Like his father and great-uncle before him, 37-year-old Caracas native Guillermo Lares is using Venezuela's rural traditions to help himself and his contemporaries reflect on the country's current reality.
After Venezuela's first commercial oil well was developed in 1914, the poor, rural nation transformed into a wealthy, urbanized global power within a relatively short period. Over time, economic mismanagement and weak institutions chipped away at this success, leading to the current crisis.
Much of the transformation that has shaped the nation over the past century has been led from Caracas. Long the country's largest and most powerful city, it has historically served as the main point of exchange between Venezuela and the wider world.
For one family based there, the desire to explore the immense (and often hidden) cultural diversity found outside the modern, cosmopolitan capital has been an obsession spanning three generations. Through projects stretching back to the 1940s, Guillermo Lares, his father, and his great-uncle have used the nation's traditional music to spark public reflection about its future in Caracas and beyond.
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