Orinoco
Life in the plain lands of Colombia and Venezuela
Inhabitants from Los Llanos and their customs
To understand how the traditional life of Los Llanos was organized, an organization that partly persists today, one must have a clear idea of the reasons that allowed the formation of this culture. The communication routes were not easy and, where they were, could only be used in the dry season. The population density did not even reach two inhabitants per square km. Everything that was produced there was only marketable in a very small part. No company encouraged the possible exchange of products from the region.
The second half of the 20th century is the period in which the transformation of the extensive cattle ranching of the Argentine Pampa or the North American prairie began. But those initiatives were not implemented in the Venezuelan tropics, where the hostility of the environment prevented the introduction of select, high-yield cattle that came from temperate Europe.
And in Los Llanos, the only thing there was cattle, but rustic cattle, spontaneously acclimatized, cimarron (Wild cattle) in great portion, son of the cattle introduced in the centuries of the colony. Its yield was not great either: the meat could only be consumed regionally, with little benefit and in minimal quantities, or it could be dried, turning it into jerky: only the skins were tradeable and there was a certain demand for them. The meat they could eat was grilled —the churrasco—, some could be reserved for the next day and the rest was abandoned. The preparation of jerky only had a certain importance in the state of Anzoategui, from where it left for the port of Barcelona, because in the Antilles there was always a demand for this product, which was sold at a low price.
If there had been cities in Los Llanos, or in nearby areas, there would also have been a market to go to, periodically, with the cattle. But no such thing happened. For centuries, it could only be traded with the hides, and the leather does not improve with the quality of the cattle. It could be continued with the rustic of the colonial era.
The cattle settled quite well in almost all of America and multiplied without difficulty. In addition to cattle, horses, mules and donkeys were the fundamental basis for land transport and, particularly horses, the irreplaceable tool for managing livestock. The llanero, like "The gaucho" (Argentina) or "The cowboy", are "horse-men".
Most of the owners of the llanero hatos (Herds) were, normally, absentees who lived in the cities along the mountains. In charge of the herd there could be a foreman and some laborers, living in precarious ranches, self-sufficient with what they obtained from the plots or orchards that they were allowed to till. They exercised a light handling of the cattle, more than anything oriented to keep it within the property and defend it from rustling. The Plains were a world without fences, whose only limits or fences were determined by the currents of water, and rustling was a common practice.
When the rainy season arrived, the cattle took refuge, spontaneously, concentrating in those places that, according to their instinct, would not be flooded. And, during that period, there were few tasks that the foreman and laborers could do.
The descent of the waters marked another moment. For a few months the grass was plentiful and the cattle were distributed freely across the plain. It was then, when they began the tasks of going through the herd and counting the cattle, according to their age and according to their categories; because there were marked cattle, the raised and the wild. The marked, already had owners, the raised was the young cattle that had not yet been marked, and the wild cattle that, having escaped control for years, had become feral. It was also the time to do the marking, for which the different ends of the cattle had to be herded to the appropriate places.
It was time to market the fat cattle live or slaughter them for leather and beef jerky. Doing it live meant long journeys, with notable losses of units and kilos of weight, to reach unprofitable markets.
In the harsh dry season, the same as if the flood was strong, a lot of livestock could die, but it was a natural risk that was counted on in advance. With the dry grass, an ancestral practice was started, which is still practiced today: it was set on fire.
It was always thought that it brought more benefits than harm. Today scientists question its advantages. But this is not the place to delve into the controversy. Yes, on the other hand, it must be emphasized that the current extension and physiognomy of the plain grasslands are, also in the opinion of scientists, the result of systematic fires. The fire in the grassland is fast and violent; it does not stay long in one place. The isolated woody plant that it catches in its path burns it, except for those that, like the moriche palm tree, resist fire, because they only offer as fast-burning grass the filamentous mass that covers their trunks. When the fire reaches the edge of the forest, it burns and kills the strip next to the grassland, with which the wooded area has been losing ground over time.
Fire has also changed the composition of the plants that make up the savannah, because not all of them survive its effects. Only the so-called pyrophiles do, which are those whose rhizomes or seeds are not rendered useless by combustion; the rhizomes, because they are buried, and the seeds, because they have sufficient protection. The high temperature that accompanies the fire, in some cases, facilitates the subsequent germination of the seeds of a certain grass.
The morichales must have originally been an arboreal formation and the systematic fires brought it to the current situation and physiognomy.
Returning to the life of the ranches, the work was little, and intense only at certain times of the year. But the life of the peon was very hard. They were people who only owned their horse, or sometimes not even that, and their chinchorro (Hammock), with the right to hang it in some shed or room on the ranch; beans as an almost exclusive diet, sometimes enriched with products from fishing or hunting; perhaps some milk or cheese and, only, if there had been a sale of meat, the meat that would have been left over.
But, with the horse you can not reach all the places in Los Llanos, because fording many of the rivers is impossible. At the same time, the multiple streams of water were still a magnificent means of communication. The pre-colonial native already had a sufficiently efficient boat, so that the passage of time has not superseded it and it continues to be the most widespread vehicle in the Orinoco riverbed: the curiara (Sailing and rowing boat, lighter and longer than the canoe).
It is the classic canoe built by hollowing out the trunk of a tree and sharpening its ends. The only substantial modification that it has undergone is that the stern has been truncated to accommodate an outboard motor; But nothing more. With it you can go much further than with the horse and during the flooding, there is almost no other possibility of transportation.
This primitive Llano, which seems poor to us, was an important piece in the independence struggle. And it was, precisely, because of its cattle wealth and the warlike capacity of the llaneros. José Antonio Páez Herrera, a Venezuelan hero of independence, was the general of the Llaneros and Los Llanos supplied all the armies that supported Bolivar with horses.
Although the genuine Llanos are the ranchers, this does not mean that there was not some agricultural practice, especially in certain parts, such as Los Llanos Altos and in the coastal areas of the Unare river depression, in the hydrographic basin of the central part of Venezuela and that covers part of the states of Anzoategui and Guarico.
The slopes of the Andes, in the States of Barinas and Portuguesa or the Caribbean mountain range, in the States of Cojedes and Guárico, have always had and still have important agricultural activity, in addition to exploiting the forest wealth. In the rest of Los Llanos there was only subsistence agriculture.
Abstract from "El Orinoco y Los Llanos" by Jose Manuel Rubio Recio.
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