A new dawn for the Paria Peninsula.

• Author: Malatesta, Parisina
• Position: Venezuela

A MULTIFACETED PLAN IS SEEKING TO REVITALIZE THIS ONCE PROSPEROUS PART OF NORTHEASTERN VENEZUELA

The Paria Peninsula, at the northeastern end of Venezuela, was the first bit of the American continental mass unveiled to European eyes. In 1498, on his third voyage, Christopher Columbus and his crew were dazzled by the sight of an immense expanse of shimmering greens and mountains cutting into the seascape. Finding himself among people "with graceful gestures and beautiful bodies," Columbus concluded that "great signs are these of Earthly Paradise." To the explorer, this was Tierra de Gracia, and he changed the name only later when he mistakenly thought he heard the native people say paria; the actual word was paira, meaning bow and the wood with which bows were made.

Paria's natural wonders drew Columbus on to the straits of the Dragon's Mouths, which separate the peninsula from the island he named Trinidad. There he encountered the strange phenomenon of waters flowing in all directions, which proved a prelude to his discovery of the Orinoco River and the tremendous thrust of its outflow against the sea. He wrote in his ship's log: "The farther we went, the fresher and better-tasting the sea water became . . . with a loud roaring, which was the fresh water fighting the salt."

Today, after a half-century of quiet decline, Columbus's Tierra de Gracia is the focus of an innovative experiment in sustainable development--the Paria Project. Under way since 1989, the project is seeking to implement the full array of the peninsula's natural resources to secure a place in the twenty-first century for Paria, and its inhabitants.

The pristine beauty that Columbus discovered in Paria remained almost untouched because of its inaccessibility, closed off as it was to the south by the fantastic barriers of the Orinoco delta and to the north by the Caribbean Sea. However, the peninsula conjured up visions of fabulous wealth, recounted by Columbus himself in his reports of natives of Paria and Trinidad covered with gold and pearls. This led to bloody persecutions of the indigenous people, who were enslaved to work in the oyster beds of the neighboring island of Cubagua.

As part of the Coast and Province of the Pearls, Paria was to witness furious contests among pearl merchants, indigenous people, and missionaries. These were concentrated at Cumana, now the capital of the state of Sucre, to which the Paria Peninsula belongs. At that time Cumana was the most important settlement of the Karive, or Caribe, people on the coast of Venezuela; it was where the pearls were brought from Cubagua, which was capable of producing nine hundred pounds of pearls a year (see Americas, Vol. 43, no. 3, 1991).

The oyster beds, however, were depleted quickly. After a prolonged period of obscurity, Paria experienced a second era of prosperity, from cacao (Theobroma cacao), the "food of the gods." Cacao seemed to offer abundance: The tree can grow to a height of forty feet and live for over a hundred years. The seeds of this fruit and the technique for preparing chocolate from it were taken to Spain around 1520. This time the wealth, which took longer to develop, came from the huge plantations of Carupano, the largest nonindigenous settlement, founded by the bishop of Puerto Rico in 1647.

Although a variety of cacao (calabacillo) had grown wild in...