Venezuelan Culture

Transitioning from one’s motherland to a new country creates culture shocks and tension. People with different beliefs challenge the newcomer’s beliefs and probably subdue the immigrant to assimilate into the culture of the masses. In my case, moving from Venezuela to the United States proved how strong I bonded with my culture. At first, I felt how the new culture was slowly integrating into my daily life, and it felt as the culture was chocking my old culture into submission. Luckily, the most prominent item in my Venezuelan culture helped my transition to a new country by blending American food with Venezuelan food. Since Pratt’s vision of the contact zone turns violent, my contact zone proves how two different cultures can coexist peacefully

The condensed flour makes a hearty breakfast for Venezuelans, but the arepa’s easy cooking makes it edible any hour of the day. In the arepa’s early days, it was consumed by workers to get energy early in the morning before working in the hot, sunny fields of Venezuela. The arepa works like a sandwich; any filling can fill an arepa, and so this versatility lets this traditional food have infinite combinations for different tastes. Historically, the arepa was the food of the low-income people, but its flavor captivated millions, and now all economic levels in Venezuela serve arepas on their tables. With such notoriety in Venezuela, those who move out of the country tend to keep on cooking arepas in their new countries. Venezuelan immigrants tend to cook many arepas for those people who have not tasted the arepa and make the popularity of the traditional food shine outside

It shows how Venezuelans can blend in new cultures; nevertheless, keep their cultures firm with them. Making space for new cultures and showing their culture, Venezuelans can garner different aspects of multiple cultures and combine them to produce a mixture of cultures, something only a Venezuelan can accomplish. And similar to the arepa, Venezuelans living around the world accept the dominant culture, but always figure a way to plug in their flavor to the mix. This acceptance and flexibility make Venezuelans and arepas stand out from the crowd; and in turn, the dominant culture absorbs parts of Venezuelan culture and transforms into a more diverse community. Furthermore, this inner peace strengthens both cultures in the Venezuelan individual, since one culture approves the existence of the other culture; no culture gets eradicated in the process of moving to different countries. Also, both cultures clash against each other, but finding the equilibrium between cultures is