomplainingly 

 in the ceaseless struggle for survival where nature is so barren 

 and niggardly. 



The harshness of the physical environment predisposes the sparse 

 population to a nomadic existence (pi. 10, fig. 1), but cultural factors 

 as well are operative. One wonders why, for instance, with so much 

 space available, the Guajiros live in tiny cramped huts, all packed 

 tightly together. To this question my interpreter answered with two 

 words : poverty and custom. The Guajiro is so poor that he cannot 

 afford to construct a roomy, solidly built house. And why should 

 he ? For whenever a death occurs in a house the family abandons it, 

 and no good Guajiro would run the risk of living in the house again. 

 (PI. 10, fig. 2.) After a death the various parts of the dwelling, 

 with the enramada, are used for a while as a place in which to re- 

 ceive relatives and friends from a distance, but after three or four 

 days or at most a week, when the velorio, or lloro, the wake and re- 

 ception, are over, the family moves away, at least 2 or 3 kilometers, 

 and builds another house. Near Cojoro, a new house, substantially 

 constructed, with cement floor and walls and a tin roof, was abandoned 

 by the owner, after the death of a son, and left to fall into ruin. The 

 Indians who have migrated to Maracaibo, or who have absorbed 

 Spanish culture, do not, to be sure, move from their house when a 

 death has occurred. My interpreter told me that he would not leave 

 his house because of a death, but his father-in-law, a wealthy Guajiro, 

 moved from Jepi to Cojoro, 30 kilometers away, when his eldest 

 daughter died in childbirth, and when his second daughter died of 

 galloping pneumonia he moved another 30 kilometers to La Gloria 

 near Paraguaipoa. Thus a basic cultural factor orients the people 

 toward nomadism or seminomadism, rather than in the direction of 

 a sedentary life. Such a factor will remain potent long after heroic 

 attempts have been made to make the people sedentary by digging 

 new wells, teaching new techniques of dry farming, and so on. 



Another factor that has favored a certain amount of migration or 

 seminomadism is the pito or vinchuca, a kind of outsized winged bed- 

 bug, found in many sectors. Its normal habitat is the thatch roofs 

 or the cracks in the daub-and-wattle walls. From their hiding places 



