Word: guajiro
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VENEZUELA. A series of attempted military coups and civil disturbances has afflicted the country; last week 123 died in a Maracaibo prison riot pitting Guajiro Indians against other prisoners. Nine prisoners and a guard died in a Caracas prison riot...
...government built tent camps at army bases all over town, filled Havana University with cots, bedded down 122 lucky guajiros in the presidential palace's Hall of Mirrors. Merely by flashing their identification cards, issued before they left home, the guajiros got free food, shirts, laundry, bus rides and movie tickets. "Our Cuban revolution is very good," grinned Calalu Nistal, 54, as he checked into the luxurious Comodoro Hotel. "I never thought I would be doing this," said another guajiro as he accepted a free Cuba Libre at the Havana Riviera...
Death Penalty. As in any army-run country, there is fear. The big ranches of central, cattle-raising Camagüey province have been seized by the army, pending expropriation by the Agrarian Reform Institute. At a seized ranch, a guajiro showed up one morning last week and told the landowner that he was joining the soldiers as "administrator" of the land. "I'll be moving my family into the main house," he added...
Crime & Settlement. Next to murder, the worst crime a Guajiro Indian can commit is to call another Indian by his true name in Guajiro language; to get around this difficulty, all Indians have names in Spanish as well as in their own tongue. But any crime, even murder, can be squared by payment of goats, the accepted currency of the Guajiros...
When an Indian from one of the 30 Guajiro tribes (each named for an animal) kills an Indian from another, the blood money, in goats or cattle, may run to high figures. The offended tribe can demand payment for 1) the original bloodshed, 2) the victim's agony before death, 3) the victim's actual death and 4) the re-establishment of friendly relations. When the fine gets so high that the compensation machinery breaks down, tribal war follows. That was what happened two years ago when Jose Velasquez, one of the Epieyus (Blackbird) chiefs, got liquored...