STATEMENT

2,500 years ago from the Orinoco river basin in Venezuela a culture identified as the Saladoids, of Arawak linguistic roots, began a population movement throughout the Antillean arc that culminated in the Greater Antilles with the gestation of the most sophisticated Amerindian culture in the Caribbean, the beautiful Taino culture.

It is estimated that at the time of first cultural contact one million Arawak lived the Caribbean; These were the people who greeted Columbus on his first voyage, sadly for in next 50 years this race was decimated and its culture forgotten.

The truth is that our Pre-Columbian period is one of the richest, most beautiful and unjustly ignored stages of our history, with our project we hope to contribute to remedy this forgetfulness and help perpetuate this magnificent cultural heritage in the memory and imagination of new generations.

So for years we have been investigating the Pre-Columbian navigation routes of our Amerindians, rebuilding in the traditional way their wooden Canoes (Curiaras) and paddling them to faithfully recreate these routes as an active way of telling their story and trying to imbed in others the same pride we feel for our roots and identity.

PREVIOUS OBJECTIVES

The initial and rather casual objective of my organization Reto Caribe had been to paddle my kayak following the footsteps of our ancestors, the Caribs. So for years, I had dedicated myself to explore the 5,000 kilometers of the coast from the Orinoco River in Venezuela to Panama City in the Pacific Ocean.

And I had frequently heard that a group of Amerindians who lived in the central coast of Venezuela, today called the Valencioids, had reached the archipelago of Los Roques, a group of oceanic islands some 140 kilometers from the Venezuelan mainland. I began to investigate and realized that saying they had arrived was imprecise, the reality is that they had been making that open ocean crossing for 500 years, starting about 1,000 years before the present.

They travelled to collect “Botutos” (Aliger gigas), a large sea conch with which they fed their people and whose shell they used to make precious pieces of body ornaments. This specialized society had an extensive commercial network for its products that spanned from the Antilles to the Andes and became a very prosperous society.

In "Dos Mosquises", the sacred and ceremonial island of the Valencioids in Los Roques, they left behind Figurines, anthropomorphic ceramic pieces, usually female, that they brought from the coast and used for their expiatory and reconciliatory rites with the spirits of the “Botutos” whose life they sacrificed for the benefit of their people. These Figurines, 400 recovered to date in the more than 60 excavations carried out by archaeologists María Magdalena and Andrzej Antczak, highest authorities on the subject and authors of the book: "The Idols of the Promised Islands", tell us the story of this magnificent people.

I, like most of the people I knew, had no knowledge of the existence of this society or their culture that was lost in time. I could not believe what the Antczak -who from then on would become the tutors for our next project "Challenge to the Promised Islands"- where telling me; But above all, I could not believe that this story was not known.

This is how the concern to transmit this knowledge arises and I passionately give myself up to tell this story, and what better way could there be to tell it than by recreating the navigations of our Valencioids to Los Roques, manufacturing an indigenous wooden Canoe (Curiaras) south of the Orinoco River where there are still a few "Moyotus", older indigenous experts in the traditional manufacture of them and then of course, paddling them in the open sea to Los Roques.

METHODOLOGY

A thousand years ago the sandy coral islands of the Los Roques archipelago vibrated in action, resonated with the voices of people and the sounds of flutes, maracas and whistles. The afternoon breeze lifted the smells from the food and mixed them with the smoke of the wood, tobacco and incense.

These people were the inhabitants of the Venezuelan mainland who lived permanently on the central coast and in the Lake Valencia basin.

What led these intrepid and daring mariners to undertake the extraordinary feat of sailing 135 kilometers of open sea to these islands paddling their simple canoes, made of a wooden log, on a journey of no less than 40 hours?  

But above all, how did they do it...?   María Magdalena and Andrzej Antczak.

Although it is evident that the settlement of the Caribbean was made by sea, there are no physical vestiges of these navigations, to recreate these faithfully in present time is like building a bridge the past to discover how they did them, helping to understand many of the possible variables that they managed to make them feasible in terms of routes, currents, physical effort, resistance, marine skills, efficiency of the Canoes, etc.

Experimental archaeology tries to understand what life was like in the societies of the past by reconstructing all kinds of artifacts made by man. Through the recreation of use it is allowed to discard ideas or modify theories that can be clarified by their reproduction through experimentation.

Some of these practices require physical risk of the experimenter, such as the recreation of large marine expeditions. This discipline, has become a magnificent didactic method to present to the public the life of the societies of the past.

With the support and tutelage of a large body of archaeologists, I set out to design Experimental Archaeology Expeditions that would maintain the necessary scientific rigor so that our results would be valuable to science.

And at the same time we started with the Construction of their artifacts: Canoes (Curiaras) made out of a single tree trunk and wooden paddles.

COMPLETED OBJECTIVE - THE CHALLENGE TO THE PROMISED ISLANDS 2016

During the following two years I would dedicate myself to selecting and training a crew, managing the manufacture of Canoes and learning to navigate them; We understood at the time that although the expedition itself presented its demands, the preparation of it would also require a lot of work to overcome the infinity of difficulties that would arise, such as finding out that there were very few "Moyotus" left that new how to build Canoes, the very first attempts at it were lost and an endless number of inconveniences followed such as permits or obtaining financial support for the project with the problems of a country with a severe economic and political crisis, however ...

In September 2016, after countless trainings day and night, we paddled our Canoes (Curiaras) "La Ye'kwana" up the coast for four days to cover the 150 kilometers we needed to position ourselves; And then in October 2016, after seeing the second sunrise aboard "La Ye'kwana” and spending 29 hours paddling 140 kilometers of open sea without stopping, for the first time in 500 years, we managed to pose once again a traditional wooden Curiara on the white sands of “Dos Mosquises”, the sacred and ceremonial island of the Valencioids in “Los Roques”.

Thus, we were able to validate that navigations could be made to cover the greater distances that exist between the longest crossings of the Caribbean Islands, such as from Tobago to Granada in the Lesser Antilles Windward Islands, and from Anguilla to Virgin Gorda in the Lesser Antilles Leeward Islands.

COMPLETED OBJECTIVE - THE WAIKERÍ CHALLENGE 2017

While I was still amazed with the marine achievements of the Valencioids (Caribs), I discovered the Saladoids (Arawak); I learned about their systematic settlement of the entire Caribbean Sea basin and quickly realized the magnitude of their seafaring skills and achievements, that made the Valencioids accomplishments look like small children’s games.

In the area that today occupies the town of “Barrancas del Orinoco”, the first known human settlement that occurred in the current territory of Venezuela about 7,000 years ago. The Saladoids developed a beautiful ceramic culture that we later find throughout the Caribbean basin and with which our archaeologists reconstruct the past and tell us the fantastic history of its population movement.

And I begin working on a plan for a new expedition that covers a respectable distance of nautical miles in continuous days of navigation to attest to the possibility of these great migrations.

In 2017, but about 2500 years later, we set paddling “La Ye’kwana” from the same place as our Saladoids did in "Barrancas del Orinoco", following their route to the Atlantic and the Caribbean, arriving at the Island of “Margarita” after 21 days and 670 kilometers of expedition, now validating that long distance travelling in Canoes (Curiaras) was also possible.

PRESENT OBJECTIVE - THE ARAWAK CHALLENGE 2024

We could not leave this story unfinished and this is how the Arawak Challenge 2024-26 was born, the logical continuation of our project with which we will follow the rest of the Saladoids settlement route throughout the Antillean Arch from Trinidad and Tobago where we arrived in 2017, to “Quisqueya”, today Republic Dominican and home to what was the most advanced culture that existed in the Caribbean, the Taino.

This goal is extremely demanding and perhaps we are pushing the limits but my past experience confirms that the human potential is unlimited and there is also the precedent that these navigations occurred routinely throughout the Caribbean until 500 years ago.

As of today, we have more than 1,000 kilometers paddled in Canoes (Curiaras) in previous expeditions and several crew members have more than 1,500 kilometers under their belt adding the previous hours of training. 15% of these in night conditions.

We have previously paddled distances equal to the greatest we will find in the Caribbean and we have spent up to 20 continuous days in the Canoes (Curiaras) covering 700 kilometers in a single of expedition. Most of us many more days than that on expeditions of another nature.

We continue to be firm believers that honoring our past strengthens our identity, so I cannot fail to mention the other objective and reason for this project from the beginning, such as contributing to acknowledged the enormous historical and cultural heritage that our Caribbean people have, which is why we take great care to document all the expeditions happenings for the future production of educational and documentary material.

LOGISTICS- THE ARAWAK CHALLENGE 2024

The logistics of the expedition is a huge multi-piece puzzle that will traverse at least 12 independent nations, make stops on at least 36 Islands, touching approximately 65 ports along some 2,000 kilometers of travel at an average speed of 5 km/hr for approximately 400 hours of navigation; We will paddle 140 kilometer routes of up to 30 hours without stopping day and night. Our Canoe (Curiara) “Atabeya” will be crewed by 17 paddlers and probably at least 3 more persons will travel with the expedition for 100 days doing image/data registry and ground support duties.

June 2024 is an ideal date weather-wise to begin the Arawak Challenge because it gives us time to adequately complete the details of the project which are many, if we are fortunate enough to have your support and because this feat is not only in the paddling expedition on the water but in the planning to make it possible.

BENEFITS

The study of the past is essential to locate people in time; we need to know where we come from, to know where we are going. Knowing history is essential to understand the condition of the human being, this allows him to build, advance and if necessary, change.

The greatest benefit of our project is perhaps intangible but I consider it to be an enormous cultural heritage legacy.

Through our various conferences as well as when we have taken schools groups out to paddle in our Canoe (Curiara) "La Ye'kwana", experience has shown me that every time I expose our projects, using our adventures as a tool to capture the initial interest in the enormous value of our Pre-Columbian past, listeners are totally surprised by discovering that our roots, unlike what we learned in schools, go back millennia before the time of “First contact” of the worlds and that our ancestors had a past of which we can be very proud.

I believe that the fusion of adventure with education is a magical one and helps awaken the imagination of younger generations beginning to establish links with the values of their past and connect them with their present as part of the context that gives meaning to their own lives.

At the most tangible level, we have transmitted the message through talks in schools, companies and auditoriums.

And with our documentaries we have reached thousands of people, participating in more than 50 festivals in 14 countries; The documentary “Amerindian Passion”, a summary of the project, was honored with a Special Mention award at the “ArqueoFilm 2018” Festival of archaeological cinema in Florence, Italy.

The advances of the project were also presented at the “27th Congress of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology” by Magdalena and Andrzej Antczak, Department of Caribbean Archaeology, University of Leiden.

To date I maintain frequent email contact with several of the highest scientific authorities of the Pre-Columbian Caribbean in different universities.

One of our expedition Canoes (Curiaras), “La Wajibaka” was donated by us and together with the infographics of our project it occupies an entire corridor of the very modest but excellent and schools favorite Margarita Marine Museum.

As part of the Arawak Challenge 2024-26 project, we will continue to promote by any means possible ways to help establish links with the values of our past and connect them with our present, if only to enjoy the knowledge and intellectual pleasure that comes from discovering who we are.