WEEKEND ENGAGEMENT TOPICS: WEEK 173/ WORKING ON WEEKEND

It was 2016, I was looking for a part time job because my freelance work was not producing enough money for me. I was no longer a young person, I was not sure what I could do. I saw on Facebook that a cultural institution, Hacienda La Trinidad was looking for guides to assist people who visited exhibitions. They were looking for young people but I sent my resume by email and I explained that I was not young but I love art and I was looking for a part time job. They answer my email and they asked me to go there for an interview and they hired me for the weekend only. It was the work I have enjoyed more in my life. I didn’t care that I had to work on the weekend, you know.

It’s not easy to explain. Hacienda La Trinidad is a cultural park. Do you know what is a cultural park? Two centuries ago it was a plantation where coffee was harvested and later sugar and tobacco. In the 20th century, a good part of the hacienda was sold, when Caracas began to urbanize and the agricultural work economy was no longer profitable.

However, the owners decided to preserve the colonial house of the plantation, which had been preserved in good condition, as well as the surrounding areas. Remodeling work began to build a cultural park, which opened its doors to the public in 2010. I will show you some photos I took when I worked there at weekend, to explain what is a cultural park.

In the conventional sense a park it’s a place where you can take a break from the usual work routine in contact with nature, where you forget problems enjoying a nice landscape for a few hours. Well, I could do it every weekend for months at Hacienda La Trinidad. They paid me for being there, in that nice place, talking with visitors about exhibitions, welcoming them, orienting them if they didn’t know the park and they were visiting it for the first time.

In a cultural park, like Hacienda La Trinidad is, you enjoy nature but you also enjoy art and cultural expressions: art, photography, music, literature. It’s more than a park in a conventional way, you know. When I worked there I learnt about Venezuelan aborígenes cultures, about different expressions of modern art and I also knew very important Venezuelan artists like Jacobo Borges.

Like I said, the house of Hacienda La Trinidad, that today is the exhibition room, is a colonial house, therefore, it’s an historic place, and an historic place connects us with the cultural heritage of our country, helping us to understand where we came from. Maybe sometimes we forget that architecture is a cultural expression too. When I worked there, at Hacienda La Trinidad, my coworkers and I explained to the public visiting the park how Caracas was transformed from a space of farms and agricultural work into an urbanized city with highways. While we told them the history of Hacienda La Trinidad as we toured the park, some of its most important owners, where the coffee was harvested, where the sugar mill was located, where the sugar cane was processed, and where the tobacco was processed.

In the sixties of the 20th century, the owners of Hacienda La Trinidad granted a space in the hacienda to the Dutch sculptor Cornelis Zitman, who lived in Venezuela, to build his house and workshop. So, he was not the owner, but he could construct his house when the mill was, he could stay there with his family. Zitman came to Venezuela when he was very young and he decided stay here, he died here at Caracas in 2016. When he was alive, who visited the park could sometimes visit his house. But after he died you cannot visit his house, his widow still lives there, but she is an old woman and she doesn’t want to receive people at her house. When I worked at Hacienda La Trinidad I had the privilege to visit Cornelis Zitman’s house, his widow received us, Hacienda La Trinidad’s guides. Those days, in one of the exhibition rooms, some of Zitman's works were exhibited, It was not exhibed before.

Hacienda La Trinidad is a private place, it was designed like a commercial place. If you visit Cultural Park Hacienda La Trinidad you will find commercial stores. First commercial place was the spa Corphus Menti, a good place for your relaxation. There are now seven commercial stores in the buildings where the tobacco used to be dried. Of course, these buildings were remodeled when the cultural park project was designed. There are: a handicraft store where objects from different regions of Venezuela are sold, an art gallery, a place rented for events and exhibitions, a restaurant, a chocolate Shop, a bookshop and a photography school, where you can see photography exhibitions.

So, as you can see I had good reasons to work there for weekends. In 2017 the unrest at Caracas in those days made it very difficult for me to go to work or return home safely. There were many protests and clashes: fires, tear gas bombs. Caracas became a dangerous city. But after Covid 19 pandemic I saw Hacienda La Trinidad had opened again and they were looking for guides again. I sent an email asking if I could return again there and they said yes. I returned there, but last year I quit because my salary was very low. But I asked director Silvia Fuentes if I could teach my courses of Creative Writing there and she said yes! So, eventually, still, I can enjoy the park and my students too. Well, I hope you enjoyed my story about why I worked on weekend and I enjoyed it.

All photos you see belong to my personal photo album.