Navigators of the Orinoco rapids
Danilo Antón

Guaremo Ye'kwana, known among the criollos as Francisco Díaz, is an expert "conocedor" of the rapid that descend from the   Huachamacare and Duida torrents to feed the short but mighty Cunucunuma River.
With the skillful help of his wife, Guaremo can guide his bongo in the middle of the night, both upstream and downstream, even in the most prolonged drought when the rocky underbelly looms everywhere. He can lift a heavy outboard over his shoulder to avoid waterfalls. He can pull the bongo in the water up to his neck to beat the strongest currents.
The streams of the Baquero or the Picure have seen them go dozens of times, downstream, towards the Orinoco river or upstream towards Culebra.
Guaremo has covered all the rivers in the Alto Orinoco Basin with his bongo. 
It knows the Brazo Casiquiare from beginning to end, from where the waters of the great river reach the land of the Baniva and the Bare in the zone of San Carlos of Río Negro where they deviate towards the south.
Guaremo and his family are Ye'kwana of pure strain, connoisseurs of the rivers and of the rapid-rains, navigators of the waters in the deep jungles of this South American continent, energetic survivor of the great nation of the caribes, who still today occupy the most remote corners of their traditional domains.
At one time, the Caribs were a powerful ethnic group, their bongos and canoes sailed beyond the Orinoco delta, crossed the sea straits, and settled on several islands of the nearby ocean-sea.
Then the invaders came across the seas, captured thousands of Caribs to work on their sugar plantations of Santo Domingo and Cuba, occupied the lands of the coast and cornered them in the most difficult places.
The Carib-Kariña took refuge in the mountains or migrated towards the east, remaining in the Cuyuní valley and other remote areas of the Guayania.
The Ye'kwana traced the rivers to the south, located in the upper basin of Ventuari, Cucunucuma and Caura.
It is in that area that more than 3,000 Ye'kwana survive in some 25 communities.
It is there that they open their conucos, grow their  manioc, they prepare their cassava and fish in the torrents of steep rivers. They are the descendants of the Maquiritare, the "lords of the rivers".
Every time that the bongo of Guaremo manages to descend or to climb the difficult streams of the Cucunucuma it repeats a ceremony of long date.
In the world of the forest, surpassing all the losses and destructions,the Yekwana have managed to survive. In their ancestral territories some of the oldest roots of the American universe still persist.
Extracted from "Chronicles of Human Adventure", Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Editions