{"id":20981,"date":"2019-09-01T12:01:29","date_gmt":"2019-09-01T12:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2019\/09\/01\/in-venezuela-a-rum-maker-gives-gang-members-a-way-out-via-rugby\/"},"modified":"2019-09-01T12:01:29","modified_gmt":"2019-09-01T12:01:29","slug":"in-venezuela-a-rum-maker-gives-gang-members-a-way-out-via-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/in-venezuela-a-rum-maker-gives-gang-members-a-way-out-via-rugby\/","title":{"rendered":"In Venezuela, A Rum-Maker Gives Gang Members A Way Out \u2014 Via Rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Young men practice rugby at Hacienda Santa Teresa, an estate belonging to a Venezuelan rum company. The estate serves as a practice field for neighboring communities of Aragua state, using rugby to help at-risk youths stay away from criminal life and violence.<\/p>\n

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Adriana Loureiro Fern\u00e1ndez for NPR<\/p>\n

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Adriana Loureiro Fern\u00e1ndez for NPR<\/p>\n

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Amid the chaos and misery that have engulfed Venezuela lies a strange parcel of tranquility, tucked within a valley surrounded by poplar trees and mountains some 20 miles south of the Caribbean coast.<\/p>\n

It is a field populated by dozens of lanky teenage boys who are spending this particular evening \u2014 as they often do \u2014 galloping around the grass in pursuit of an oval ball.<\/p>\n

These impoverished Venezuelans are training in the skills of a sport not often seen in a South American nation that’s mad about soccer, baseball and horse racing: They are playing rugby.<\/p>\n

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Their game is taking place on the grounds of a hacienda, a picturesque country estate that includes a distillery and sugarcane plantation, in the Aragua Valley about 40 miles west of the capital Caracas.<\/p>\n

The estate belongs to Santa Teresa, makers of Venezuela’s oldest brand of rum, which has \u2014 its website proudly proclaims \u2014 withstood “wars, revolutions, invasions, even dictators” since it first started distilling more than 200 years ago.<\/p>\n

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\n Left: A worker at Santa Teresa rum factory oversees the bottling process. Right: The estate belongs to one of the most popular rum brands in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

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Adriana Loureiro Fern\u00e1ndez for NPR<\/p>\n

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Adriana Loureiro Fern\u00e1ndez for NPR<\/p>\n

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Rugby is one more albeit unusual play in the rum-maker’s history of negotiating the country’s turbulent times, this time by helping turn its neighborhood away from violent crime, especially by gangs.<\/p>\n

Watching this evening’s training session is Guillermo Morales, 21, a keen rugby player who would normally be on the field but has been sidelined by an injury. “Here, you don’t see what you see at home, like guns and drugs,” says Morales, who lives nearby. “Here, we are away from all that.”<\/p>\n