I love to know places. With this I start these lines.... And what excites me most about doing it, is the lack of planning. That means, that by a fortuitous and even beautifully surprising share of life, I end up together with people I genuinely love knowing a place that simply leaves you speechless... On this occasion, we arrived at the "Piedra Pintada Shopping Center", in Guacara, Venezuela... Perhaps, if you hurry me, the only place (outside of a museum) that pays an architectural and historical tribute to the aboriginal culture of my country. Sculptures, ethnic groups, history and learning. Exercises, which undoubtedly, are directed towards the soul and the mind; and not so much to the physical...
"We are the sum of our ancestors.... The lives they lived, what they learned; what they bequeathed to us." So goes a well-known indigenous saying from my country. And today, when I visited this place, I kept thinking about it. At school, when we are kids, they teach us some things about our origins. The pre-Columbian era, how we were organized at that time and what ended up happening after the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America... However, to see it for your own eyes, and to set foot in a place that is more centuries old than anything that inhabits the continent is simply incredible.
It blows your mind to see how, without any of our technological tools, the Native Americans (because they not only inhabited the United States of America, but all the countries of the continent; from Canada to Argentina) managed to transcend time and space. They built everything. Boats, rafts, vessels, hunting and gathering tools; they made art, they understood very well the same concepts of aesthetics and beauty, which today we are all obsessed with. In short, "going back" is a comforting experience. A window into the knowledge and heritage of my own culture today.
I confess, I have not been a faithful follower of all the historical processes that precede the richness of this culture. But I can feel the pride and connection with those who, genuinely, are the natives of this region. And the latter is no small thing. We live in turbulent times, where nations filled with migrants from all over tell other migrants that they are migrants; and therefore "illegal".... It would seem absurd, don't you think? But this experience has fascinated me entirely. Too bad that there are certain things that I could not capture or store in photographs... For example, the texture of the objects (there is a limit to the distance to the works).
At the same time, I took the opportunity to pass on the passing of the torch to my daughter. Let her also feel our own essence. How we got to where we got to. That she gets used to the normality of the beauty and power of our land. And in such turbulent times as the ones we are going through in Venezuela, it is something that breaks all expectations; the habit of survival. Art, a lot of history, strength and courage. I believe that in this fantastic shopping mall, which also honors the great reptiles, the dinosaurs, are part of a memory that resists "dying". I believe that this magic, this capacity for human ingenuity, should be remembered and admired.
All photographs in this post, have been taken by me, and are of my authorship.
