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 regional multi-sport games in 2022 and 2024, followed by further bocce medals in 2026.

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. (The 1956 founding date is corroborated by the federation's own blog and independent Venezuelan sports-history sources; the specific founders' names are well corroborated across several secondary sources but could not be confirmed against a single federation-primary document.) 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 José Manuel Marcano and María Pérez beat Argentina's Guillermo Montemerlo and Romina Bolatti 11-6 to take gold; the tournament awarded two bronzes rather than a single third-place match, going to Paraguay's Aníbal Recalde/Susana De García and Chile's Rodolfo Gálvez/Melisa Polito (the latter after Venezuela beat the same Chilean pair 11-8 in the semifinal) - the same tournament where Paraguay's own bochas medals came from raffa volo rather than petanca. (A previous version of this article gave the male gold medalist's name as "Carlos Marcano" and the score as 11-0; both were sourcing errors, corrected here against the Games' own official results, reproduced on Wikipedia's "Bocce at the 2022 South American Games" page.)

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's Erik Bardelli and Rosalba Rojas. The event's overall standings (Venezuela 5 points, Peru 2) are independently confirmed via Peruvian state press, though no independent source names the specific Chilean pairing for this edition - it is reported here as the article's existing source states it. The "Carlos Marcano" vs. "José Marcano" naming question raised in an earlier version of this article is now resolved: it was simply an error in the 2022 result (see above), not two different players - the same José (Manuel) Marcano / María Pérez (Bitriago) pairing went on to represent Venezuela in mixed petanque doubles again at the 2026 South American Games (see below).

Venezuela was listed among ten confirmed nations in host federation FECHIBO's pre-event announcement for the Panamericano Clasificatorio de Petancas Iquique 2025 (5-7 November 2025), a Pan American men's triples qualifier for the 2026 Men's Triples World Championship (now set for Khon Kaen, Thailand, 20-24 November 2026). However, FIPJP's own results report names only eight teams - Argentina, Bolivia, host Chile, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States - and Venezuela is not among them, so it does not appear to have competed. The three qualifying places went to the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina.

At the 2026 South American Games in Rosario/Rafaela, Argentina (bocce events 14-17 September 2026), Venezuela won two individual bocce medals: Laura Oses took gold in women's singles (beating Uruguay's Karen Sanguinet 10-7 in the final), and Rubén Garrido took bronze in men's singles. Venezuela's mixed petanque doubles pair, José Marcano and María Pérez Bitriago, competed in the group stage (finishing 1-1) but did not advance to the medal rounds; gold went to Peru's Tomaz Centa and Rosalba Rojas, silver to Chile's Rodolfo Gálvez and Sabrina Polito.

Venezuela remains a current member of the Confederación Panamericana de Petanca (PAPC), listed among its 14 member federations alongside Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, the United States, and Uruguay.

Federation

Venezuela's Ministry of Sport (Ministerio del Poder Popular para el Deporte) lists Lesbia Marcano as the Federación Venezolana de Bolas Criollas y Bochas's current president/representative in its official sports-federation directory, with fvbcyb2017@gmail.com as the current contact email - both current as of this update. This supersedes an earlier version of this article, which could not confirm a current president and listed the federation's older blog contact (bolascriollasdevenezuela@gmail.com, phone +58 212-443.1763); that older contact information was not independently re-confirmed as still active, but also was not directly contradicted, so it is not asserted as wrong, only as unconfirmed.

Domestic Scene

The federation held its III Campeonato Nacional de Bochas Femenino y Masculino Individual Juvenil y Adulto from 15-20 April 2025 across Yaracuy and Miranda states, contested in both the punto raffa volo and petancas modalities, per the Ministry of Sport's own published 2025 annual calendar. Separately, the federation's board held elections for its 2025-2028 term on 8 August 2025, consistent with Lesbia Marcano's listing as current president above. A February 2025 Ministry press release also described the federation training a national bochas/petancas squad explicitly for the "Juegos Bolivarianos Ayacucho - Lima 2025" - but the regular, numbered XX/XXI Juegos Bolivarianos held in Ayacucho and Lima, Peru (22 November - 7 December 2025, distinct from the one-off 2024 "Bicentenario" edition covered above) did not include bocce or petanque among its roughly 45 contested sports. Whether that squad competed elsewhere, was intended for the 2024 event, or saw its sport dropped from the 2025 program after the announcement could not be determined from available sources.

Recent Events

Outside the federation's own competitive calendar, pétanque also has a small but recurring social following among Caracas's French expatriate community. Caracas Accueil, a support association for French and francophone residents, partnered with the Cámara de Comercio Franco-Venezolana (CCIAVF) to run a Torneo de Pétanque (Second Edition) on Saturday, 14 June 2025, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., at Restaurant Chapeau House in the Santa Fe district of Caracas. Entry cost $10 per participant, with prizes awarded to the winners. This is a casual community tournament rather than a federation-run national championship - it sits alongside, not inside, the Federación Venezolana de Bolas Criollas y Bochas structure described above - but its recurrence as a "second edition" suggests an annual or semi-regular fixture worth watching for future editions. (This claim remains the article's most weakly sourced: this update's research pass could not independently confirm Caracas Accueil's pétanque tournament, the CCIAVF as a named organization, or the "Chapeau House" venue through any additional source beyond what a prior cycle already found.)