100% SAN AGUSTIN / Caracas, Venezuela
Fear of the unknown is a powerful social influence. It shields us from some of life’s greatest surprises, perhaps most importantly in discouraging us from reaching out to those who seem a little different.
For decades, the San Agustín neighbourhood in Caracas, Venezuela was a major source of fear. It was the place that parents taught their children to avoid at all costs, for fear of being caught up in the violent trappings of local gang warfare.
In truth, a simple peek behind this fraying facade of doom would have revealed that a cultural renaissance was underway. It’s a renaissance that has turned this neighbourhood completely inside out and revealed its florid inner beauty.
Beginning in 2016, 100% San Agustín distilled the magic of their cultural haven into a hand-curated experience known as Cumbe Tours. Visitors from all over the world are taken through the colourful neighbourhood alleyways en route to discovering spaces such as the Plazoleta de Marin, an important community meeting point and hub of social activity. Along the way, visitors interact with proud inhabitants and sample local treats including a unique liquor distilled from the native Cocuy agave plant.
The tour is set to an immersive musical soundtrack; this neighbourhood is famous throughout Venezuela as a musical mecca, and rhythms bounce through the streets from all corners. As locals are fond of saying, “San Agustín had to exist to provide a beat for the city.”
This beat is distinctly African, reflecting the majority Afro-descendent makeup of San Agustín’s population. Indeed, the word “cumbe” itself refers to communities that were formed by Africans who escaped from slavery during the Spanish colonial era. It’s no surprise then that these beats feel like the exuberant pulse of freedom.
This freedom didn’t occur by accident. In the early 90s, local musicians and cultural organisations approached San Agustín’s gang leaders with a proposal: we want to take our community in a positive direction, and we want to do it through music and the arts. We want to give our kids a creative education, and we hope that you will be part of this solution and not part of the problem.
The proposal clearly paid off. Percussion workshops and other forms of creative education began popping up right in the streets, and the community never looked back. Today, The San Agustín School Workshop is an important pillar that nourishes artistic development to help foster opportunities and dramatically enhance the quality of life for everyone in the community.
The story of San Agustín’s remarkable transformation is written all over the faces of those who take part in the Cumbe Tours. They come with a taste of fear, but they leave with a sense of pride. Pride in what we as a people are capable of achieving, and pride in overcoming our fear of the unknown to experience it.
