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

Indigenous peoples of the Upper Orinoco: the Yanomami

  

About 20 years ago I had the opportunity to tour the upper Orinoco and its affluent-connection with the Amazon basin: Caño Casiquiare. In that place inhabits one of the most numerous nations of the South American tropical jungles. the Yanomami, whose villages I had the opportunity to visit ..

At that time they were threatened by the "evangelization" of the "New Tribes" and other evangelical sects. In recent years, this religious colonization was considerably reduced both in Venezuela and in Brazil. We will see how they are affected by the political changes in those two countries.

  

The world of the Yanomami

  

For the Yanomami, "urihi", the jungle land, is not a mere inert space of economic exploitation (what we call "nature"). It is a living entity, inserted in a complex cosmological dynamic of exchanges between humans and non-humans. As such, it is currently in danger from the blind predation of "whites". In the vision of the leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami: 

"The forest-land can only die if it is destroyed by the whites, then the streams will disappear, the earth will be burned, the trees will dry up and the stones of the mountains will be broken by the heat." The spirits xapiripë, who live in the sierras and they stay playing in the jungle will end up fleeing, their parents, the shamans, will not be able to call them to protect them anymore The earth-jungle will become dry and empty The shamans will not be able to stop the smoke-epidemics and the beings evils that make us sick, in this way, everyone will die. " 

                                    Yanomami village

The Yanomami form a society of fishermen, slash-cultivators and, in addition, gatherers and hunters of the rainforest of the north of the Amazon region whose contact with the national society is, in most of its territory, relatively recent.

Its territory covers, approximately, 192,000 Km2, located on both margins of the border of Brazil with Venezuela, in the Orinoco-Amazon interfluvial region (tributaries of the right bank of the Branco River and left of the Negro River). They constitute a cultural and linguistic group composed of, at least, four adjacent subgroups that speak languages ​​of the same family (Yanomae, Yanõmami, Sanima and Ninam). The total Yanomami population, in Brazil and Venezuela, was estimated at almost 26,000 people in 1999.

In Brazil, the Yanomami population was 12,795 people, spread over 228 communities (census of the Fundação Nacional de Saúde-Fundación Nacional de la Salud - 1999). The Yanomami Indigenous Land, which covers 9,664,975 ha (96,650 km²) of tropical forests, is recognized for its importance in terms of protection of Amazonian biodiversity and was approved by a presidential decree on May 25, 1992.

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