Santa Elena de Uairén

The Gran Sabana was Pemón country long before any town stood here. Santa Elena de Uairén was founded in 1923 by Lucas Fernández Peña, a pharmacist turned landowner who had been drawn to the region by its diamond boom. He named it after his daughter Elena and the Uairén river that crosses the valley. The settlement grew up in a tense frontier: settlers from British Guiana were moving in on the back of the diamond trade, and from 1929 English Adventist missionaries set up mission houses in the valley. Fernández Peña campaigned to assert Venezuelan control, and the last of the British missionaries left in 1931.

Capuchin missionaries followed, and their mission became the centre of missionary work in the town; the stone cathedral was built in the middle of the 20th century. In the 1920s settlers from Spain, many of them Basques and Castilians, were also brought to the region. Santa Elena became a municipality in 1945 and is now the capital of the Gran Sabana municipality.

In 1999 the town was declared a free port, and trade with Brazil became the core of its economy. Its small airport was renovated and reopened in 2009. In February 2019, as troops were sent to the Brazilian border during the attempt to bring humanitarian aid into Venezuela, security forces shot Pemón civilians in the town, leaving several dead and many injured, an event that drew widespread criticism. The military action of 3 January 2026 and the earthquakes of 24 June 2026 both struck the north of the country, far from the Guayana south.

Santa Elena has a mixed population of Venezuelans, Brazilians, Guyanese and descendants of Spanish settlers. Pemón people, whose language belongs to the Carib family, lived here long before the town was founded, and the Taurepang variety of Pemón is spoken alongside Spanish. In the indigenous neighbourhood of Manakrü the schools teach in both languages. Because Brazil is so close, many residents also speak Portuguese, and Brazilian influence runs through shops, food and sport.

In Pemón tradition the mountains are home to ancestor spirits, and one story makes Mount Roraima the stump of the tree of the world; Pemón guides lead the treks that start near the town. The Capuchin mission is the centre of missionary work in the town, and the stone cathedral is one of its main sights.

Football, strengthened by the Brazilian influence, is the most popular sport, and bolas criollas, the Venezuelan bowls game, comes second. Relations between Pemón communities and the state are tense in places, above all over mining and the border, a subject handled with care in conversation.

About 28,000 people lived in Santa Elena at the 2011 census. The town has grown quickly, and it is the capital of the Gran Sabana municipality. It is a place of low houses and a small centre, with the savanna and the hills beginning at the edge of town.

The economy rests on commerce and mining. Brazilians cross the border, especially at weekends, to buy cheaper food, electronics and household goods, while Venezuelan fuel has long flowed the other way. Tour agencies organise trips into Canaima National Park, flights over Angel Falls and treks to Roraima. Gold mining, much of it informal and violent, dominates the wider region.

Ties with Brazil are close, and some students from Santa Elena attend school across the border in Pacaraima. Shortages of fuel and medicine, scarce cash and an unreliable power supply shape daily routines, as they do across the south. Spanish, Portuguese and Pemón are all heard in the town's streets and shops.

Everyday food in Santa Elena is the Venezuelan standard — arepas, empanadas and pabellón criollo, the national plate of shredded beef, black beans and rice, often with fried plantain — with a strong Brazilian accent. Brazilian-style restaurants serve comida a kilo, a self-service lunch buffet charged by weight, and Brazilian products fill the shops alongside Venezuelan ones.

The Pemón and other indigenous peoples of the south cook with cassava. Casabe, a large, dry flatbread of grated bitter cassava, is made across the region, and mañoco is another staple made from bitter cassava. Fresh juices of tropical fruit are common with meals, and in Amazonas, further west, catara is a hot sauce of cassava juice, spices and ants.

The tour operators for the Roraima trek are based in the town, and strong black coffee is drunk throughout the day, as it is everywhere in Venezuela. The bakeries sell cachitos, ham-filled pastries, and other breads found across the country, and a long day on the trail usually ends with simple, filling plates of rice, beans and meat.