VivirLatino

A few years back I had the opportunity to spend Christmas in Ciudad Ojeda, a small town outside of Maracaibo in Venezuela’s Zulia state. There were two very notable things about Christmas in Zulia that I immediately became aware of: the temperature (around 90 degrees) and La Gaita Zuliana. La gaita, as it is so lovingly called in Zulia, is perhaps the one thing that best defines the culture of the people of this region of Venezuela: luchadora, resilient, proud and traditional. Gaitas are Christmas music, yes, but not in the way the rest of Latin America does it — traditional villancicos and hymns — the content of the songs are largely based around social issues, protest and politics.

A perfect example of what I am talking about is the very controversial gaita Aló Presidente by gaita superstars La Gran Coquivacoa. This gaita ruffled a lot of feathers in the Chavez camp a couple of years ago as it accused the Venezuelan president of taking advantage of the Venezuelan people. The sentiment wasn’t lost on the people of Zulia, the state with the most oil and, paradoxically, the most extreme poverty. Here’s a snippet:

Aló Presidente, aló
Qué quiere hacer con nosotros?
Respóndanos presidente
Todos estamos calientes
Nos está volviendo loco
Ay dios, qué calamidad
El país no vale medio
Porque ha sido peor el remedio
Que la misma enfermedad

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