ALBERTO LLERAS, Director General

WILLIAM MANGER, Assistant Director

THE PAN AMERICAN UNION, now 57 years old, is an international organization created and maintained by the twenty-one American Republics: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Originally known as the International Bureau of the American Republics, it was established in 1890 in accordance with a resolution passed April 14 of that year by the First International Conference of American States, which convened at Washington in October 1889. April 14 is celebrated annually throughout the Americas as Pan American Day.

The work of the Union was greatly expanded by resolutions of the Second Conference, held at Mexico City in 1901-2; the Third, at Rio de Janeiro in 1906; the Fourth, at Buenos Aires in 1910; the Fifth, at Santiago, Chile, in 1923; the Sixth, at Habana in 1928; the Seventh, at Montevideo in 1933; the Eighth, at Lima in 1938; and by other inter-American conferences. The creation of machinery for the orderly settlement of inter-American disputes is one of the outstanding achievements of the Pan American system, but more important still is the continental public opinion that demanded such procedure.

PURPOSE AND ORGANIZATION

The purpose of the Pan American Union is to promote friendship and close relations among the Republics of the American Continent and peace and security within their borders by fostering constructive cooperation among them.

The Union is supported by annual quotas from all the countries, and its services are freely available to officials and private citizens alike. Its affairs are administered by a Director General and an Assistant Director, elected by and responsible to a Governing Board composed of one member from each American Republic.

ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS

The administrative departments of the Pan American Union are organized to carry out the purposes for which it was created. There are special offices dealing with foreign trade, statistics, economics, intellectual cooperation, music, juridical matters, agricultural cooperation, travel, and labor and social information. All these offices maintain close relations with official and unofficial bodies in the countries members of the Union. The Columbus Memorial Library contains 138,500 volumes and 2,400 maps. The BULLETIN of the Pan American Union, published monthly in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, is the official organ of the institution. For a list of other publications, see the inside back cover.

PAN AMERICAN CONFERENCES

The Pan American Union also serves as the permanent organ of the International Conferences of American States, usually referred to as the Pan American Conferences. In addition to preparing the programs and regulations, the Union gives effect to the conclusions of the Conferences by conducting special inquiries and investigations and by convening or arranging for special or technical conferences in the intervals between the International Conferences.

FOLKLORE is the soul of a country, its collective personality, and I wish to present to you the soul of my country, Venezuela, through its folk music. Geographically, Venezuela is divided into three distinct regions:

The mountains, those high and imposing mountains of the Andean range that is called the backbone of South America.

The plains, our llanos, similar to your Far West-the land of cowboys, cattle, gay music, and dairy products.

The jungle, El Dorado, the land of Hudson's Green Mansions, rich, mysterious, almost unexplored, where there are white, pink, and blue tigers, golden rivers, twenty-four different kinds of orchids, birds that announce the approach of wind, of rain, of death (there are even birds that announce the hours, in spite of the belief

The records used to illustrate this lecture, which was delivered at the Pan American Union on December 2, 1947, were selected from a Library of Congress album, "Folk Music of Venezuela," soon to be released by the Archive of American Folklore of the Library.

that we do not care about time); trees that give milk, bread, and salt; flowers that perspire and bleed and feed themselves with animal life; branches that sing like birds, and call the traveler with green, strange, human voices. In there, in the mountains, jungle, and even the plains, every door is open to the imagination, and that is why Venezuela makes good music and has one of the richest musical traditions in all America.

"There is no revolution without music," someone said. The greatest Venezuelan revolution, the one that culminated in the independence of Venezuela and five other Latin American countries, was warmly praised and fought by Venezuelan musicians, mainly from Caracas, the capital. Our national anthem, Glory to Thee, Courageous People! (the Venezuelan Marseillaise), and many other patriotic songs raised the flame of revolutionary fire to such a point that one Spanish official decided to choke the revolution by