LATIN AMERICA VENEZUELA

This week in class All Around This World visits Venezuela, a country that, primarily because of its outspoken not-so-long-ago-past leader, Hugo Chavez, got lots of press in the U.S for many years. Debating the geopolitical implications of Chavez’s continued Bolivarian Revolution and the nation's subsequent, very substantial, troubles under Chavez's successor may be beyond the purview of a kiddie music class, even one that inspires explorations of Venezuela for kids, so All Around This World will mainly focus on Venezuela’s rich, multifaceted culture.

In class we meet — and learn to count from one to ten like — the Yanomami, a group of about 35,000 people who live scatted across 200-250 villages in the Amazon Rainforest near the border between Venezuela and Brazil. They have long been a the focus of anthropologists who study them as an example of a people who live in almost complete isolation from contemporary society. Most Yanomami live in villages of up to 400 people, all of whom live under one long oval roof (a Shabono). They hunt, fish and gather fruit from trees, and when food dries up in an area they move; few shabonos last more than a couple years. The Yanomami are traditionally animists who believe the spirits are present everywhere in nature.