Venezuela’s indigenous lost tribe

Auxiliano Zapata may be a Warao chief but after fleeing chaotic Venezuela for neighbouring Brazil his people are a lost tribe, wondering if they will ever settle in their beloved Orinoco river delta again. The Warao, who number around 20,000 and usually alternate between towns and traditional rural areas in Venezuela’s northern Orinoco River region, were among the first to flee to Brazil from the economic near-collapse and political unrest under hard-leftist President Nicolas Maduro. “There was no medicine, no food, no transport, nothing. Everything became too expensive. To get here I had to sell everything. I had a television, a cellphone, a fridge,” said Zapata, 43, at the Pintolandia refugee camp in Boa Vista, the capital of Brazil’s frontier state of Roraima. More…