Caracas Chronicles

A reader,

This bachaqueros article annoyed me. It is kind of harsh to say a policy is ripping away a community and to use a language in which you put the identity of goajiros as low as to the level of gas smugglers. Thats a minority inside a minority and you know it.

If you are posting about this you should also say that Venezuela is perhaps the only country in the world where anyone can block a road to protest in favor of such an illegal activity, and there is someone in a blog tying this to a cultural thing (you).

This is something we all should as group think of.

What do we do? Keep the status quo and see the country ripped? Why do zulia and tachira have a over 20% more consumption per capita than the rest of the country?

As a half zuliano I see your post insulting as for the goajiro identity and the post itself useless in a debate, we all know stopping bachaqueros is a good thing.

There are two ways of getting this fixed, we put up the gas prices in venezuela, or we try to do everything to decrease the amount of USD that is the subsidy we ALL pay. The government is putting down all the bachaqueros and now you use a language almost saying its a goajiro thing…

Sometimes I think we should put a law in which on once a week and only for one day gas prices are leveled to the international standard so we all know how blessed we are to have such a thing.

I probably should have spoken more carefully. Listen, I’m no expert in Wayu’u identity, but from what I understand Goajiros have retained their identity through a confrontational/dismissive stance towards outsiders for a long long time, dating back to the early 18th century (if Wikipedia can be believed.)

A kind of blithe dismissal of both the Colombian and Venezuelan states is one aspect of that. But when the Venezuelan state creates an incentive structure that builds massive economic incentives for Goajiros to smuggle gas, then the way dismissiveness of the state is expressed is through this: a series of protests in defense of the right to smuggle! That’s totally crazy.