Exorcizing A Country

By Adriaan van Ginkel

Although today’s urban culture world-wide is slowly but surely pushing Christianity into a back seat – in a way saying that two thousand years predominance have been enough and it’s now the turn of other creeds or anti-creeds to sit in front – its roots are still deeply embedded in Latin America. Even in Brazil, where so many religions and creeds live side by side, Christianity still is the common denominator. In santería, an Afro-Caribbean religion combining Yoruba and other African deities with Catholic and home-spun beliefs and traditions, only the very bold followers will shove away Christianity completely – and they are a total minority. Latin America is probably the most heterogenic continent on this planet, not only ethnically speaking, but also in matters of religion and beliefs. Here, you call yourself an atheist and still believe in spirits and/or follow Satanism, or follower of Ché

Guevara and Pope Francis at the same time. It’s common here to see people burn a candle in front of an image of the Venezuelan goddess María Lionza, say a prayer and then attend Mass like any other religious Catholic with a rosary in their hands. Religious freedom is a very holy thing to specifically Venezuelans, and open fanatical shows of religious fervor, like nailing yourself to a cross like on the Philippines during Easter, or shunning non-believers just for the sake of it, are not approved of at all.

If anything, Venezuelans show themselves very tolerant towards others and of course, themselves. Here, church bells don’t ring on Sundays, in a clear statement that the Catholic Church doesn’t rule the country anymore since the 19^th century. In small towns and villages, it is sometimes hard to find a Catholic church or chapel. Other creeds have put their marks on the streets, like the wildly proliferating Evangelical churches blown over from the Evil Empire of the North (= US) or Brazil. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses too are harvesting enough souls to fill their own temples. Local traditional creeds are everywhere, concentrated on animism and showing a mix of Catholic, African and Amerindian elements. The cult of María Lionza that I mentioned earlier, showing all three elements, is so important that it can even be found in the US nowadays and all over the Caribbean. Santería (left), which I mentioned above, was brought over by Cubans and Dominicans and has grown wildly popular in urban circles these last years. Look for white-clad persons on the streets, from head to toe. There they are. It is in fact Yoruba religion masked as Catholic devotion which evolved as African slaves in times past tried to practice their creed without waking up the Inquisition. African divinities like Ochún and Eleggua bear the names and appearances of Catholic saints like some kind of avatar, that of St. Barbara being the most important one. You see people here with a statue of this particular saint on their desk or in their car, and if you also spot the tell-tale yellow-and-green bracelet on their wrist, you know you have a santero in front of you. No problem, he or she is not going to bite you or cast a spell. Sadly for these people, their santería has been connected to bloody animal sacrifices, giving this “good” creed a certain degree of disrepute. Now, the “baddies” among them, or paleros, roam in cemeteries, stealing skulls and bones from the graves and using them in very dark rituals invoking the dead to do bad things to people they want to harm.  If you believe in the spiritual world or in these creeds, you will agree that these are no people to mess around with.

By the way – I tried to put a picture of a palero altar with skull and purple candles in this text block for your information, but it wouldn’t let itself be put where I wanted it. Every time I tried, it popped back to page two. I tried it with a similar picture, same story. Could it be there IS something in this whole story the rational mind cannot explain? My wife told me, don’t try. So I won’t. You google it and find out how these contraptions look like. 

Many, even born and bred Venezuelans, mix up santería with spiritism. Maybe at this point, you will also stop reading for a sec or two and try to figure out this wildly colored picture. Read on, because understanding this topic will bring you a giant step forward towards understanding what is going on in the Caribbean. There is a difference between the non-Catholic devotion of Catholic saints, santería, and the belief in the goddess, or “queen” María Lionza, who rules over a realm of spirits good and evil. Don’t mix the two up. La Reina, the queen, is one of three ruler spirits in what we might call a heavenly triad called The Three Powers (las tres potencias), or more commonly, corte celestial. Her triad mates are Negro Primero, an Afro Caribbean hero of the Independence Wars, and Guaicaipuro, a Carib Indian chieftain who fought against the Spanish conquistador centuries ago. There are cortes of all sizes and colors, even that of dead presidents and – believe it or not - Vikings. Google it if you don’t believe me! Even Christ is put in some high and powerful corte. There is even a corte made up of criminals, the corte malandra, in which dead assassins and burglars (above) will be revered and asked for their heavenly intervention against, let’s say, still living and killing criminals, you name it. Or they are invoked by those same hoodlums who want to clean out your apartment with no harm done.

You may laugh at it or find this ridiculous. But it’s the spiritual dust that blows over entire countries, among them Venezuela of course. Would you still be laughing if you found out that your own government – I am talking specifically about the Chavist one – brings out banknotes (left) with the heavenly triad stamped on in, surrounded by all kinds of weird stars and symbols? Spiritist money, no less! Spiritism, santería and all kinds of lesser and maybe darker creeds can be found up the top, in ministries and probably even in the presidential palace. It is widely known that Chávez was a spiritist himself, and Maduro shows all the signs of believing in something that is not orthodox at all, either.

And on an even broader scale, María Lionza is found smack in the middle of

Caracas, on a monumental scale (see picture), placed by an old follower in the 1950’s, dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Now if that doesn’t show the importance of those creeds in Venezuela….

Chavism as a relative newcomer on the spiritual scene cannot be overlooked. Despite being a political stream, it can also be viewed as a creed at the same time, centered on the Comandante Eterno Hugo Chávez. He is placed in the corte presidencial by the spiritists, you probably guessed it. In fact he ranks slightly below the father of the fatherland Simon Bolívar. But there are signs that Chávez is getting a niche of his own, with makeshift chapels showing his effigy surrounded by candles.  It explains in a great deal the puzzling 20% of the Venezuelans still believing - despite the economic and social disaster torturing the country - that following a dead president and his ideas is the right road. Being a Chavist is more than a political statement. Chavism is a credo, a statement of faith that will outlast its political grip on the country.  

But still, but still… on Holy Week or Semana Santa, countless of Venezuelans will flock to the Catholic places of worship to commemorate the week when according to the Bible, Jesus Christ was imprisoned, flogged and crucified, to resurrect on Easter Sunday. Because, despite the carnival of creeds I tried to describe to you, Venezuelans are basically Catholics or Christians, if not Jews or Muslims, of course. So, they will combine and mix all kinds of creeds to finally come to their own personal one, custom-made. Some will sacrifice black cats and dogs in santero ceremonies, but virtually every one of them will still state that he or she is Catholic or Christian. And this, my dear reader, you will encounter over the whole Hispanic Caribbean up to the US and down to Colombia. Stay broadminded, or stay out if you can’t stand it.

The Semana Santa started with Palm Sunday which was last Sunday. On

Monday and Tuesday, preparations for the Easter celebrations were feverishly made. No pagan Easter eggs or bunnies, forget those. Catholic traditions are followed. Yesterday, Wednesday, was the day of the big procession of the Nazareno, or the effigy of Christ flogged and bearing his cross. It’s done all over the country, with the statue sometimes weighing a ton or two born on the streets by an army of penitents, or people who pay for their sins by doing this.

In Caracas, a very particular Nazareno, that of the church of San Pablo, has become iconic. Many years ago, a scurvy epidemic was hitting Caracas. During the Easter procession in Caracas, the statue got entwined in a lemon tree, which was seen as a sign from heaven. People started eating the lemons and became cured. Don’t laugh, because people here believe it was a miracle. Since then,

the procession of the Nazareno de San Pablo through the old center of Caracas became a national Easter attraction, drawing thousands and thousands of faithful from all over the country. I was there some years ago. The sea of people was immense and the religious mood was intense. Most people who attend had prayed to the Christ bearing his cross, got their prayers answered and flock on that Wednesday to the procession dressed in purple. The procession, which lasts for hours and ends at night, starts and ends with a Holy Mass attended by thousands. 

In all previous years, the numbers of candles big and small plus all the other Catholic paraphernalia like rosaries, crucifixes and effigies of saints (including that of St. Barbara) were enormous during this period. But this year, reports came in of an enormous downfall. Candles were scarce and expensive due to a national shortage of paraffin. Rosaries and other religious objects are normally imported, but this year they became scarce and expensive thanks to the same evil befalling meat, milk and toilet paper – there is almost no money for importations. The imported fabric from which the purple tunics of penitents are made, have made these garments very expensive, almost unpayable for the humble faithful. One lady stated in an interview some days ago that paying 2,000 bolivars for her purple garment, a piece of clothing she might wear only once, that amount being maybe half her monthly salary, is her way of paying her penitence, and that is why she will buy it. For non-Catholics this may sound ridiculous, but such is the faith of so many Venezuelans that they keep believing that the crisis hitting their country in an unprecedented way, will one day be solved with the help of Heaven. Lacking all other hope, this is the only hope that keeps Venezuelans marching on through the scarcity of everything which now has reached critical levels.

Maybe in a desperate but massive attempt to exorcize Venezuela from all

evils that have fallen upon this country, religiosity has risen, not only within the mainstream faiths, but also in the religious fringe that I have described earlier. The people filling the streets honoring the Christ bearing his cross everywhere in Venezuela on Holy Wednesday each Easter, and specially this one, show the faith in that their country will come out of the horrible crisis that is causing children to lack milk and go to bed without supper. In a peaceful way, with no violence or bloodshed. The Nazareno of San Pablo (above and at the beginning), besides having the name of being miraculous, has a special characteristic: the centuries-old wooden statue is visibly bending more and more to the cross, like it is curving to its weight. Still, the statue stands strong, showing us that despite all the pressure and the weight, we should stand strong and not give in to anything that might push us in the wrong way.

Realizing this has made me understand why Venezuela is still holding on to a situation that would have caused violence in other regions. Red meat is GONE from the butcher shops, as is chicken. The scarcity has increased more and more, and the government, instead of addressing the problem, is mounting an enormous propaganda campaign against US president Obama freezing the US$ bank accounts of a bunch of corrupt Venezuelan generals and officials. A campaign that is followed only by Venezuelans, in fact, because the rest of the world doesn’t give a hoot about it. So, with the rest of the planet turning their backs on Venezuela, it is religion and faith that hold this country together. No matter the individual religion or creed.  

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© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015