The Speech of Venezuela: Rhotacism

On the U.S. Spanish TV network, TeleFutura, I have watched several times a soap opera called "A Calzón Quitáo". I have noticed something quite peculiar: rhotacism.
I have known that this phenomenon is found in Southern Spain, in Andalusia. I had never known that it also realized itself in America. There is this one woman in the soap opera who says: «\er negro\», for «el negro» (the black one). Just in case you don't recall what rhotacism is, it is simply the conversion of a sound, in this case L, to R. This is quite a natural linguistic change having taken place (and still is) in many languages. Some of the sentences that this woman has uttered, followed by what would be 'correct', are:

pa'r negro » para el negro (for the black one)
Arvarito » Alvarito (someone's name)
quiero argo » quiero algo (I want something)
ya viene ér » Ya viene él (He's coming)

I have always known of an opossing phenomenon which takes place in the Caribbean area: lambdacism. In parts of these regions, one hears in the popular or rural speech: \comèl\ » comer (to eat), \mujèl\ » mujer (woman), \àlbol\ » arbol (tree). It is the complement of what takes place in Venezuela.
I am not truly a soap opera fan, but, like I said before, I sometimes will watch some of these programs solely to study the way of speaking. When I heard this woman say those things mentioned above, I stopped what I was doing, and turned the volume up on the television set. It was the first time I heard such a thing. The woman's character is a rather comical one. It seems that her character belongs to the lower social classes; therefore, she has been adapted with linguistic realizations that will mark her even more as poor and/or rural. In this case, as I have been saying, it is rhotacism. She is the only one to do in this, or any other, soap opera. I can say this strongly because here in the United States we get much media from Venezuela. All of this relates to what I wrote about certain usages of "estar" and "para".
For this, once again, I ventured into doing some informal interviews. What I found out confirmed my hypothesis. I was told that in Venezuela, the only people who fall to such rhotacism are the "chavistas" and the 'common', low class people. It is highly stigmatised, as I discovered. There is, however, another feature in Venezuela in the title of this program: Quitáo. In this instance, there occurs a strong weaking of intervocalic D, or, in this case, complete loss of it. In Spain, the disappearance of D in the «-ado» endings is full-fledged; in all social classes there, one will find: \cansáo\ » cansado, \e estáo\ » he estado. It will actually be odd to hear a Spaniard pronounce the D in this case. In America, this linguistic process is nearly complete. Another example in the media of this would be a song by the now late Cuban singer, Celia Cruz. In one her songs, she says (and writes): La negra tiene tumbáo, y no camina de láo. We see here \tumbáo\ for «tumbado», and \láo\ for «lado». This loss is socially accepted in quite all levels, in Spain and in America, where it occurs. The characters in this soap opera nearly all the time lose this type of D. What is actually socially disregarded is something similar in Andalusia, in the south of Spain. People here will drop basically all intervocalic D's, so that we hear marked forms as: \déo\ » dedo (finger), \venío\ » venido (come [p.part.]). There are many features that are common to both Andalusia and Spanish-America. I have read several theories about whether these were brought to the Americas particularly by the Andalusians, or, whether these developed completely independent of each other. Of the most noticiable ones, there is the seseo, which consists in pronouncing Z, C, and S as /s/, and aspiration of this last one. In the rest of Spain, these represent two different phonemes.
Going back to the rhotacism, as I said, it is widespread in Andalusia. Now, I know that it exists as well in Venezuela. One thing I noticed in this soap opera is that in the closed captions, the words spoken with rhotacism were enclosed in quotations, which implies, even more, their incorrecteness and social rejection. I will continue to research this rhotacism in South America, such as where else it is found, and post whatever new findings.