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 andF 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. The ethnocartographers, who had ference for the future of their people. the mapping project. “We are the ones who no knowledge of cartography and had From February 2002 to September 2003, know. We know the whole story. never spoken in village assemblies, eventu- the ethnocartographers traveled to ten com- Venezuelans can put their own names on ally excelled at their work, easily negotiat- munities, including Maywak, where they places, but we know the story of these ing with skeptical or dominant chiefs, and worked with Velásquez and other elders for places. Because these places are in my ter- confidently guiding men, women, and chil- four days in the shade of a shaky lean-to, ritory, here where we are living.” dren as they drew “mental maps” by hand. children running underfoot, kachiri, jokes, As Gonzales suggests, indigenous people After the villagers had sketched their men- and stories flowing freely, rain showers ham- have an intimate knowledge of their envi- tal maps, the ethnocartographers patiently mering on the metal roof. They were excit- ronment, mental maps that are amazingly interviewed elders and turned vast, blank ed but also nervous, recalls Ana Cristina detailed and accurate. The Pemon and sheets into meticulously drawn “intermedi- Rossi with a laugh. “When I was in Maywak I other indigenous live in the embrace of ary maps” (mapas iniciales in Spanish), and realized I had learned a lot. I was amazed. their natural environment, forming their recorded more than two thousand names But I at the same time I was worried. I was world view and their cosmology through of land-use sites and detailed historical, hoping it all would turn out well. . . . I was

10 AMÉRICAS “We are the ones who know. We know the whole story. Venezuelans can put their own names on places, but we know the story of these places.

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.

hoping that we would meet people’s expecta- tions.” They did, indeed. After two years of mapping workshops, the ethnocartogra- phers produced twelve differ- ent, hand-drawn maps of different portions of Sector 5, the land they and their parents and grandfathers call their birthright. Once they had completed the work- shops and after uncounted hours of digitizing—transferring the hand- drawn maps to digital format—the ethno- cartographers led a workshop in October 2003, which was attended by sixty elders from the entire sector, to revise a draft of the complete sectoral map. Villagers who had never before collaborated on a profes-

AMÉRICAS 11 sional project—in fact, in many cases they a map of their own, and from the fears of Pemon are one of the largest indigenous could not read or write—worked under the indigenous leaders in the Gran Sabana and groups in Venezuela, their population is direction of the young ethnocartographers elsewhere in Latin America that their land only about twenty thousand. But now, to correct the spelling of place-names, to was being lost. For decades, the lands of the Latin American countries have moderated adjust the geographic locations of fishing Pemon and other indigenous people have their policies, allowing for—even actively and hunting grounds and other land-use slowly been occupied by settlers, ravaged by supporting—indigenous peoples’ right to sites, and to add new names to the map. mining and logging companies, and invaded maintain their cultures and religions apart During the project, the ethnocartographers by careless tourists and the companies that from mainstream society. And perhaps and the author also referred to satellite bring them. In the Gran Sabana in the late most importantly, indigenous people images of the Gran Sabana and recorded 1990s, the Pemon fought unsuccessfully to throughout Latin America have earned the almost two thousand geographic coordinates halt the construction of a power line across rights to self- determination of their tradi- their land, even blocking tional homelands. Although in reality, the Pan American Highway these homelands—which take different and facing the bullets and forms in different countries, ranging from tear gas of the National the semiautonomous region of the Kuna in Guard. Daily, young indige- Panama to the rescuardo system in nous people were con- Colombia and the reserve systems in Brazil fronted by the trappings of —routinely are invaded by settlers, miners, modern culture and grew and others, and state enforcement of their impatient with the old boundaries is weak and inconsistent, they ways. Instead of learning nevertheless represent a great improve- old dances, indigenous lan- ment from the state repression of the past. guages, or traditional food In the case of Venezuela, these indige- preparation, young Pemon nous territories, or habitats, have still to and other indigenous peo- become a reality. The notion of an indige- ple learned to dance nous habitat stems from the revised with GPS units—often on week-long expedi- merengue and salsa, speak Spanish or Venezuelan Constitution of 2000, which for tions into the most remote corners of the Portuguese, and eat at McDonalds. These the first time gave indigenous people rights sector—to make the map as geographically cultural influences combined with the assimi- to control large homelands designed to pro- correct as possible. lationist policies of most Latin American gov- tect their culture, as opposed to the small ernments, which had long sought to inte- blocks of land designated for communal n February 2004, two years after the grate indigenous people into urban society farming, as was the case under the previous first mapping workshop, the final map and rid the modern nation of that which was agrarian law. But the government has been was printed at the Instituto Vene- considered backwards and primitive. slow to make this laudable intention a reali- zolanoI de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC) In the Gran Sabana, as elsewhere, these ty. Today, five years later, the legislation in Caracas. At a ceremony in Kumarakapay social changes are a source of great con- and methodologies to demarcate and legal- later that month, the final map—and all cern. Nodrid Delgado, a villager in ize indigenous land claims are still being original maps, photographs, and videos Kumarakapay, says he doesn’t know as developed by a poorly funded state com- recorded by videographer Anibal Hererra— much about the natural and spiritual life of mission. Venezuelan indigenous leaders were turned over to the village chiefs, other the savanna as his father and grandfather, remain vigilant, lest the rights granted by indigenous leaders, and regional and and his children know even less. “I know the Constitution be diluted through politi- national representatives of state agencies. more or less the customs of our grandfa- cal pressure. But despite the delays in Finally, Velásquez’s settlement had earned thers,” he says thoughtfully. “But I didn’t enforcing their constitutional rights to terri- a place on the map. And not as “Vista teach them to my sons, because they start- torial control, Venezuelan indigenous peo- Alegre,” but as Maywak. Finally, the knowl- ed going to school when they were young ple such as the Pemon, the Y’kwana, and edge of elder Pemon had been recorded boys. They didn’t walk with me like I the Hoti are taking advantage of this politi- and published, providing an important cor- walked with my grandparents. I know how cal opening to map the lands where they rective to traditional state-produced maps to hunt deer, I know how to call for the have fished, hunted, and made their spiri- of the region. The map, and the young turkeys, I know how to fish, I know all that. tual home since pre-Columbian days. Pemon who had led the project, became a But now that I have my business I stay in “The recognition of the rights of indige- source of intense pride for elders. Kumarakapay all the time. I don’t leave to nous people in the Constitution was an Says Fidel Calcaño, an elder from the hunt deer, to kill turkeys at four in the important, historical achievement follow- community of Kavanayen: “You young peo- morning. I don’t do these things anymore. ing many years of struggle,” muses ple who are doing this work are more intel- And I don’t bring the boys to do any of this, Juvencio Gómez, indigenous representa- ligent and are studying more than those so they don’t learn.” tive in the Bolivar state assembly, former before you. That makes me happy. I thank Until recently, indigenous people had lit- village chief of Kumarakapay, and former these young people and the professor who tle recourse to withstand such social pres- president of the Indigenous Federation of has come from far away to teach us, and sures or to fight state agencies, companies, the State of Bolivar (FIEB). “But this con- who has made us come together to be one and individuals that had an interest in their secration of the rights of indigenous peo- single heart. Because one person can not land. They were impoverished, wracked by ple doesn’t mean that our aspirations carry such a heavy burden.” illness, and lacked education. And they have come to an end. Now we have to The mapping project grew from the old, were relatively few in numbers and there- fight to make the collective property of persistent dreams of people like Velásquez of fore politically powerless: Although the our lands a reality.”

12 AMÉRICAS This indigenous system of collective tion with Mother Earth has always been survival of his people lies in the hands ownership of the land has translated into a vital,” explains Noeli Pocaterra, president and hearts of his children and his grand- respectful, low-impact relationship with of the Commission for Indigenous People children. It is for them he made this map, the environment. The Pemon and other and vice-president of the National he says. “We are living in a land of leg- indigenous people have forged a bond with Assembly, and through her close relation- ends,” he says pensively, leaning on his their homelands—with the forests, moun- ship with president Hugo Chávez, one of staff. “And now we have fulfilled the tains, and rivers that surround them—that the most powerful politicians in Venezuela. dreams of our ancestors. Now our grand- is at once magical, practical, and sustain- “Our land is the foundation for our culture, children can say, ‘look, this is what our able. They have developed land-use strate- our cosmology, our essence as indigenous grandfathers made.’” gies that minimize the impact on the envi- people. We are nothing without our land.” He pauses, staring dreamily across the ronment: shifting agriculture ideally suited Because of this connection with their land, mottled plains towards the Chini to rain forests with fragile, shallow soils; plant breeding techniques intended to pre- vent the spread of disease and adapt to “This project local conditions; hunting strategies designed to maintain animal populations. shows how In the case of the Pemon, they maintain a proscriptive burning system designed to we can keep savanna grasses from accumulating and savanna fires from raging out of con- trol. Soon after the end of the rainy season, create a the Pemon burn the savanna in small patches, only a few square feet at a time, dialogue turning the savanna into a mosaic of differ- ent shades of yellows and greens. This between means that any fire, started anywhere in the savanna, will always stop by itself once civilizations it reaches a newly burned area. Through this system, fires are not likely to reach but it also any of the forest patches, which provide shelter for game and prevent soil erosion. helps us Such landscape management is increas- ingly appreciated by environmental scien- protect the tists, who are beginning to see indigenous people as partners in the conservation of environment tropical forests. In fact, areas occupied by indigenous people correspond with the where areas of greatest, remaining biodiversity in Latin America, in large part because indige- indigenous people care for the environ- indigenous nous people maintain land-use practices ment as a means to conserve biological that are largely nonintrusive and sustain- diversity—but also to protect their own people live” able. Increasingly, indigenous peoples’ identity. “This is why the mapping project claims to greater self- determination in the Gran Sabana is so important,” she receive powerful support from international says. “It doesn’t simply reflect the techni- environmental organizations such as the cal vision of a European scientist. It is a Nature Conservancy, Conservation communicative process that facilitates the International, and the Wildlife Conservation expression of indigenous views and knowl- Society. No longer is indigenous self-deter- edge. This project shows how we can cre- mination merely an ethical cause feebly ate a dialogue between civilizations—but it supported by nonbinding international also helps us protect the environment treaties: It is becoming a key to biodiversity where indigenous people live.” conservation. In the case in Venezuela, Back in Maywak, Velásquez and his fel- most of the Pemon homeland lies within low map-makers think little about national Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World politics, the international movements of Heritage Site considered one of the most indigenous people, or the broader impact important wilderness areas in the world of their work for biodiversity conservation. because of its wealth of endemic species. They simply know that the land means But still, the village has Greater self-determination for the Pemon everything to them. In fact, kowantok not no running water, and no not only improves their chances for cultural only means “homeland” in their language. electricity. There’s a dirt survival. It also means that Canaima It also means “life.” road to Maywak that’s National Park is more likely to be preserved Velásquez walks with a staff now. His passable with a four-by- for future generations of Venezuelans. vision is weakening, making it impossible four, but only in the dry “To us indigenous people, our connec- to go hunting the way he used to. The season.

AMÉRICAS 13 Mountains to the west. “But I always tell my grandchildren to continue living the legend of the Pemon,” he says. “And I hope that after I die, this land will still be ours.”■

14 AMÉRICAS