Caracas, Guaire River

The chroniclers as Oviedo y Baños said about river Guaire was a "beautiful river" that divided the valley "from west to east, crosses it with its currents, and fecundates with its waters". Alexander Von Humboldt referred to "smiling valley of the Guaire" Aquiles Nazoa, venezuelan writer said: "On the banks of Guaire emerged the first crops, the first dairies, the first fruits of transplant, the first sugar mills, the first tanneries, the first tiles, the first woods to build and the first of the royal roads ".

Miguel Otero Silva calls: "doughy rivulet", "ghastly ghost", "nauseating lymph" and "marsh of swamp and excrement" in his novel Cuando quiero llorar no lloro. The governments, on the other hand, pack it, turn it into a big sewer, forget it, rescue it halfway and persist in the promise we all want to be real in a not so distant future.

Sordid histories of Guaire could be told, primitive time (the tarmas, the mariches, the arbacos) bathed in it, quenched their thirst, watered their crops with it, gave it its indigenous name. Later, the inhabitants of Caracas walked along its banks, washed clothes on it, fell in love with girls, and also, in the vicinity sheltered by dense vegetation, under the shade of mangoes, chaguaramos and jabillos, exercised in the twists of love and sex.

All this and more has been said and done around our Guaire. In its adjacencies, the buildings, the stench swirls among chipped windows of ranches, the river continues to flow.

River Guaire, 2018