It’s past two in the morning and a group of men and women wearing what look like Apache headdresses and loincloths are dancing around some bonfires. They keep peeling off to stand before an altar where they take swigs of rum and spit them out in a fine spew, while they grunt and puff out their cheeks, their eyes rolling into the backs of their heads.
As the flames on the fires die down, they take turns walking over the hot coals. A crowd has broken through the cordon to take a closer look and as the Conga drums build to a crescendo a woman stoops down, picks up a burning log and begins to chew on the burning embers.
The woman is a follower of Maria Lionza, a cult particular to Venezuela that mixes African animism, Catholicism, indigenous spiritual traditions and Cuban Santeria. Its precise origins are unclear but it is believed to have been brought over by African slaves during colonial times. They obscured their practices behind the Spaniards’ Christianity as a way of preserving them. Like Christianity, it is centred on a holy trinity: Maria Lionza, a white woman born in the state of Yaracuy; Negro Felipe, a black hero from the Cuban wars of independence; and Guaicaipuro, an Indian tribal chief who led an uprising against the Spanish Conquistadors.
It is believed that almost half of Venezuelans practise some form of esoteric religion. Even the Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez was a known follower. He had a statue of Maria Lionza commissioned that stands guard over one of the main roads into Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. She is depicted riding a tapir and holding her pelvis aloft to symbolise her femininity.
‘In Venezuela, there is a saying: “He who doesn’t play the drums, fires arrows,”’ says Celia Blanco, who owns a perfumeria – a ‘perfume’ shop selling potions and religious iconography – in Chacao, an upper-middle-class neighbourhood of Caracas.
‘What that means is that everyone in Venezuela has some indigenous blood, and many people of all social levels follow Maria Lionza,’ she adds. ‘The trinity represents Venezuela’s three main ethnic groups.’
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