A dozen children are half- listening to a guide at the small synagogue in the centre of Coro, a town that was Venezuela's first capital before the title passed to Caracas, 300km to the east.

The guide points to the floor of the country's oldest Jewish house of prayer, which is covered in a thick layer of sand. "The sand reminded those praying of the time the children of Israel spent wandering in the Sinai desert," he says.