By Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert – Oct 30, 2026For generations, the Warao people have lived along the waterways of the Orinoco Delta in eastern Venezuela. However, migration to urban areas, particularly Tucupita, the capital of Delta Amacuro state, has increased in recent decades. The Janokosebe community on the outskirts of Tucupita was established in the mid-2000s for Warao families displaced from the delta. Janokosebe is part of the Mariscal Antonio José de Sucre Commune, which brings together 21 communal councils made up of both Warao and hotarao (non-Indigenous) people. It is located between the river and the main road into town.The first installment of this series on Janokosebe in the delta looked at how its residents have worked to maintain elements of Warao culture and collective life in the city, including the use of the Warao language. This second installment looks at how families sustain themselves through handicrafts, alongside small-scale cultivation and fishing; how they endured the hunger brought by the US blockade; and what they expect from the Bolivarian Revolution and its proposal to build socialist communes.This column is part of the Communal Resistance series.Production, economy, and the blockadeLack of land and few fishing tools have made handicrafts into the main source of livelihood for most of Janokosebe’s residents. In the worst years of the blockade, hunger led to wage work in the city, along with barter and sharing what little there was.Production and the local economyJesús González: Here in Janokosebe, we don’t have enough land to cultivate on a large scale. I grow some things in our small plot, but it’s not enough for my family.Yalitza González: We are in an urban setting, so land is scarce. Some families have plots on the other side of the river. There they grow crops and sell what they produce to buy what they need. Others keep small conucos [subsistence plots] on this side, where they grow plantains and corn. It’s small-scale production, but it helps.During the worst years of the blockade, and during the COVID pandemic, I learned to plant yuca and medicinal plants. My story is the story of many: those years were very hard, and nobody could say that we miss them, but they also brought back ancestral knowledge and practices that had almost been lost.Nowadays, much of our economy rests on handicrafts: we make hats, bags, hammocks, baskets, and more. Most are woven from bora [aquatic plant fiber], but our elders made nearly everything from moriche palm fiber. Moriche does not grow here, so we have to purchase it, and we use it almost exclusively to make hammocks.Moriche is known as the “tree of life” because it gives so much: its fiber for weaving; the worms that live in its trunk for food; and its fruit for making carato [a traditional fermented drink]. It grows deeper in the caños, far from the city.Domitilo Silva: When I lived in the caños, we ate yuruma [a food made from moriche starch], worms from the moriche palm, and fish. The palm fed us, and we used its fibers to make hammocks, baskets, and many other things.Today, people here support themselves mostly by selling handicrafts, although some also work in public administration or for businesses run by hotarao. Warao crafts are known for their fine workmanship and their beauty, and they are sold across the country and abroad. Janokosebe hats are especially prized: people come from all over Venezuela to buy them.Fishing is hard here, both because we lack the equipment and because the river is wider here. We have no nets and few hooks. We can catch fish in baskets in the nearby waterways, mostly morocoto [a Delta fish] and bagre [catfish], but it isn’t easy. We stand in the water, waiting for fish to come through the current.The blockade: hunger, barter, and survivalYalitza González: During the worst years, we all went through a very difficult time. We ate casabe [Indigenous flatbread] or yuca with sardines every day… if we were lucky! I remember my little sister crying because she was so hungry. Sometimes we got lentils, which we ate with casabe. That was how we got by. When there were many of us at home, we shared what little there was. We all got skinny.Sometimes someone went fishing, and we traded what we had for the fish. If you had bread, fruit, or yuca, you could barter it. Or someone would come wanting a hat, and we would exchange it for some food. People also planted plantains or corn in their small conucos, and that helped quite a bit. I remember when a friend came to offer me a few plantains: that was a true act of generosity.Domitilo Silva: The food shortages hit us very hard. Some Warao decided to leave for other countries, mostly Brazil. Those of us who stayed had to find ways to survive. I remember seeing a woman in the community collecting yuca peels to fry them. We tried all kinds of things to get by. We even ate roasted or fried mangoes.We also looked for odd jobs. Sometimes the pay was food instead of money. We would work someone else’s fields, caring for their plantains, yuca, or pumpkins. Sometimes we went to other municipalities, even to Monagas [bordering state], to look for work. We left at four or five in the morning and reached Monagas around ten, and we got back home long past dark, sometimes carrying a sack of yuca as payment.Jesús González: When the fuel ran out, people had to paddle instead of using their outboard motors. It’s still hard to get gas. Sometimes people spend four or five days on their curiara to reach a destination that had once taken a single day when gas was easily available. This means carrying food for the journey and stopping along the way to sleep.Yalitza González: For months at a time, we couldn’t buy cooking gas. Fortunately, we could get firewood, so we cooked over open fires.The Janokosebe Communal Council was already active during the blockade, but with no resources coming in, the communal activity dwindled. Now, in the past few years, we have seen a reactivation of the communal council, but the institutional support is still thin.Now, one thing that was very important for us was the CLAP [Local Supply and Production Committees] food program. I’m sure it kept many children alive: it was the only way we could get corn flour for arepas and milk.Domitilo Silva: The young people going to high school had no school supplies back then. People’s wages weren’t enough to buy the most basic staples. It’s still hard to get by, but things are better now.During those years, some NGOs came to Indigenous communities to distribute supplies and schoolbooks. They also took our information down, registered our families, and recorded the number of children studying.Arny Torres: The blockade also hurt our handicraft sales. People stopped coming to the Delta, and we had fewer chances to sell what we made.But it wasn’t all bad: we helped one another, like brothers and sisters. As hard as those years were, they brought us closer instead of driving us apart. We should not unlearn what we learned then.Authority, recognition, and the communeResidents of Janokosebe turn to traditional authorities and to the communal council assembly to solve problems. They value the recognition the Revolution brought to Indigenous peoples, yet still await projects that meet their needs, and some now propose a commune of their own.Indigenous authority and communal democracyDomitilo Silva: When a Warao community has a problem, people gather and call the aidamo, our community leader. Everyone comes together to discuss the problem and find a solution. The aidamo gives counsel so that there is harmony and nobody harms the community. That is how it’s done in the caños, and it’s the same here. We are still doing it.We also meet in communal council assemblies, where we elect spokespeople and form committees. We debate and reach agreements together.Jesús González: The cacique [chief] is the authority in the community, something like a judge, and together we resolve the problems that arise—in other words, the aidamo and the cacique must work together. When there is a problem, the whole community gathers to hear what happened and we decide how to settle it. In our tradition, we make agreements with our voice, not in writing; once an agreement is reached, everyone knows of it, because the whole community was there to hear it.‘Many Houses’: A Warao Community Between the Delta and the City (Part I)Participation and its limitsJesús González: We have always supported the commune as a project, and we have always participated in what is now our commune, the Mariscal Antonio José de Sucre Commune. But the commune is too large, and projects end up benefiting the hotarao communal councils over the Warao communal councils. That’s why we argue that the commune should be split: the urban, mostly hotarao [non-Warao] communal councils should be one commune, with their own needs and processes, and then there should be another one formed by the Warao communal councils in the outskirts of Tucupita. This would make a lot more sense.Domitilo Silva: Here in Janokosebe, we have taken part in the consultations, but we haven’t yet received any benefits. In the last consultation, a project was approved to buy the handicrafts our mothers and grandmothers make and sell them across the country and abroad, but we are still waiting for the resources to arrive.But more importantly, we have problems with water and sewage. If we are able to control the resources more directly and not mediated by more than twenty communal councils, I’m sure we will be able to effectively solve the problems of our community.Chávez, Indigenous recognition, and the communeDomitilo Silva: Chávez did well for Indigenous people, and that’s why we love him. Before the Bolivarian Revolution, we did not have the political participation that we have now. Today we take part in national politics, we are heard, we have representation.Chávez also left us a Constitution that recognizes our rights as Indigenous people. He understood that there was a historical debt to us, and we are grateful he acknowledged it. He was the first to do so. We are still here, still with the Revolution, struggling, with many contradictions, but still standing.Ángel Silva: We have taken part in the consultations, and participation has grown with them. But now we have a proposal: that we have our own Indigenous commune [made up of the Warao communal councils within the existing commune]. Why? So that we can receive more attention and support and solve the problems that affect our community. I hope our government listens to us and makes it possible. (MR Online)