Anthropology at La Tortuga Foundation

Within the framework of the alliances that La Tortuga Foundation seeks to establish with the indigenous peoples of the Delta Amacuro and in its desire to achieve a better interaction with the environment and better use of resources, in harmony with the indigenous communities, La Tortuga Foundation received at its headquarters the anthropologist Ronny Velásquez.

Within the framework of the alliances that La Tortuga Foundation seeks to establish with the indigenous peoples of the Delta Amacuro and in its desire to achieve a better interaction with the environment and a better use of resources, in harmony with the indigenous communities, La Tortuga Foundation received at its headquarters the anthropologist Ronny Velásquez.

The purpose of Dr. Velásquez’s visit was to advise and guide the approach for the establishment of alliances between Fundación La Tortuga and the Warao people in the areas of crafts and environmentalism, as well as in the possibilities of ecotourism, or valuation tourism, an activity in which the Waraos would be the operators.

During the past March 4 to 6, the members of the Foundation received from Dr. Velasquez a wealth of knowledge in the areas of ethnography, customs, myths, legends, ritualization, and ethnomusicology of the Warao people, an indigenous community still existing in the Orinoco Delta, whose origin dates back more than 3,500 years.

Ronny Velásquez is an Anthropologist from the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) with a postgraduate degree in History of the Americas from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB) and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the UCV. He is a professor and researcher at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and former Head of the Department of Cultural Promotion at the School of Arts of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the UCV. He is President of the International Foundation of Ethnomusicology and Folklore, FINIDEF.  As a result of his field research in the jungles of America on the aboriginal theme, he has written several books and develops lines of research among indigenous peoples and Afro-American descent of Venezuela and Latin America.

The knowledge imparted by Dr. Ronny Velasquez aims to leverage the activities that our organization has been carrying out in certain populations of the geography of the state of Delta Amacuro, where indigenous communities are pleased with many modern and urban elements that facilitate and contribute to their "quality of life", but are unaware that the misuse and lack of awareness can, in the long term, make that "quality of life" considerably damage the environment in which they live. By explaining the concepts of reducing, reusing, and recycling the different waste materials such as bottles, cans, and plastic bags that they can currently find in their daily lives, we seek to create awareness in the inhabitants of these ancestral lands located in the canals of the Orinoco Delta. We are also developing alliances to improve the quality of life of these communities.