Venezuelans survive with the maraña

"Maraña" is a word that has no translation to any language, it is a Venezuelanism born from the Maracucho dialect, and at first meant, work badly done, but with time and dynamics changed this.

Now it is called this way to the quick or simultaneous jobs that are done to obtain an extra income and in a country like Venezuela where the recent salary increase brings the salary to less than 4 dollars a month, this is indispensable.

It is impossible to survive with one salary, not even with 10, because informal dollarization, hyperinflation and speculation, as in the pac man game, are eating everything at a rate as fast as the speed of light.

Those of us who live here still cannot explain how we survived, it is a kind of miracle like the multiplication of the loaves, only in this case represented by an anonymous hero called "Maraña".

People perform many different daily tasks, for example the manager of a bank, may also buy and sell products serving as a bridge to a third party, in addition to selling at home some item or provide their services to leave there as an instructor of some subject in which he performs well.

And those who do not have a job paid by a company, which is the bulk of the population, then become a multitasking machine that would envy any corporation. Buy, sell, rent, work on the internet, do manual labor, and all the etceteras that can fit.

There is a very peculiar gaita from Zulia that can portray this, it is called "En mi casa se larga el forro" and the chorus goes like this "In my house they sell tits and special mondongos, newspapers, terminals, winners and duplets. Also put Ampoyetas and sewing is not lacking and mom you cast the cards if you buy her the gazette."

This is the reflection of the Venezuelan at this moment, where everyone is a "Toderos", another Maracucho word, which means to do everything and the marañas save him from dying in the attempt to survive.

This may not be understood by people who live in other countries, where there is some order, but here it is a jungle where the strongest rules and the basic rules of trade are simple and there is no need for registration, taxes and all the paraphernalia involved in the rules.

For example, a person who has a car can use it in many ways, as a cab, a gas dealer, school transportation, inter or extra urban trips, renting it to a third party and other things he/she can think of.

The maraña has no law and is not supervised by anyone, it depends on the desires of those who carry it out, so there are good and bad, legal or illegal, but it is the only thing left for Venezuelans to subsist, given the helplessness in which they find themselves.

I end by clarifying some local terms in the refrain of the bagpipe.

Teta is an ice cream whose container is a transparent plastic bag and it is called this way because the person who eats it does it through the tip of the bag.

Mondongo is a soup made with beef stomach and feet.

Terminals are lottery tickets

Winners and duplets are games related to horse racing.

Ampoyetas are injections.

To cast the cards is to read them in the style of the gypsies.