What is unique about the region the Llanos?
T.M: The Llanos is a tremendously large area in the southern part of the country that is flat – llano. That’s where the name comes from, and it extends into southern Colombia as well. It’s a shared culture that goes across the borders. It’s a kind of a cowboy culture. But it’s a little different from the dry Southwest in the United States because it floods every spring. I’ve seen the cowboys out there with the water all the way up to the bottom of the horse as they try to herd cattle to a dry area, where they can get their feed. This zone was promoted as the supposed cultural touchstone for the national identity of Venezuela throughout the 20th century. In 1935, Juan Vicente Gomez promoted the Llanos, and also with it, this idea of Mestizaje, or the Venezuelan mestizo. I’m used to thinking of mestizo being a mixture of European and indigenous blood, and then if you have mixture of European and African blood it’s mulatto. But in Venezuela, they use mestizo to mean any kind of mixture, a
