The Guarie river is commonly spoken of as a polluted, open sewer that runs from west to east through the city of Caracas, carrying in its murky waters putrefaction, and rancid odors. Residents and pedestrians tiptoe with caution around what was once conceived as a river, warning their children to avoid the banks lest they would be ravaged by disease. The Guaire River, surrounded by decades of physical barriers—vehicles, infrastructure, and meandering concrete—was relegated to a forgotten relic of landscape, exacerbated with failed government attempts to clean up the river. Caraqueños turned a blind eye to the once-celebrated force that nourished the fecund valley in 1595. Instead, they averted it as if a large scar, a sewage channel for the more discreet industries, banished into the natural landscape after exploiting its use to the fullest. Yet, the Rio Guaire is an integral part of the city´s less than ideal water service. The rivers Guaire and Tuy are intertwined in a circular journey, where reservoirs of the Tuy river flow into kilometers of pipes in Caracas, and into the Rio Guaire with the flush of a toilet lever. This macro-scaled journey is constructed from a multitude of scales and perspectives, from the personal to the vegetal.

Riverside Walks
Approaching the Rio Guaire on foot, Enlace Arquitectura, Ciudad Laboratorio, and a multidisciplinary group led eight walks along the shores of the Rio Guaire. They were encouraged to saunter along the river edge, to contemplate and sketch the flora and fauna, beginning to reconfigure their understanding of their relationship with the river and the city. The tour was a part of a community effort to reconcile the Rio Guaire in the minds of Caraqueños as a space of desire, an irrefutable force in the urban landscape that became visible in the confluence of artists, educational institutions, architects, engineers, and urban planners.

Dialogues
Eight guest lectures on collective efforts to recover and conserve rivers in other latitudes were presented virtually to an audience of university students and interested parties. Various approaches, from kayaking to navigate rivers, to art and education, allowed us to reflect on the relationship between bodies of water, urban planning, environmental justice, and communities in various cities and regions of the world.

Engagement
For local school children between third and sixth grades, we created a board game with the goal of defending the Rio Guaire from curses and evils that have descended upon it. A topographic model of the Rio Guaire serves as the board, while figurines representing each player are used for displacement. Treasures found along the edge of the river and cards are part of children’s repository and resources to save the river.

Archive
The website www.rioguaire.com was created as a repository of every possible perspective on the Guaire River. It includes documents and stories that reveal the transformations in the sociopolitical and environmental ideology associated with the river. A timeline created from Carlos Marín's research at the National Library, the Fundación para la Cultura Urbana, and other sources, builds an archive of the history of Río Guaire in literature, art, and historical documents. The timeline documents Francisco Fajardo's first encounters with the river in the aboriginal valley in 1560, and advances to current efforts by Enlace Arquitectura and Ciudad Laboratorio to reconceptualize the relationship between the river and the city. Another segment of the web offers articles by authors from various professions -ecologists, artists, historians, journalists, curators, engineers, architects and politicians.

Collaborators
Faitha Nahmans
Laura Angarita
Erika Valentina Martinez Camacaro
Nelson Camacho
Maria Eugenia Collell Schnaidt
Rodrigo Blanco Calderon
Rodrigo Figueroa
Ileana Ramirez Romero
Maria Alexandra Garcia Amado
Mary Dolores Ara
Ricardo Ramirez
Maria Virginia Millan
Lisabel Noguera
Gerardo Zavarce
Frederick Vegas
Elisa Silva
Carlos Alfredo Marin
Bela Kunckel
Alejandro Alvarez Iragorry
Cheo Carvajal

Team: Enlace Foundation & Ciudad Laboratorio | Photography: Carlos Ancheta, Régulo Gómez and other artists and photographers