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MAPPING THE GRAN SABANA hen he was a young man back in the 1950s, Jesús Velásquez built his daub-and-wattle home on the banks of the dark and muddy Apanwao River, deep in the Gran Sabana. Velásquez chose his Wland his pata well. There were forests nearby with deep, black soils. To the west rose a series of dry hills, the Waipa and Chini mountains, where deer were common and easy to hunt. In the river, the fish were large and plentiful. He built his house on a grassy plain and when the rainy season began, the earth was full of swarming maywak, delectable ants that he could mix in his pepper sauce. He called his village Maywak to honor the ants that shared the plains with him and helped him survive when hunting was difficult, and he knew he had found his sanctuary. Today, Velásquez’s little settlement has grown into a village of about eighty people. They are Pemon, for whom these rich lands of southeastern Venezuela have been their traditional home since the time before Columbus. But life in Maywak these days is a strange blend of the old and the new, people living uneasy, liminal lives, caught between modernity and tradition, as in most indigenous villages in Venezuela. Although village homes are still made of mud and straw and poles, most roofs are of sheet metal instead of grass. A concrete building houses the elementary school, where Pemon schoolchildren raise the Venezuelan flag and sing the national anthem in the early morning mist. But still, the village has no run- ning water, and no electricity. There’s a dirt road to Maywak that’s passable with a four-by-four, but only in the dry season. Once, someone brought home a car battery and now teenagers play merengue and American rock in the blackness of the night. But in the morning, the boom box is silent. All you hear are the muffled voices of children, chopping wood for the morning fire, and the murmurs of men, going hunting with their bows and arrows. Women still tend the gar- dens, bake the traditional kasabe bread, and brew kachiri, the fermented drink made from manioc roots. Text and photographs by Bjorn Sletto 6 AMÉRICAS Village elders in the vast Venezuelan savanna helped create the “paper of their land,” protecting it for future generations But still, the village has no running water, and no electricity. There’s a dirt road to Maywak that’s passable with a four-by-four, but only in the dry season. AMÉRICAS 7 The contradictions that define life in village chiefs, the capitanes, of twelve Maywak even extend to the very name of Pemon communities in “Sector 5,” one of the village. Only villagers and other elder eight Pemon sectors, representing about Pemon know the community’s real name is 20 percent of their territory. Sector 5 Maywak. On the only map of the area, pro- forms the extreme southeastern corner of duced by the government agency EDEL- Venezuela, squeezed between the rain CA, Maywak is called “Vista Alegre,” a forests of Guyana in the north and the Spanish name dreamed up by a nameless savannas of Brazil in the east, and the pro- bureaucrat. On other maps, Maywak does ject aimed to map the cultural landscape not appear at all, as if it never existed. what Venezuelan law calls habitat of the This is why Velásquez always wanted to entire sector. It was an ambitious goal. make his own map. When he was young, he These vast savanna lands dotted by forest recalls, he and other men tried to draw a patches, palm swamps, shrub lands, and map of their homeland—the woods, rivers, mist-covered sandstone massifs called hills, palm, and shrub lands—that make the tepuys stretch some 125 miles (200 km) Gran Sabana a crazy quilt of greens, from the Sierra Lema in the north to the browns, yellows, and life-giving veins of Kukenan River in the south, less than eight blue. “But we didn’t know how to make a miles (12 kilometers) from the frontier city map,” he says, with a glint in his one good of Santa Elena and the Brazilian border. eye. “We didn’t have the training.” Only one asphalt road, the Pan American So, Velásquez says, he waited. As only a Highway, crosses the Gran Sabana. Pemon can, he waited for fifty years. He Although some communities are linked to smiles his easy smile. “Today we have our the highway with rutted and treacherous map, thanks to the boys who came to help dirt tracks, most villages are a four-to- us. Now we finally have the ‘paper of our eight-hour hike from the highway on trails land,’ our kowamopö dapon.” that wind through deep swamps and over The paper of their land came to Maywak in July 2003, conceived in the minds of Bjørn Sletto is a Ph.D. candidate in Velásquez and other elders, and brought to geography and environmental plan- life by a group of young activists from ning at Cornell University, in Ithaca, Kumarakapay, a nearby, larger and more New York. He led the Pemon ethnocar- modern Pemon village. The mapping of tography project while conducting his Maywak was part of a four-year, participa- dissertation research on fire manage- tory mapping project initiated in 2000 by ment in the Gran Sabana. But still, the village has no running water, and no elec- tricity. There’s a dirt road to Maywak that’s passable with a four-by-four, but only in the dry season. They worked for four days in the shade of a shaky lean-to, children running underfoot, kachiri, jokes, and stories flowing freely, rain showers hammering on the metal roof. They were excited but also nervous steep and rocky hills, and through river the memories and legends currents that tug and push at your legs as they attach to natural you wade across. places. In the Gran Sabana, The mapping project, “Proyecto Etno- virtually every hilltop, cartográfico Inna Kowantok” (Ethnocarto- pond, and forest patch has graphy Project “Our Land”), differed from its own name, its own his- the cartography typically conducted by tory, and its own meaning. state agencies. It was “participatory”: To become a responsible Pemon worked with other Pemon and drew and educated Pemon adult maps, which were later transformed into a is to know the meaning and standard map using the Geographic locations of each of these Information System ArcView, a computer- places. This is why a map based mapping program. And the project of indigenous territory relied on the “mental maps” of Pemon must rely as much on tradi- elders: their knowledge of the distribution tional, local knowledge, as of natural features, such as forests and on modern cartographic rivers; their mental picture of the many techniques. But the chal- trails that criss-cross the Gran Sabana, lenge lies in recording leading to hunting areas, fishing grounds, these mental maps and gardens, and places where they collect ter- converting them, as faith- mites and fruits; and their memories of his- fully as possible, to stan- toric sites and sacred places, such as the dard maps. In the Gran hills the imawari (Pemon ancestors) have Sabana as in other indige- declared off-limits, ponds where the nous areas, cultural differ- ürütürü (dangerous tigers) live, and the ences, language barriers, mountain homes of the urupre, the fierce and logistical problems dragons that can kill a hunter with a single such as a lack of electricity, swipe of its claws. But perhaps most impor- roads, and telephones, cre- tantly, elders located the hundreds of small ate formidable challenges settlements—sometimes merely the house to participatory mapping of a single family—scattered throughout projects. To overcome the Gran Sabana and recorded their prop- these obstacles, indigenous er, Pemon name, in most cases for the first peoples and their collaborators need time. “It was good that we made our own technical skills, creativity, dedication, and map,” says Leticia Fernandez, an elder not the least: patience. woman from Kumarakapay. “And do you In the case of the Gran Sabana, twelve know why? It’s because we are from here.” young villagers from Kumarakapay became key to the mapping project: since they or modern city-dwellers, making a could speak both Pemon and Spanish, they cultural, and land-use information about map might not seem like a momen- were able to gain the confidence of elders each site. Eventually, the skills of these tous undertaking. But for the Pemon and translate their knowledge into a legible, indigenous cartographers reached the Fand other indigenous people who have an standardized form. During the two years of attention of government officials in intensely personal relationship with their working together, the ethnocartographers Caracas, who invited them to share their land, and who have long experienced the and the author grew into a tight group of experiences with state technicians and to disrespect of scientists and government colleagues and friends, hiking together to assist the indigenous Warao to begin their officials, a map of their own has enormous, distant villages, cooking over open fires, own mapping project in the state of Delta symbolic value. “Venezuelans don’t know fighting mosquitoes and fatigue, and shar- Amacuro. To the ethnocartographers, it the history of this land,” says Antonio ing frustrations and successes while the was a dream come true. Not only did they Gonzales, an elder, former village chief in map of Sector 5 slowly grew from dream to learn a valuable skill; they also made a dif- Kumarakapay, and an active participant in reality.

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