A people that wants to talk. The Maco of Bolívar

Abstract

When the aim is to connect historical, social, and cultural practices with the very essence of a context within its spatiotemporal framework, the focus shift to finding a way to rewrite a history that is etched in the hearts of the people, a history that shaped the past and has left indelible traces, allowing its inhabitants to transmit the essence of that place from generation to generation. This article refers to how to reconstruct the historical memory of the town of El Maco, located in the General Francisco Esteban Gómez municipality, Nueva Esparta state, Venezuela, based on the oral testimonies of its inhabitants. Therefore, the study presented here is framed within the ethnographic method, since the communities, small towns, neighborhoods, and streets play an important role, as it is the people of these localities who preserve the events of the history waiting to be told. This process leads to the conclusion that: Gathering history through oral testimonies is an invaluable practices, as it can constitutes the methodology for reconstructing the history of a towns, as is the case of El Maco. With the support of oral tradition, it is not necessary to know the historical figures to rewrite the history of a community. The informants become open books, where one can read every event and every moment of that past, imbued with the essence, feelings, emotions, and identity of a particular context.