A CROCODILE NAMED CAIMAN / UN COCODRILO LLAMADO CAIMAN

MUSEUM OF CAIMAN AND ITS PLACES

The Caiman Museum and its sites is considered as a free space for research and creativity around the image and symbolism of the Orinoco caiman (Cocodrylus intermedius), an endemic species of the Venezuelan and Apure plains. Also called yellow caiman, caiman llanero and long beak caiman.  It is one of the largest in the world and its population is on the way to extinction. The museum proposes a space to revive man's memory of the Orinoco caiman and its ecological, cultural, scientific and economic relationship. 

The museum's experience is especially focused towards visual arts due to its free expression and where all the manifestations of knowledge have possibilities, differentiating it from the other two museums of the crocodile of scientific and archaeological character that exist in the world, one in Chiapas, Mexico and the other in Ko Ombo Egypt. The fundamental idea is to create a physical space for the Cayman Museum and its Places in the agrarian city of San Fernando de Apure in the Venezuelan plains. 

The physical and virtual space proposed for the Museum of the caiman is intended to create alliances for research management on the conservation of the Orinoco caiman and the cultural environment that characterizes it in the anthropic environment in this time of accelerated loss of diversity Biological and cultural environment. It is a space conceived for the public to perceive through art and science the importance of crocodile in the several aspects, ecological, cultural, scientific, economic and even the appropriate way to live together with them.

    Watching a crocodile sunbathing on the highway in the plains is considered today an  anachronism, they were almost exterminated during the decades of 1940s and 60th due to the indiscriminate hunt to a profit their skins for export which reached the volume of 600,000 skins per year, until a government Pronouncement for 10 years of prohibition of hunting was decreed in 1972 together with famous worldwide programs implemented for the recovery of alligators, although very slow for the Orinoco´s  cayman that continues to be a species threatened of extinction.

To say cayman in Germany can be an exoticism. To say crocodile in Venezuela would be an eccentricity. Hence the Crocodile of the Orinoco (Crocodylus intermedius) is called Cayman of the Orinoco, a representative of the hidden image of the Plain dwellers that could well be coined in numismatics as a symbol of the Venezuelan autochthonous. 

The crocodile is as important for the biological chain of the ecosystem as for the Venezuelan popular culture. At the end of the dry season, hundreds of crocodiles, searching for water and food, used to  burst into the ponds and even into the native villages ... These were mythical times when men and animals were considered equal and danced together to the music of Warimé  and the breath of the beasts.

Today in Apure state In Venezuela there are families who live with three meters long pets crocodiles in their courtyards. It is common to see children riding on their backs and even painting their claws, a symbol of the domination of the rugged plain. 

Several socio-cultural facts give an amphibian identity to the Apure Plains: The cross swimming  in 1936 of the mighty Apure river plagued by crocodiles and piranhas by Trina Omaira Salerno, a 10-year-old girl, who became a  local heroine of the twentieth century. Many shops and even the local Olympic pool are named after her: Trina Omaira Bar, Trina Omaira Hotel, Shoe shop Trina Omaira.

Another hidden icon of the Plains is the image of “Negro”, the female alligator of the watchmaker Faoro, a docile three meters long crocodile that walked children on her loins. When Negro died, she was dissected and exposed in a cabinet in the house that saw her grow.

A third element is the huge “Patrol Cayman”, the one everyone feels but no one sees. It represents the soul of the river. In times of human vicissitudes Patrol Cayman´s shadow walks around the city leaving on the asphalt the traces of its huge tail. 

Although the main square of San Fernando is the Fountain of the Alligators holding horns of abundance, today it is an anachronism to see a crocodile sunbathing on a highway in the Plains; They were almost exterminated during the 1940s to 60s  for their skins to  export, almost 300,000 per year, until successful programs were implemented in 1972 for the recovery of Caymans and Babas, although very slow for the Orinoco crocodile that continues as a threatened species of extinction