In the fields of El Tigre and San Tomé, in the heart of Anzoátegui's oil-producing region, grows a tree that is not native to that land. It is the pandelaño, the same fruit that, since 2005, has been the emblem of the Arismendi municipality on Margarita Island due to the abundance with which it once covered its landscape. The tree traveled with the community that left the island following the trail of crude oil after the opening of the well drilled by the Gulf Oil Company in 1933.
That exodus was so large that some today know El Tigre as the mainland Margarita, a city whose initial fabric was shaped by the pioneers of the so-called Margarita colony, who had first migrated to Zulia during the heyday of Lake Maracaibo and later settled along the Anzoátegui-Monagas axis. Those who left decided to found a new island in the middle of that plateau, leaving the Virgin of the Valley in front of the main church and the galerón (a traditional Venezuelan folk song) playing at festivals with the same rhythm as in the Caribbean. The migrant and the new land mutually constitute each other, nourishing one another until they became inseparable.
The impulse to sow and sing in order to nourish and be nourished by the land stems from a long-standing historical practice, tested on the very same island soil centuries ago. Long before oil, the waters of Cubagua welcomed enslaved African populations to sustain the pearl harvesting that had already decimated the Guaiquerí divers. The island was thus transformed into a space marked by colonial exploitation and the dispossession of its local workforce.
By 1814, the current had transformed into a tide of survival. More than twenty thousand people left Caracas with Bolívar, heading east toward the territory governed by Santiago Mariño, driven by the advance of Boves' royalist troops. This Emigration to the East, which passed through Guarenas, Guatire, and the harsh terrain of the Capaya mountains, claimed the lives of some twelve thousand people from hunger, snakebites, fevers, and the llanero bands that pursued the weary migrants for weeks. Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi herself lost four relatives on that march and arrived in Barcelona at the end of July with only her mother and younger brother. Of every two people who left the capital, one did not reach their destination. Those who survived walked toward the island because it was the only corner of the country that the war had not yet reached.
The historical need to protect life explains why the oil boom transformed the relationship with the land. In 1936, Venezuela was a predominantly rural country, but hydrocarbon exploitation forced farmers and fishermen to abandon farming and become the workforce in the oil industry. On Margarita Island, this process decimated local agriculture.
However, the community's collective memory found continuity in 1957, when the military dictatorship evicted the coastal population of Turiamo, in Aragua state, to build a naval base. The displaced families arrived in San Juan de Margarita, carrying with them the knowledge of their origins, and planted in the island soil the drum that today defines its celebrations. The drum of Turiamo in San Juan and the pandelaño of Margarita in El Tigre demonstrate that dispossession cannot erase the history of a community, for its knowledge always finds a way to germinate and establish a new sense of belonging.
Settlement patterns based on work, refuge, or political resistance were drastically disrupted when the Free Trade Zone of 1966 and the Free Port of 1971 transformed Margarita into a commercial and tourist enclave. Tourism replaced agricultural activity and dependence on oil, introducing a flow of people disconnected from previous settlement patterns.
