Barranquitas looks like any of the hundreds of sunbaked, working-class towns in Venezuela's vast interior. The central square is dominated by a statue of liberator Simon Bolivar. But there's something odd about the inhabitants of this fishing village at the southern end of western Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo. As a man walks down the street, his arms and legs suddenly flail out in a sort of a leaping dance. In a flash, he resumes a normal gait and goes on his way.
Nobody pays attention.
A skeletal woman approaches with a wild-eyed stare, unsteady on her feet, as if drunk. But as she gets closer, you see that her legs are as stiff as flagpoles and her neck is rigid and crooked. Farther along, two men sit chatting. As one's eye twitches violently, the other flings out his hand. Then they, too, carry on as if nothing has happened.