Pétanque in Venezuela

Petanca in Venezuela is governed by the Federación Venezolana de Bolas Criollas y Bochas, a federation whose name signals its real scope: it oversees bolas criollas, Venezuela's own home-grown boules game, alongside the separately organized European disciplines of bochas and petanca. Unlike the bocce-federation umbrella already documented on this site for Italy, Chile, and Paraguay, Venezuela's federation is built around a native game first and imported European disciplines second - but that structure has still produced real petanca results, including gold medals at back-to-back regional multi-sport games in 2022 and 2024.

Bolas Criollas, Bochas, and Petanca: Three Different Games, One Federation

Bolas criollas is Venezuela's most widely played boules game, a family and community pastime for generations, associated with Sunday afternoons at clubs and recreation centers across the country. Its balls are typically made of concrete or resin rather than the metal used in European pétanque, and it is played on informal dirt courts with its own scoring conventions - a genuinely distinct sport, even though popular accounts trace a shared distant ancestry to boules games European colonizers brought to South America. The Federación Venezolana de Bolas Criollas y Bochas was founded in 1956 by Lorenzo Rivas and Carlos Pérez Castillo, is registered with Venezuela's Instituto Nacional de Deportes (I.N.D.), and is affiliated with the Comité Olímpico Venezolano. Alongside bolas criollas' own competitive modalities (including tiro progresivo, or progressive shooting), the federation separately administers bochas and, distinct from both, petanca - played with FIPJP-standard metal boules under international rules.

International Results

Venezuela's clearest petanca success on the international stage came at the XII Juegos Suramericanos (South American Games) in Asunción, Paraguay, in 2022. In the mixed pairs petanca final, Venezuela's María Pérez and Carlos Marcano beat Argentina's Romina Bollati and Guillermo Montemerlo 11-0 to take gold - the same tournament where Paraguay's own bochas medals came from raffa volo rather than petanca.

Two years later, at the Juegos Bolivarianos del Bicentenario in Ayacucho, Peru (27 November - 8 December 2024), Venezuela's José Marcano and María Pérez won the petanca doubles gold medal in a three-nation event, ahead of Chile's silver pairing of Melisa Polito and Renato Donoso and a bronze for Peru. (Sourcing for the two tournaments gives the players' partner as "Carlos Marcano" in 2022 and "José Marcano" in 2024; this could not be independently confirmed as the same person and is reported here as each source states it.)

Venezuela was also among the ten nations - alongside host Chile, Canada, the United States, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and Argentina - that entered the men's triples field at the Panamericano Clasificatorio de Petancas Iquique 2025, a Pan American qualifying tournament for that year's Men's Triples World Championship; Venezuela's individual results there were not independently confirmed.

Federation

The Federación Venezolana de Bolas Criollas y Bochas can be reached at bolascriollasdevenezuela@gmail.com or by phone at +58 212-443.1763. A current federation president was not independently confirmed via available sources.