The Rich and the Poor

Venezuelan colors are divided on several lines. But indeed there are two major lines that seem pervasive, covering the general population and owing to discussion.  As you have gathered from reading or visiting the country, its population is highly mixed between the sons of this land, Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese and Africans.

With this mixture you are bound to encounter people like the colors of the rainbow, diverse and rich. From the very light skin, European looking to very dark skinned as if picked from the middle of the Nigerian soil. Everyone lays somewhere on this long color line.

But within this long line, a crossroad is formed when another line crosses through it, dividing the population on two sides, placing them into two different parts.

I only realized it when I decided to walk around the Eastern part of Barquisimeto on a Saturday evening, trying to absorb more of my surrounding. As I walked I met people on the road doing the same thing as I.

And then it hit me after I had covered approximately three quarters of the journey. There is a funny smell to the color line. At the end of the day, one is confident to make the final conclusion based on the majority data that the Eastern part of the city lays the fabric with the more lighter-skinned color.

This was further supported by another adventure I took the following day. A friend invited me for a tour to the Western part of the city which is home to the barrios and ranchos where the economically weaker part of the population resides.

It became clear that this part is home to the darker side of the color line. Once in a while you will encounter the lighter ones. But at the end of the day, this is indeed the darker part. Then I started the journey through the exploration of the color lines of the country.

The Eastern part of the city which is home to the richer population owning big businesses and driving expensive cars from the United States are mostly the advantaged part of the population, the descendants of the economically powerful colonial structure weaved by the Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese.

They have inherited not only the famous Italian restaurants and boutiques but also the rich bakery business which flourishes in the country where bread is a key component of the meal. They are also the owners of the big farms feeding the population with the products from Mother Nature.

They are the tycoons with the access to capital, setting up shops in malls and importing goods from nearby countries for profit making. This has afforded them the capacity to flourish in the 21^st Century even in the presence of a turbulent Venezuelan economy with high levels of inflation and unemployment, and soaring insecurity levels in the wake of political disorder.

But on the other side of the city where the darker population calls home is a different story. These are the descendants of the power that built the agricultural sector of this nation under the Spaniards’ settlement during the colonial era.

They came in ships like cattle and they ploughed the land while dancing tambores. After the sun had already settled and the land furiously tilled to the corners and slavery ended, they had to integrate into their new land. And you see them around; either in their beautiful charcoal skin or the one with is mixed with milk.

But today they stand as the weaker part of this complicated fabric. They are the supporters of the socialism of the 21^st Century and the man who has for the first time in centuries paid attention to their wounds and the pain inflicted through generations.

There is no any strong hatred on the land. Everyone greets everyone and everyone is everyone’s friend. No one is killing anyone because of color, in fact many, even those who are of the light color will be more than ready to boost about the intermixture of their ancestry and that of the nation at large.

But as the sun shelters its final dying rays, I understand something. It is not easy to snatch oneself from the claws that brought you up. One can try or two, but not everyone. When you were colonized you will always be. Changing that doesn’t have any education that is currently offering Bachelor degrees or admitting Master programs.