Guest Lecture: Race, Coexistence and Petroculture in Venezuelan Oil Narratives

The subsoil of Cabimas, a municipality in western Venezuela, has played a key role in sustaining Venezuela's status on the global energy map since 1922. Analyzing Cabimas and neighboring oil towns through an ecocritical lens reveals how the oil boom dramatically transformed Venezuela’s geographic and cultural landscapes. The extractivist model adopted by the Venezuelan government not only reshaped the country's post-colonial development but also altered racial relations as Venezuela emerged as an oil power. These transformations are reflected in literary works of the period, such as Mancha de Aceite (1935) by César Uribe Piedrahita and Mene (1936) by Ramón Díaz Sánchez. Both novels explore the social reconfiguration of space, the weakening of institutional structures driven by foreign oil companies, and the impact on marginalized communities. The influx of workers—both domestic and international lured by the promises of oil wealth, left lasting social and economic consequences. As multinational oil companies established themselves in the region, western Venezuela saw a resurgence of colonial-style labor abuses, echoing the exploitation prevalent during the plantation era. Additionally, American oil companies introduced and enforced racial segregation modeled on the “Jim Crow” laws of the U.S. South, further entrenching racial divides.

Oleski Miranda Navarro earned a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a master’s degree in Anthropology and Development at the Universidad de Chile, in Santiago, Chile. His research covers Latin American racial thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as emotion, popular culture, extractivism, migration, literature and petrocultures. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Emory & Henry University in Virginia, USA.