Congo Mirador: trapped by mud and without gasoline, the floating town of Venezuela is extinguished

Where fish used to grow, there are now banana trees and grazing cows. The idyllic life in Congo Mirador, a town of stilt houses that seemed to float on the still waters of a lagoon in Venezuela, drowned in mud and undergrowth.

“When have you seen you kill in banana here?”, ironically throws a fisherman while navigating the makeshift canals in this settlement in the western state of Zulia.

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Congo Lookout, famous for being inside the so-called “world capital of lightning”, on Lake Maracaibo, succumbed to the drowning of sediments washed away by the Catatumbo river that rises in Colombia and flows into this lake, one of the largest in South America.

With its natural channel altered for the irrigation of farms, the river was dragging aquatic plants and mud until it covered the town.

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“This was a very beautiful lagoon, the lagoon settled down and what we have is pure mountains”, describes Euclides Villasmil to AFP, from one of the few stilt houses still standing.

A few pilings is all that remains of the local clinic, where getting sick can be a sentence. Many structures have been cannibalized: doors, ceilings, walls have been removed. The image emulates a ghost town: out of 200 families, about 10 remain.

Aerial view of stilt houses in Congo Mirador, Zulia state, Venezuela, on September 6, 2021. (FEDERICO PARRA / AFP).

With the sedimentation, which was already uncontrollable in 2013, snakes, toads and other animals began to get into the stilt houses. These changes caused the progressive migration of a good part of the 700 people who came to live among the waters of this ecosystem surrounded by mangrove forests.

“I will not let him lose”

Congo Lookout It appears, seen with a drone, a meadow covered in vegetation, but in reality it is a large swamp dotted with dilapidated houses.

Refusing to allow everything to be covered, Douglas Camarillo, 62, spent 15 days opening channels through which boats pass. With the mud up to his chest, he manually dug about 130 meters that he can now traverse his boat and those of his few neighbors.

“I will not let my people lose, as long as God gives me life to Congo I will not let him lose”, he told AFP.

The sediment he removed was used to plant several banana plants.

Before, the noise of fishing boats burst from dawn. Now there is an almost deathly silence, only interrupted by the desperate chirping of birds confined to cages so tiny they can barely move.

View of the church in Congo Mirador, Zulia state, Venezuela, on September 6, 2021. (FEDERICO PARRA / AFP).

Others denied life on land, dismantled their stilt houses and transported them in boats to the neighboring lagoon of Ologá.

The church is one of the few structures that remains almost intact, although Masses have not been celebrated there for years.

On the altar, with curtains and tablecloth, there are vases with plastic flowers, a somewhat rusty chalice and various religious images, the largest being a statuette of the Virgin of Carmen, widely venerated in these towns.

“My little Venice”

As if moving in a time warp, Janeth Díaz remembers June 1, 2016 as one of the saddest days of her life.

“Having to migrate from the Congo has been the strongest thing in our life”, he recounts from his new home in Puerto Concha, a town on land about three hours away by boat.

He left with his sick mother, who passed away a few months after moving. The same with his two dogs, who also died. His brothers also migrated.

For Janeth, 59, Congo Mirador was her “little Venice” in which “they were all one big family.”

But when he began to see the mud covering everything and was scared, he reached his limit: “I felt that that caught me,” he says.

In addition to sedimentation, those who remained suffer severe shortages: lack of gasoline, the two diesel generators that supplied the town with electricity have been damaged for years, the antenna that supplied them with a telephone signal does not work either, and food is limited.

“My mother died in Maracaibo and I could not go, three brothers could not go to the funeral, she is strong, one is stranded for fuel,” laments Erwin Gotera, born 33 years ago in this place.

Much of the fishing is going to pay for fuel. For example, if they catch 200 kilos of fish, they must invest 100 to buy about 20 liters of gasoline.

Here “gasoline is what kills us,” remarks this father of three children.

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