Venezuela, Land Of Cowboys

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31081, 9 June 1966, Page 22

Venezuela, Land Of Cowboys

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter) CARACAS (Venezuela) Few people think of Venezuela as a land of cowboys. Yet one-tenth of its eight million people inhabit almost a third of its land area —and that third is devoted to raising cattle. What is more, it is far from kind to human beings.

The region of the “Llanos,” or plains, stretches in a 200mile wide strip for 600 miles between the Venezuelan Andes and north of the river Orinoco.

For six months of the year, from October to April, the region is a parched, dry wasteland, where dust clouds raised by a moving vehicle can be seen 10 miles away. In the second half of the year, the plains turn into immense lakes covering thousands of acres. Torrential rains flood the dry gulches and riverbeds making travel by land almost impossible.

The "Llanero” or Venezuelan cowboys and their families live through these wet-dry extremes in a centuries-old pattern. Employed by the families who owned large tracts of the plains for hundreds of years, they follow their herds in traditional cowboy style. The cattle graze in the interior plains for one or two seasons before the herdsmen drive them hundreds of miles across the rough terrain to the central western areas around Valencia and Maracay where they are fattened for market. Almost all the cattle are bred for meat, and little attention is paid to dairy-farming in the Llanos. Some of the heards are slaughtered in the plains and the fresh meat flown direct to Cracas. In recent years, the discovery of oil in the northeastern area of the Llanos, bringing easier contact with the outside world, has to some extent changed at least the method of travel used by the Uaneros.

Today, It is a common sight to come across a Llanero riding a bicycle in the middle of nowhere in the plains. He has. discovered that he can take a bicycle where has was previously unable to go even on horseback. He can also put a bicycle on his back and he does not have to feed and tend it. The ranch foreman can cover much larger distances in a jeep with a four-wheel drive during both seasons than he

could ever manage on horseback. Nevertheless, the horse remains a permanent feature C* the plains. The Llanero’s young son is still taught to ride bareback with his big toes in the small loops of a rope slung across the horse for a saddle. The wilderness of Llanos in the dry season is broken only by an occasional river flowing sluggishly towards the Orinoco and stagnant lagoons infested with “babas,” or tiny alligators. Between three and six feet in length, they stay in the lagoons and the rivers buried in the mud, and are a constant danger to cattle and deer.

’’’he cattle converging on the lagoons are also threatened by the “caribe” (piranha), the deadly, flesh-eating fish which swim in the rivers and lagoons of the Llanos. A school of these freshwater man-eaters will devour a cow or a horse in a matter of minutes, leaving only the bare bones. A human being with a slight open wound who treads in piranha-infest-ed waters is an immediate target for this man-eater.

Yet, in spite of the threats of man-eating fish and alligators, and poisonous snakes like the anaconda, the plains are nonetheless a region of immense, stark beauty. The former President and well-known Venezuelan writer, Romulo Gallegos, described the silence of the plains as so great that it can be heard. It is the region of Venezuela which most moves the imagination of hunters and sportsmen.

The rivers and lagoons also abound with electric eels which can paralyse a bull or a horse, catfish of all sizes and colours up to five feet, and turtles.

Animals like the ant-eater, the chigure (a giant rodent), iguana, wild boar, grey fox and deer roam the Llanos.

Among the most colourful of the hundreds of different species of birds in the Llanos is the "chenehenca” a bird with reptilian characteristics, the scarlet ibis, flamingoes, parrots, and ducks of all kinds, from the native royal duck to the smaller migratory ones which fly in from northern latitudes.

The Venezuelan Llanero is the unsung stoic of one of the most rapidly progressing countries in South America. But for many years he will continue to live by his wits in a hostile region which he has fought for centuries.