(David M. Guss) The Festive State Race, Ethnicity

The Festive State
The Festive State

r a c e , e t h n i c i t y , a n d
n a t i o n a l i s m a s c u l t u r a l
p e r f o r m a n c e
d a v i d m . g u s s
u n i v e r s i t y o f c a l i f o r n i a p r e s s
Berkeley Los Angeles London
Frontispiece: Logo from the Festival of Tradition program, 1948.
Courtesy of the FUNDEF Archives.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
2000 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Guss, David M.
The festive state : race, ethnicity, and nationalism as cultural perfor-
mance / David M. Guss.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-20289-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-520-22331-4 (pbk. :
alk. paper)
1. VenezuelaSocial conditions. 2. Popular cultureVenezuela.
3. FestivalsLatin AmericaVenezuela. 4. Cultural performance
Latin AmericaVenezuela. 5. MestizosVenezuela. I. Title.
HN363.5.G87 2000
306.0987dc21 99-056890
CIP
Manufactured in Canada
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
ANSI / NISO Z39 0.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
To those before and after
To my father, Harry A. Guss, 19151991,
& to my daughter, Chloe Indigo
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Chapter 1. Variations on a Venezuelan Quartet 1
The Popular Terrain 3
Cultural Performance and the Production of Meaning 7
Traditionalizing the Traditional and the Ideology of
Folklore 12
The Venezuelan Quartet 18
Chapter 2. The Selling of San Juan: The Performance of History
in an Afro-Venezuelan Community 24
San Juan Bautista 25
San Juan Nacional 33
San Juan Monumental 37
San Juan Cimarro n 43
San Juan Congo 52
Chapter 3. Indianness and the Construction of Ethnicity in
the Day of the Monkey 60
The Performance of Ethnicity 60
Santo Domingo de Guzman 63
The Dance of the Monkey 65
The Feast of Fools 72
The Sultan of the Guarapiche 77
viii c o n t e n t s
Chapter 4. Full Speed Ahead with Venezuela: The Tobacco
Industry, Nationalism, and the Business of Popular
Culture 90
The Origins of a Foundation 94
The Workshops: Where the Past and the Future
Come Together 103
The Image of Culture 116
Chapter 5. From Village Square to Opera House: Tamunangue
and the Theater of Domination 129
The Politics of Performance 129
The Choreography of Mestizaje 134
The Choreography of Race and the Dance of the
Blacks 148
The Theater of Domination 154
Notes 173
Bibliography 207
Index 231
ix
Illustrations
f i g u r e s
1. Floor plan for the Festival of Tradition, 1948 19
2. San Juan Bautista 31
3. The mina 32
4. San Juan being carried from the church 41
5. San Juan drummers playing the mina 48
6. Africa Is Also Our Mother Country 51
7. San Juan Congo 57
8. Chilo Rojas and the Parranda de Gavilan 67
9. A parranda playing the ciriaco 69
10. Monkey mask 71
11. Transformation of the workforce, 1974 78
12. San Pedro Parranda with gourd masks and straw hats 81
13. Billboard at the entrance to Caicara 82
14. Mural dedicated to the Day of the Monkey 84
15. Monument to the Dance of the Monkey 85
x i l l u s t r a t i o n s
16. Mono performers dressed as a television crew 87
17. The Talleres de Cultura Popular, Caracas 107
18. Bigott-sponsored concert, Caracas 119
19. The Bigott train 126
20. Musicians performing a Tamunangue 136
21. The Batalla 137
22. Directing a dancer in the Juruminga 139
23. Attaching a kerchief in the Caballito 141
24. The Seis Corrido 143
25. San Antonio being carried through Sanare 157
26. Mar a Magdalena Colmenarez Losada, 1978 166
27. A mixed Batalla at the Talleres de Cultura Popular, Caracas 169
28. Alma de Lara performing in Caracas 171
m a p o f v e n e z u e l a 26
xi
Acknowledgments
Benito Yrady led me into this project by introducing me to the village of
Curiepe between visits to the Yekuana in the early 1980s. It was with
him as well that I rst attended the Day of the Monkey, met Chilo Rojas,
and got splattered with blue paint. Few guides to popular culture are as
able and knowledgeable as Benito, and I have been fortunate to have
him as a friend throughout. Curiepe is a town that denes hospitality,
and there are many in it who not only aided my work but also opened
their homes to me. I am grateful to each of them but above all to Angel
Lucci, Tomas and Norris Ponce, Isabel Cobos, and Javier Rodr guez. Je-
su s Chucho Garc a, Fernando Yvoski, and Alfredo Chaco n also helped
navigate the rich world of Barloventen o culture.
In Caracas, Carlos Garc a, among others, helped introduce me to an-
other world, that of urban popular culture. He also encouraged me to
begin investigating the Bigott Foundation. Members of the Clavija, Tulio
Hernandez, Mar a Teresa Lo pez, and Bigott director Antonio Lo pez
xii a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
Ortega all contributed to making this study possible. I am especially
indebted to Jose Perez of the Popular Culture Workshops, a wonderful
teacher, friend, and musician. He shared with me not only his work at
the talleres but also his great insight into the life of Tamunangue.
But my real introduction to Tamunangue, as well as to the community
of Sanare, was through my dear friend Norma Gonzalez. In addition to
sharing her enormous experience, she also aided in the transcription of
various tapes, particularly those of Jose Humberto Castillo, El Caiman,
that inimitable storyteller to whom I am also very grateful. While in
Sanare, I also worked with Lotte Dars of Denmark. Her many insights
and years of support have been invaluable.
My work in different communities over a number of years has been
possible only through the generous support of various foundations and
institutes. They have included the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthro-
pological Research, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for
the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Rockefeller
Foundation for the Humanities, the Latin American Studies Center at
the University of Maryland, the Center for the Study of World Religions
and the Committee on Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University,
and, nally, Tufts University, from which I received two Faculty Re-
search Awards.
I am also grateful to the American Ethnologist, Public Culture, and the
Latin American Studies Center Series at the University of Maryland,
where versions of three chapters of this book previously appeared. One
of them was awarded the Joseph T. Criscenti Best Article Prize for 1996;
another, Honorable Mention, the Joseph T. Criscenti Best Article Prize
for 1994. I am grateful to the New England Council of Latin American
Studies for both of these honors.
Grateful acknowledgment is also made to Miguel Betancourt of Quito,
who so generously provided his painting Fiesta 19891990 for the cover;
to the archives of the Foundation for Ethnomusicology and Folklore
(FUNDEF) for graphic materials from the 1948 Festival of Tradition; to
the Bigott Foundation for concert and workshop photographs as well as
the image of its train logo; and to Mar a Magdalena Colmenarez for
Tamunangue photographs from her private collection. I am equally
a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s xiii
grateful to John Sposato for his wonderful design suggestions and for
his help in producing the map. My many thanks, too, to Peg Bruno, who
so carefully oversaw the nal preparation of the manuscript.
Numerous friends and colleagues read various drafts of this book and
contributed valuable suggestions and ideas throughout. I am particu-
larly grateful to Jean-Paul Dumont, Ken George, Richard Handler, Cath-
erine Howard, Peter Hulme, Lisa Markowitz, David Roche, Rosalind
Shaw, Charles Stewart, Lawrence Sullivan, Kate Wheeler, and Norm
Whitten. It was Yolanda Salas, however, who made the greatest contri-
bution. Her insight, wisdom, and wit concerning every aspect of Vene-
zuelan culture have enriched this entire book, and without her endless
cheer and generosity, it might not have been written.
1
Chapter 1 Variations on a Venezuelan Quartet
Cuando hay santo nuevo
los viejos no hacen milagros.
When theres a new saint
old ones dont make miracles.
ceposnvenezuelan saying
Catuaro is a village in the eastern hills of Venezuela, not far from the
Gulf of Cariaco. It is so small that for many years its ancient church was
shuttered and there was not even a priest to hold mass. For much of this
time an Indian woman, referred to as La Padra, instead of Padre or
Father, conducted services. Only for Holy Week was the church
opened and the various saints taken out and carried in long processions
through the town. People would come from all over then, descending
from their isolated homes in the mountains to pay promesas made to
individual saints during the year. For the men, these promises meant
hoisting onto their shoulders huge platforms with the gure of a saint
on top. Powerful attachments formed between the bearers and the saints,
attachments lled with deep love and emotion. But the greatest devo-
tion was claimed to be that of the men who carried La Dolorosa, the
2 v a r i a t i o n s o n a v e n e z u e l a n q u a r t e t
Sorrowful Mary. For them the relation was said to be protective if not
macho, one so profound as to border on the erotic.
Then the government, in an attempt to preserve its national heritage,
began to send restorers to various neglected churches throughout the
country. In Catuaro, as elsewhere, the saints were carefully inventoried.
Missing and broken parts were repaired and replaced, after which each
saint was completely repainted. The specialist sent fromCaracas worked
alone in the church for several weeks. Then one day she announced a
startling discovery. While working on the Dolorosa, she found that the
beloved saint was not who she appeared to be. Under her clothes, a wig,
and countless layers of paint was actually another gure, that of San
Juan Bautista, a saint often portrayed as a young boy. The people of
Catuaro were thrown into panic, but none more so than the devotees of
the Dolorosa. After years of bonding with this gentle female gure, the
revelation that she was actually a male saint challenged their own iden-
tities. At rst they insisted that the restorer leave the saint exactly as it
had been. But some argued that if it was really San Juan, its entire iden-
tity would have to be changed. The town soon split into bitter factions,
each supporting a different position. Finally a public meeting was called
to decide the issue once and for all. In the end, despite the misgivings
that many continued to hold, it was agreed that the Dolorosa would
become San Juan Bautista.
I rst heard this story in 1984 while visiting the nearby remnants
of San Francisco de Guarapiche, a 270-year-old village that had just
been ooded in order to make way for the El Guamo Dam (Guss
1984). The strange sight of a church spire along with several other
artifacts peering up out of the water was an eerie metaphor for the
way progress and modernity seem to swallow everything in their
path yet never wholly digest them. But it was the story of the trans-
vestite saint that was to haunt me even more. An odd ssure had
opened up, and inside was a community imagining its own identity.
Of course, if the national government had not intervened with a her-
itage preservation campaign, the faithful of Catuaro might still be pay-
ing homage to an impostor. Yet what was becoming increasingly clear
was the fact that such interventions were now a part of every com-
v a r i a t i o n s o n a v e n e z u e l a n q u a r t e t 3
munitys reality regardless of how isolated it appeared to be. Whether
it was the arrival of tourists, the transmission of television and radio,
the demands of party politics, or the discovery of oil, what were once
called local traditions were now embroiled in a much greater ow
of national and global interests. At its worst, as in San Francisco de
Guarapiche, these concerns could lead to a towns complete destruc-
tion. But in most instances the consequences have been less severe,
and, as in Catuaro, people have found ways to negotiate and discuss
them. For the anthropologist, the challenge has been to discover new
strategies with which to present this increasing collision between the
local, the national, and the global, between the many forms of cultural
difference that now seem to converge at every point. It is this chal-
lenge of nding a way in which to write about these transformed
cultural landscapes that is at the very heart of this book. And it is
festive behavior, the point of greatest convergence and resistance, that
I take as my point of departure.
t h e p o p u l a r t e r r a i n
Until recently, anthropologists and folklorists have ignored the plural-
istic nature of festive forms, preferring to characterize them as the uni-
form expression of a collective consciousness.
1
The origins of this ten-
dency can be traced to the work of Durkheim, along with that of the
functionalists upon whom he had so much inuence. But this only pro-
vides a partial explanation. For although functionalists such as Malinow-
ski and Radcliffe-Brown were determined to deny the importance of
historical consciousness among the peoples they studied, the fact re-
mains that very little historical information has been provided in the
analyses of most ritual and festive traditions. With the absence of such
time depth (often the consequence of single viewings), it has been dif-
cult to present alternatives to the belief that such rites are simply mech-
anisms for the maintenance of social solidarity (Radcliffe-Brown 1965:
164). And yet, the introduction of history has not automatically reversed
such tendencies. Traditions said to have been molded by the demands
of small, bounded communities, where orality and an imaginary lack of
contact were believed to dominate, were often seen as victims of in-
creased literacy and other technological innovations. In fact, it was the
need to rescue these disappearing worlds from the onslaught of his-
tory that gave anthropology its initial sense of urgency and mission.
Coexistence simply did not seem possible. And if modernization per-
mitted any vestiges of this premarket form of behavior to exist, it would
be that relegated to the museum, or to state-sponsored performances
orchestrated to reinforce a new national solidarity.
Fortunately, alternatives to this moribund vision of a contaminated
primitive paradise are now starting to appear. In concepts such as hy-
bridity (Garc a Canclini 1990, 1995), creolization (Hannerz 1992), and
public culture (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1988, 1992), forms of be-
havior previously condemned to immediate extinction once released
from the airtight environments said to have produced them are now
being granted new and even more complex lives. Instead of simply
dissolving into a market-driven global culturescape, these forms may
actually enlarge their semantic elds. The expanded audiences and con-
texts created by such forces as urbanization, tourism, and new technol-
ogy, to name but three, may multiply rather than reduce the range of
meanings suggested by these events. As James Clifford writes:
New dimensions of authenticity (cultural, personal, artistic) are making
themselves felt, denitions no longer centered on a salvaged past.
Rather, authenticity is reconceived as hybrid, creative activity in a local
present-becoming-future. Non-western cultural and artistic works are
implicated by an interconnected world cultural system without neces-
sarily being swamped by it. Local structures produce histories rather
than simply yielding to History. (1987: 126)
In Latin America, various scholars have addressed this particular pro-
cess of modernization, in which the traditional or popular has not been
eliminated but rather reformulated into new social and structural rela-
tions. William Rowe and Vivian Schelling even write of an alternative
modernity, where modern industrial technology comes together with
magic (1991: 105). Whether or not this is always the case, a rearticu-
lation of tradition (Yu dice 1992: 18) has certainly been observed, in
which expressive forms once thought to be limited to small rural, sub-
sistence communities are both adapting and thriving in radically differ-
ent circumstances. Rowe and Schelling locate the beginning of this pro-
cess with the arrival of the Spaniards, claiming that the concepts of
reconversion, resignication and resemanticization are particularly ap-
propriate to popular culture as ways of handling the constant refashion-
ing of cultural signs which keeps alive the sites of the popular and pre-
vents them from being wholly absorbed into the dominant power
structures (1991: 11). But it is in the work of Nestor Garc a Canclini that
this process is most carefully examined.
An Argentine trained in philosophy who now works as an anthro-
pologist in Mexico, Garc a Canclini has attempted to answer in his nu-
merous works why it is that traditional forms of expressive behavior
have expanded rather than disappeared under the pressures of modern-
ization in Latin America. His preoccupation began with a recognition
that such forms, whether artisanal or festive, were consistently dened
in opposition to modernity and hence were incompatible with the
economic forms of organization it imposes (1988: 484). And yet, evidence
demonstrates that traditional production did not collapse in the face of
widespread social and economic change but inserted itself into newmar-
ket and communication systems. While Garc a Canclini offers various
market-inspired explanations for this seemingly contradictory phenom-
enon, he nevertheless insists that it is not a one-way street but rather a
space of contestation in which local and global continue to struggle for
dominance.
2
As a result, Garc a Canclini claims, they are doubly en-
rolled in two systems of cultural production: historical (a process that
gives identity to ethnic groups) and structural (within the present logic
of dependent capitalism) (1988: 486; 1993: 45).
In order to make sense of the various contradictions caused by such
double enrollment, Garc a Canclini develops an analysis that does not
dene popular culture by either its origin or its content but as a system
of production (1993: 11). Recalling the work of Raymond Williams
(1977, 1980) and Janet Wolff (1984), among others, he demonstrates how
this system consists of production, circulation, and consumption and
shows how changes in any one of these three elements may lead to a
signicant shift in both reception and meaning.
The brilliance of Garc a Canclinis analysis is that it undermines the
Western preoccupation with issues of authenticity and tradition, prefer-
ring instead to see them as part of a continually changing interplay of
political, economic, and historical forces. While traditional forms char-
acteristically nd themselves in an asymmetrical relation to the new
structures of power created by these changes, their expressive impor-
tance is not necessarily diminished. In fact, as both the state and private
media solidify their control over ofcial forms of communication, that
of the popular may actually become more important. This does not
mean, however, that the popular should be seen as the exclusive domain
of resistance and protest. As the examples in this book illustrate, these
forms will always be threatened with appropriation and commodica-
tion. Nevertheless, the more that special corporate and political interests
dominate the means of cultural production, the more that popular forms
will be relied upon to express what otherwise has no outlet.
3
And yet,
the very popularity of these formsthe fact that they mobilize so many
potential voters, consumers, and protestersmakes them too valuable
to be left to the people alone. Instead they will become increasingly con-
tested or, as Stuart Hall claimed, cultural battleelds (1981: 237).
This view of the popular, particularly as it is constellated in festivals,
is far different from the one I expected to nd when I began to seriously
observe them in 1989. Like many, I believed that popular culture, and
its corollary folklore, were being rapidly devoured by a market hungry
for new products and consumers and a central government in need of
unifying symbols. My rst visits during the years prior had led me to
this conclusion as I saw evidence of commercial paraphernalia displayed
everywherethe drummers wearing ofcial T-shirts inscribed with the
names of beers, the streets hung with banners advertising cigarettes and
rum, the busloads of tourists, the postfestival parties featuring imported
salsa and rock bands. Then there was the presence of the government
and the various political parties, which regularly used such events to
promote causes or gain support. But as I began to observe more closely,
I realized that beneath these dissonant intrusions were many new local
forms struggling to emerge. The process was not simply a one-way street
in which the center inevitably consumed the periphery. Rather, it was
lled with ambiguity and contradiction, with the popular and the elite
constantly shifting places. Meaning, it became clear, was not something
that simply resided in an ideal model (or text) waiting to be released.
It was something that was created with each performance, and to un-
derstand it meant comprehending the entire context in which it was
produced. It also meant recognizing that this context was continually
changing and that festivals were being readily deployed to meet these
changes.
c u l t u r a l p e r f o r m a n c e
a n d t h e p r o d u c t i o n o f m e a n i n g
An important strategy for relocating festive practice in the sociopolitical
reality in which it occurs has been to view it as cultural performance.
The term, which Milton Singer introduced while working in India in the
1950s, was applied to a range of clearly framed occasions, such as wed-
dings, festivals, dances, concerts, recitations, and even devotional mov-
ies. Employing this category was a way for Singer to organize the over-
whelming diversity of Indian experience while revealing how Indians
themselves conceptualized it. As Singer explained:
Indians, and perhaps all peoples, think of their culture as encapsulated
in such discrete performances, which they can exhibit to outsiders as
well as to themselves. For the outsider these can conveniently be taken
as the most concrete observable units of the cultural structure, for each
performance has a denitely limited time span, a beginning and end,
an organized program of activity, a set of performers, an audience, and
a place and occasion of performance. (1959: xiii)
Equally important to Singer was the way in which these cultural per-
formances allowed him to grapple with the complex relation between
the innumerable local, indigenous forms, or Little Traditions, and an
elusive, overarching national one, the Great Tradition (1959, 1972).
Although sensitive to the way in which these traditions interacted and
co-opted one another, Singer was aware of the need to historicize his
analysis even more.
A study that did succeed in exploring the full historical contingency
of cultural performance was the pioneering work of Abner Cohen (1980,
1993). By looking at the development of Londons Notting Hill Carnival
from its inception in 1965, Cohen was able to overcome the limited time
depth that has plagued most studies of ritual behavior. Identifying his
approach as a dramaturgical one, he shows how the carnival has re-
sponded to various socioeconomic changes, taking on new meanings
with each performance. Although the celebration, like all symbolic sys-
tems, is relentlessly multivocal and therefore irreducible to any one
interpretation, he nevertheless argues that certain motivations and ideas
emerge to dominate different phases.
4
As a result, there is no single anal-
ysis that will apply to all performances of the carnival. As Cohen states:
It raise[s] the question of whether popular culture is an opium of the
masses, inspired by the ruling classes as part of the dominant culture,
whether it is a counter culture, an ideology of resistance and opposition,
or whether it is a contested ideological terrain (1993: 134).
In the end, it is all of these things at different times. Yet to understand
exactly which it is at any given moment demands that the carnival be
understood as an historical creation performed by actors who often have
competing interests. By applying a dramaturgical approach, Cohen
avoided identifying the Notting Hill Carnival as the manifestation of a
set of transcendental values and instead focused on the way meaning
was produced through individual performance.
From studies such as those of Singer and Cohen, an outline of what
cultural performance is quickly starts to emerge, and it might be useful
before going any further to consider what at least four key elements of
it are. The rst, as noted by Singer, is that the performances are clearly
framed events set off from what might be considered normative, every-
day reality. While Erving Goffman has provided invaluable insights into
how these performances are framed, keyed, and bracketed
(1974), it is in the work of Victor Turner that the limits of this terrain are
most thoroughly mapped.
5
Through his discussions of ritual process and
social drama, Turner has shown how both separation and breach
establish a space in which intense social transformation can occur (1969,
1974). One should not, however, mistake this spatial and temporal
bounding for an exclusive, hermetically sealed world, particularly as
new forms of mediation continue to redene its borders. In fact, it is the
very porousness of these frames that has made such cultural perfor-
mances, whether they be festivals, fairs, or other forms, so attractive as
sites of investigation. As Turner himself recognized: What was once
considered contaminated, promiscuous, impure is becoming the fo-
cus of postmodern analytical attention (1986: 77; see also Manning
1983: 4).
In addition to being set apart and framed, cultural performances
are important dramatizations that enable participants to understand,
criticize, and even change the worlds in which they live. And it is with-
out doubt this reexive quality that has been the most appreciatedaspect
of cultural performance. The fact that these public displays provide fo-
rums in which communities can reect upon their own realities has
meant that both anthropologists and participants attend to them with
special interest: They are cultural forms about culture, social forms
about society, in which the central meanings and values of a group are
embodied, acted out, and laid open to examination and interpretation
in symbolic form, both by members of that group and by the ethnogra-
pher (Bauman 1986: 133).
And yet, as the question of group becomes more problematized, so
too will the issue of interpretation. Or put another way, whose reality is
it that is being reected? As such, cultural performances will remainboth
contentious and ambiguous, and while the basic structure of an event
may be repeated, enough changes will be implemented so that its mean-
ing is redirected. The same form, therefore, may be used to articulate a
number of different ideas and over time can easily oscillate between
religious devotion, ethnic solidarity, political resistance, national iden-
tity, and even commercial spectacle.
This is precisely what David Cahill (1996) and others have found in
their exhaustive studies of the history of Corpus Christi in Peru. Falling
as it did close to both the solstice (Inti Raymi) and a native harvest
festival, this holiday proved a useful tool in the Spanish co-optation of lo-
cal religions. Yet indigenous peoples found it equally useful for the sub-
versive display of ethnic identity and repressed beliefs, particularly once
all other native forms of dance were outlawed. And even though both
church and Crown tried to eradicate any signs of apostasy, indigenous
peoples eventually subsumed the festival into the newly created Qoyllur
Riti celebration, which in time became Perus greatest expression of na-
tive devotion.
6
Today, more than 400 years after its rst appearance in
the Andes, Corpus Christi is still a semiotic battleeld where, as Cahill
notes, there is so much overlap that it is often unclear what is popular
and what is elite and who is appropriating whom (1996: 101).
Similar examples could also be summoned from other sources, many
closer to home, in which festive forms have become part of local histo-
ries, reecting both their antagonisms and their contradictions. Never-
theless, while the massive colonization of one people by another is by
no means a necessary ingredient, the example of Corpus Christi clearly
illustrates what might be identied as cultural performances third es-
sential featurethe fact that it is a profoundly discursive form of be-
havior. Actors use these events to argue and debate, to challenge and
negotiate. Thus, rather than thinking of cultural performances as simply
texts, to be read and interpreted, a discursive approach recognizes that
they are dialogical and even polyphonic. They are elds of action in
which both dominant and oppressed are able to dramatize competing
claims or, as Jeremy Boissevain states, duel with rituals (1992: 3).
This discursiveness has only increased as local forms become more
entangled within national and global debates. Suddenly, television and
other forms of media have the potential of making every citizen a par-
ticipant if not an authority. To understand this crosstalk (Kelly 1990:
65) now demands a certain binocularity as each tradition leads a double
life, that within its own community and that beyond. But separating
them may be impossible, as the recent example of the Saint Patricks Day
Parade in South Boston demonstrates. After gay and lesbian activists
were refused permission to march in the 1992 New York version of this
event, a support group formed in Boston and applied for the right to
participate, which was rejected by parade organizers. But a state court re-
versed this decision, claiming that their First Amendment rights of ex-
pression were being violated. Although only twenty-ve members of the
gay and lesbian coalition (GLIB) were permitted to march, the parade
was covered by media from around the world. Eventually, in 1995, after
several trials, a parade cancellation, and a veterans protest, the U.S.
Supreme Court overturned the Massachusetts decision and permitted
the organizers to ban their participation. The parade belonged to the
sponsors, the Court held, and it was a violation of their freedom of
speech to force them to express something they did not wish to. For the
Allied War Veterans who ran the parade, this meant expressing tradi-
tional Catholic family values, along with pride in their Irish heritage
and community (Guss 1996a; Walkowski and Connolly 1996). GLIB, on
the other hand, had wished to redene that community as well as to
expand the rights of homosexuals. The choice of the parade as a medium
to do so was a brilliant strategy that had enabled them to communicate
not only with the participants in the event but also with the millions of
viewers and readers throughout the world who followed them as they
wound their way through the streets of Boston to the Supreme Court.
The example of the Saint Patricks Day Parade illustrates how public
celebrations may serve as discursive events challenging notions of fam-
ily, community, and ethnicity. By insisting on their inclusion, IrishAmer-
ican gays and lesbians were forcing other marchers to recognize that
they too were part of the civic body being celebrated. The fact, however,
that the event was mediated by so many additional forms of commu-
nication, including the courts, television, and newsprint, permitted
many beyond the immediate community to also participate in this dis-
course. Yet for most the question was not the enchoric one of who be-
longed in South Boston but a growing national one over issues of sex-
uality and civil rights. In both instances, whether experiencing the event
directly or as mediated through another source, the parade demonstrates
cultural performances fourth key elementthe ability to produce new
meanings and relations. Although this idea is obviously related to no-
tions of reexivity and discursiveness, it underlines the important fact
that these performances are actively engaged in cultural production. As
John MacAloon notes, Performance is constitutive of social experience
and not something merely additive or instrumental (1984: 2). The ex-
pressiveness and creativity that are part of all performative behaviors
therefore must be understood in their truest sense; that is, as poiesis, the
making or producing of something.
As already noted, festive forms have often been dismissed as mere
instruments of social control. Even when they exhibited transgressive or
inverted behavior, they were still perceived as being convenient safety
valves through which the ruling class could dissipate revolutionary en-
ergy and thus maintain the status quo (Gluckman 1954). And while there
is no doubt that many celebratory forms have served dominant interests,
there are also many examples in which they exploded into rebellion
(Burke 1978: 199204). But the idea of cultural production (as opposed
to simple reproduction) is not contingent on the permanent overturning
of the social order, for oppositional practices may take many other forms
as well. In addition, there is the possibility (as chapter 4 illustrates) that
what is produced may only shift allegiances from one dominant force to
another. What is important is that cultural performances be recognized
as sites of social action where identities and relations are continually
being recongured. Often this process is imperceptible, with the event
appearing as a mere afrmation of the relations that already exist.
At other moments, however, groups will use a festive form to shift the
way in which history is told, to rethink the boundaries of a community,
or to reconsider issues of race and ethnicity or, as in the case of the Saint
Patricks Day Parade, sexuality. In each instance, the festive form will
remain what Mikhail Bakhtin claimed it was: a powerful means of
grasping reality . . . not the naturalistic, eeting, meaningless, scattered
aspect of reality but the very process of becoming, its meaning and di-
rection (1984: 211).
t r a d i t i o n a l i z i n g t h e t r a d i t i o n a l
a n d t h e i d e o l o g y o f f o l k l o r e
The notion that festivals could serve as powerful vehicles for the forging
of new identities has long been recognized by social architects on both
the right and the left. One of the earliest of these was Jean-Jacques Rous-
seau, who even before the French Revolution suggested the use of fes-
tivals as a type of social dramaturgy that would both instruct and
uplift a newly liberated human being (Duvignaud 1976: 16). Later, when
the Revolution did occur, festivals were immediately set in place. As
their namesFestival of the Federation, Festival of Reason, Festival of
the Supreme Beingsuggest, these were meant to effect a transfer of
sacrality from the Old Regime to the new (Beezley, Martin, and French
1994: xix; Ozouf 1988). Similar experiments also occurred in the after-
math of the Russian and Mexican Revolutions, with newly created fes-
tivals serving as secular analogues instilling faith in an infant state. The
extensive use of festivals by Hitler and his National Socialists, on the
other hand, combined folkloric exhumations with newpatriotic holidays
(Day of the Martyrs) as the new German was to be a mythic incar-
nation of the old. And more recently, when Cuba sought a way to com-
memorate the beginning of the July Revolution and Antigua its eman-
cipation, they simply rescheduled carnival to coincide with them. Such
examples, which continue to proliferate with the emergence of new
nations and the rebirth of old ones, remind us that states too have always
recognized the incomparable power of festivals to produce new social
imaginaries.
7
The manner in which states have appropriated these forms, however,
has had consequences far different from those of other interventions,
particularly when the festival in question is uprooted from the specic-
ities of its local environment. Events that were not only structured by
local histories and conicts but that also celebrated them now become
symbols for a nation at large, a purpose for which they were never in-
tended. To accomplish this has required that the hallmark of festive be-
havior, its superabundance of symbols and meanings, be shrunk as
much as possible to a handful of quickly and easily understood ideas.
At its most reduced, a festival is transformed into an icon of national
tradition, a borrowed image of difference made to stand for the nation
as a whole.
8
With the audience magnied many times over, the subtle
ambiguities of local performance, the layerings of history and context,
must be all but eliminated. In analyzing this process, Garc a Canclini
claimed that popular forms suffer a type of double reduction: from
the rich ethnic diversity of the regional to the unied national and from
the ux of social process to that of codied object (1988: 479).
Although it is tempting to dismiss the results of such reductions as
mere representations, like paintings or tableaux based on live models,
these performances have to be understood as parts of the same discur-
sive traditions from which they have come. Like Richard Handlers in-
sightful example of rural Quebecois taking a break from their Christmas
reveillon dance in order to watch themselves perform it on English-
language television, these variations are continually fed back in a circular
loop (1988: 5556). The effect of this expanded discourse, or what Han-
dler calls the process of cultural objectication, is twofold: aesthetic
and ideological. The rst of these will be dealt with extensively in the
discussion of Tamunangue, a suite of dances, in chapter 5. Still, the aes-
thetic makeover required in order to translate these forms into national
spectacles shares many features cross-culturally. The privileging of the
visual, accomplished through colorful costumes and dramatic choreog-
raphy, combines with technical excellence and virtuosity to present a
cheerful, unceasingly optimistic world. This increased theatricalization
abjures any mention of true historical conditions and replaces themwith
the staged creation of a mythic, detemporalized past.
Of course the fact that this aestheticization is driven by the need to
erase any signs of conict, poverty, or oppression (common elements of
all popular forms) underscores the impossibility of disconnecting the
aesthetic from other issues of ideology. For at the heart of all tradition-
alizing processes is the desire to mask over real issues of power and
domination. By classifying popular forms as traditions, they are ef-
fectively neutralized and removed from real timeor at least that is the
hope of ruling elites who wish to manipulate them as part of a much
larger legitimizing enterprise. Promoted as natural entities with ties to
both land and origin, they become important supports for broader claims
to national authority. It is in relation to these claims that questions of
authenticity suddenly become important as well. For if traditions
are to be commodied like valuable family jewels (national patrimony),
then they must also be subject to some means of verication. In this
sense, authenticity and tradition are coconspirators in ensuring that the
socially constructed and contingent nature of festive practice will con-
tinue to be misrecognized.
Equally important to the ideology of folklore is the selection process
by which particular forms are canonized as ofcial traditions. As Wil-
liams has effectively argued, all traditions are by their very nature se-
lective and must be viewed as part of the hegemonic work of natural-
izing asymmetric relations of power (1977: 115120). Choices are guided,
therefore, by the desire of certain dominant groups to impose specic
versions of history and the past. The success of this hegemonic process
is evidenced by the tenacity with which local groups have incorporated
this authenticating discourse into their own festive vocabularies. Part of
this is an economic strategy, as such valorization often leads to the pro-
curement of government support and the attraction of tourists. But it is
just as internalized in the way that competing village groups debate
among themselves. As Jane Cowan reports, as soon as the carnival in
the community of Sohos in northern Greece was discovered for its
unique folkloric and touristic qualities, local factions began to struggle
over control. The language of their rival claims was primarily that of the
newly imported discourse of tradition:
The Sohoians subsequently heightened awareness of the uniqueness of
the local celebration and of the fame, prestige, and resources it poten-
tially brings to the town has not enhanced feelings of solidarity and
community. Rather, opposing communal factionsby and large, party-
political factions acting under the auspices of ostensibly non-political
education, cultural, and folkloric associationsstruggle for control
over the celebratory proceedings. For a variety of reasons, the discourse
of tradition has emerged as the dominantthough not the only
legitimating discourse in local controversies over how Carnival should
be celebrated. Appropriating political party rhetoric, folkloric texts, and
various scholars authoritative opinions, each faction attempts to
characterize its own initiatives as traditional, authentic, and
pure, while castigating those of its enemies. (1992: 174175)
A similar example of this internalizing process is to be found in
chapter 3. When disputes over the origins of Caicaras December 28
celebration surfaced, those supporting claims for the indigenous-
inspired Day of the Monkey invoked the authority of ofcial government
recognition. They subsequently began to refer to the event as a national
folkloric dance and the folkloric festival of the Monkey. And when
the local church instituted an annual mass to commemorate past cele-
brants, it was called Misa de los Folkloristas Difuntas (Mass for the De-
ceased Folklorists). The implications of this are quite startling: It is as if
a group of Native American performers decided to call themselves an-
thropologists in order to legitimate a certain interpretation. It is also
ironic that the role of scholar and practitioner should be symbolically
reversed at a moment when various non-Western peoples are resisting
attempts by contemporary anthropologists to undo their disciplines past
cultural inventions.
9
But such inversions are not uncommon, as recent debates at the Smith-
sonians annual Festival of American Folklife demonstrate. Here it has
been folklorists who have insisted on an ascetic approach to staging,
discouraging costumes and other dramatic modes of representation
(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998: 7274). The folk, on the other hand, hav-
ing incorporated these presentational strategies into their repertoires,
now argue for their inclusion. These dizzying reversals conrm once
again that what denes the popular is its relation to the dominant order
and not some inherent quality or content. For, as Hall cautions, Almost
every xed inventory will betray us [and] this years radical symbol or
slogan will be neutralized into next years fashion (1981: 235)and,
one might also say, the reverse. One only has to consider the current
symbol of indigenous womens resistance in Boliviathe pollera, a style
of native dress closely patterned on the clothing of the countrys former
colonial elite.
The instability of these symbols demonstrates once again that no he-
gemony is ever total and that even within the most folklorized traditions
new emergent forms will continue to appear (Williams 1977: 123). At
the same time, it is important to recognize that there has been a long
history of resistance to these appropriations throughout Latin America.
As early as 1927, the great Peruvian theorist Jose Carlos Mariategui
warned:
Contrary to what the nationalists would like, tradition is alive and
changing. Those who would forbid it to renew and enrich itself are
only fabricating it. They are killing it if they want it to be xed and
dead, a projection of the past into a spiritless present. . . . I am speaking
here of that tradition which is called patrimony and historical continu-
ity. . . . Tradition is made up of heterogeneous and contradictory ele-
ments. To try to reduce it to a single concept, to be satised with
its so-called essence, is to renounce its many crystallizations. (1970
[1927]: 117)
10
Some in Latin America have insisted that the solution is to ban the
use of the term folklore altogether and to replace it with either pop-
ular culture or popular arts (de Carvalho 1991; de Carvalho-Neto
1990).
11
The mere application of this term, they theorize, creates a type
of double bind. On the one hand, it stigmatizes whatever it is applied
to, causing it to be viewed as marginal and backward. To be labeled
folkloric is to be premodern, preliterate, preindustrial, and, just as
important, non-European. Yet this second-class citizenshipis maintained
by the desire to preserve the integrity and authenticity of these forms.
The situation becomes even more perilous when traditions are elevated
to the status of national patrimony, for any alterations may now be
viewed as acts of disrespect or, even worse, treason. The policing of these
forms is commonly attributed to professional folklorists who vigilantly
guard against any innovation or change.
In Venezuela, Jesu s Garc a and other activists have begun calling for
the de-folklorization of traditional culture, arguing that it is the rst
step in regaining control of the means of cultural production (1992:
135). He tells of a time in the 1940s when the Afro-Venezuelan com-
munities of Barlovento were lled with musical experimentation and
innovation. Trombones, trumpets, and saxophones were being intro-
duced to the famous drum ensembles, and new rhythms and lyrics
were being developed. He equates this with the type of creative explo-
sion that was bringing salsa and merengue to other parts of the Carib-
bean. But in 1946 the Servicio de Investigaciones Folklo ricas Nacio-
nales (the National Folklore Investigations Service) was created, and
overnight all of this came to an end. Rural black culture was suddenly
put under glass, and a do not disturb sign was hung on it. Yet this
loss of control may actually have stimulated rather than silenced cre-
ativity, and what were perceived as primarily religious forms may
have entered into a much larger discourse, where these very issues of
oppression could be articulated.
t h e v e n e z u e l a n q u a r t e t
Although the National Folklore Service was legally established by the
Ministry of Education in October 1946, it was not actually inaugurated
until February of the following year. The occasion was an exhibition of
photographs documenting the San Juan festival and drum dances of the
black communities of Barlovento. Like so many early anthropological
exhibits, it was held at a natural science museum. Then, several months
later, when Ro mulo Gallegos was selected as president in Venezuelas
rst democratic elections, the service was enlisted to organize the main
inaugural event. This Festival of Tradition, as it was called, would be
a great celebration of a new nations unique heritage. After years of
dictatorship, it would symbolically announce that the government now
belonged to the people and, at the same time, would attempt to dene
who they were. As the services director, Juan Liscano, said in his open-
ing remarks, In organizing this festival, this government recognized
three fundamental things: that in order to govern democratically you
need popular support; that in order to develop a sense of ones own
nationality, one needs to understand ones own Tradition; that Tradition,
in the nal instance, is Folklore (1950: 217).
12
The event, which was held in a Caracas bull ring, began on February
17 and ran for ve consecutive evenings. The crowds of up to 15,000
were both delighted and amazed. For few had ever imagined that such
things existed in Venezuela, a fact that many still recounted to me nearly
fty years after they attended the festival. The sixteen groups that Lis-
cano assembled had been brought from small rural communities from
throughout the country. None had ever performed onstage, nor had
they ever considered their music and dances anything other than acts of
religious devotion (Fig. 1). Their audience was usually that of a saint
Figure 1. Floor plan for the Festival of Tradition, 1948. (Original drawing by
Miguel Cardona, courtesy of the FUNDEF Archives)
who was being honored or repaid for a particular favor. But it was a
challenge to nd a unique popular culture in Venezuela that was not
already attached to the church. This contradiction, however, would be
only one of many as these forms now gained new meanings as symbols
of national identity and pride.
While the Festival of Tradition had a tremendous impact on the way
that urban populations subsequently viewed Venezuela, it also trans-
formed the worlds of the rural actors who had participated in it. Liscano
was particularly aware of this, and, in an article published the following
year, he commented on the sudden self-consciousness that the perform-
ers experienced as they realized they were now parts of a tradition.
But the real payoff for Liscano was in the way these individual forms
all blended together to create a new national synthesis:
Nothing could match the emotion we felt when, at the rst of ve re-
hearsals, we saw the astonishment that the dances and music of certain
Venezuelans aroused in other Venezuelans. When, for example, the
plainsman applauded the mountaineer, the man of the coast praised the
farmer from the central valleys, or the Indian of Goajira beheld the
Black of Barlovento. This meeting produced an immediate stimulation,
an awareness of tradition itself, that exalted the dancers to heights of
aesthetic perfection. Each group yearned to surpass the others in fair
ght and win new prestige for its own region. Moreover, putting this
variety of traditional expressions of the people in contact gave rise to
cultural exchange, to the perfection of techniques and enrichment of
tones. This is the very process of culture: the cross-breeding of expres-
sions and of peoples to attain a perfect synthesis. (1949: 35)
13
For those participating in the Festival of Tradition, the folklorization
process had begun. Permanently suspended between the worlds of ritual
obligation and national spectacle, these festive forms now began to ne-
gotiate a new and complex reality.
Like the lives of those who animated them, they too existed in in-
creasingly different environments. As the tensions between these reali-
tiesbe they local and national, secular and religious, or household and
marketcontinued to develop, it would be through such cultural per-
formances that these conicts were dramatized. This is not to say that
festivals had not already served as important vehicles for articulating
new and oppositional views in Venezuela. The Caracas Carnival, in par-
ticular, had long been a site of active, and even violent, contestation. In
fact, it was there that the rst student protests were mounted against the
Go mez regime in 1928, events that only culminated twenty years later
with the election of Gallegos.
14
But the Festival of Tradition marked a
special turning point. For the rst time festivals were being transported
from one location to another and their performances expanded to in-
clude national and even global signicance.
15
For the investigator interested in historicizing the way in which fes-
tive practices have been understood, the freshness of these events offers
a rare opportunity. Yet there is also a paradox: No sooner does one pick
up the trail, when suddenly it explodes in a maze of different directions.
If in their isolated communities these forms seemed to submit to a to-
talizing analysis, their newly situated circumstances resist it at every
level. With the competition of local factions, political parties, commercial
interests, government, church, media, and tourism all tearing at the
meaning of these events, there is no longer any possibility of reducing
them to a single model. And yet, although the luxury of such a totalizing
vision may have vanished, a more realistic view has replaced it. Instead
of speaking about what festivals mean, the focus has shifted to howtheir
multiple meanings are produced.
In selecting the quartet of examples for this study, I was concerned
not only with exploring how celebratory practices create meaning but
also with using them to address the greater problem of how anthropol-
ogists can represent the realities of culture today. In particular, I was
concerned with Venezuela, a country I had come to know well since rst
going to work there in 1976. Although it was clear that no number of
examples could ever exhaust the innite possibilities that Venezuelans
had for describing themselves and their world, I selected four cases that
might at least touch on the cardinal points. In addition to reecting the
great ethnic and geographical diversity of this nation of 23 million peo-
ple, the examples also suggest the range of ways in which festive be-
haviors can be deployed. And yet, none of these should be seen as being
completely independent from any other. Like spokes in a wheel, they all
intersect in the center and share an equal preoccupation with their re-
lation to the state. But if the dialogues in which they are engaged share
many of the same referents, what they do with them is determined by
radically different histories.
In the case of Curiepes San Juan Festival, the celebration itself has
been an important form of historical remembering. Manipulated at var-
ious times by both national and commercial interests, the festival has
most recently served to reconsolidate the community in a time of tre-
mendous social turmoil. Equally important, it has created a space in
which the history of its Afro-Venezuelan participants can be recalledand
celebrated. The fact that this history has been erased from all ofcial
accounts has transformed the event into an important site of oppositional
practice. It has also provided its participants with a way in which to
speak about the commonly avoided issue of race and how it is both
constructed and denied.
The Day of the Monkey, which takes place in the eastern village of
Caicara, is concerned with recalling another history, that of Venezuelas
pre-Columbian population. However, some members of the community
challenge this indigenous interpretation and question whether it is not
a recent invention. This conict reveals the importance of the festival to
those members who have been forced to migrate to the cities in order to
nd work. Its invented ethnicity provides them with a new form of sol-
idarity in a respatialized world. It also creates a new ambiguity in rela-
tion to the state as members try to enlist ofcial support for their claims
of authenticity.
The popular culture campaign instituted by British American To-
baccos Bigott Foundation introduces another key actor in the massi-
cation of these festive forms: the multinational corporation. With head-
quarters in Caracas, this foundation has been active in almost every area
of cultural production since 1981. Not only have its school, publications,
and television programs multiplied the audiences for these forms, they
have also helped redene the way they are interpreted and performed.
At the same time, they have provided British American Tobacco with a
new criollo identity. An analysis of the Bigott Foundations work dem-
onstrates that the discourse of tradition is now more deterritorialized
than ever and must take into account both urban and transnational
voices.
The Tamunangue celebration danced in the western state of Lara to
honor San Antonio de Padua has also been affected by this deterrito-
rializing process. Often referred to as Venezuelas most beautiful folk-
loric dance, Tamunangue has been staged in numerous performative
contexts, including museums, festivals, television, and even the national
opera house. Part of its attraction has been its association with the Ve-
nezuelan racial ideal of mestizaje, or mestizoness. Yet many also con-
test this, claiming that it is an African dance. As its choreography has
changed to accommodate new performative demands, so too has the
relationship of the dancers. Of particular importance has been the way
in which gendered roles have been redened, paralleling in many ways
the emerging status of Venezuelan women. By tracing this movement
along with the directorial decisions involved, the important place of aes-
thetics in the politics of performance can be identied.
In each instance, the festive forms are viewed not as static, authori-
tative texts but rather as unique performances responding to contem-
porary historical and social realities. All four are saturated with multiple
and contested meanings. Whether they are indigenous, African, or mes-
tizo, urban or rural, they are the sites of continual struggle, public stages
on which competing interests converge to both challenge and negotiate
identity. And yet, as these examples demonstrate, the location of these
stages, along with the actors, are continually shifting. By presenting a
multisite ethnography of four intersecting cases, the ux and dynamism
of present-day Venezuela will hopefully be captured. For it is only in
this intersection of forms and meanings that we can perceive identity as
a performed reality, a layering of metaphors and symbols drawn from
the full range of human experience. And it is in the festive state, above
all, that these identities are imagined and created.
24
Chapter 2 The Selling of San Juan
t h e p e r f o r m a n c e o f h i s t o r y
i n a n a f r o - v e n e z u e l a n c o m m u n i t y
Si Dios fuera negro
todo cambiar a.
Ser a nuestra raza
la que mandar a.
If God were black
all would change.
It would be our race
that held the reins.
s i d i o s f u e r a n e g r o ,
s a l s a c o m p o s i t i o n
b y r o b e r t o a n g l e r o
Even the most casual perusal of anthropological literature over the last
fteen years will reveal an increasing, if not obsessive, preoccupation
with what some have called the selective uses of the past (Chapman,
McDonald, and Tonkin 1989).
1
The growing awareness that histories
(and not merely History, writ large) are more than simply static
traditions inherited from a neutral past parallels an equally signicant
realization that the most common subjects of anthropological study (that
is, oral-based tribal cultures) actually possess historical consciousness.
The erosion, therefore, of functionalisms long-dominant view of Prim-
itive Man as an ahistoric, mythic being has gradually given way to one
of contested realities in which any purported absence of history becomes
t h e s e l l i n g o f s a n j u a n 25
suspect as part of a privileged construction of it. In this sense, the ack-
nowledgment of history or, inversely, its denial is not about the accuracy
of memory; it is about the relationship to power. Although Arjun Ap-
padurai, in a 1981 article, attempted to rein in what he called the wide-
spread assumption that the past is a limitless and plastic symbolic re-
source, he nevertheless insisted that it is through the inherent
debatability of the past that cultures nd a way not only to talk about
themselves but also to change (1981: 201, 218).
This view, that history is primarily about the contemporary social
relations of those who tell it, has important repercussions for the way in
which any group denes itself in relation to another. It is for this reason,
Raymond Williams writes, that much of the most accessible and inu-
ential work of the counter-hegemony is historical: the recovery of dis-
carded areas or the redress of selective and reductive interpretations
(1977: 116). Nowhere, perhaps, is this observation more true than in the
experience of the African-descended populations of the Americas.
Brought to the New World under brutal conditions that quickly severed
them from all ethnic, linguistic, and familial ties, these populations have
been systematically denied the histories that others accept as a birthright.
Yet many of these groups have shown, through often brilliant and re-
sourceful strategies, that the past is recuperable and that proud and au-
tonomous histories may be hidden within it. One such group that has
demonstrated this is the Afro-Venezuelan community of Curiepe, a vil-
lage located just two hours east of Caracas (see map). For the people of
Curiepe the dramatic vehicle with which to tell this history has been the
performance of a three-day drum festival dedicated to San Juan.
s a n j u a n b a u t i s t a
The Fiesta de San Juan, known in English as either Saint Johns Day or
Midsummer Eve, is considered one of the oldest of all church festivals
(James 1963: 226). Strategically placed six months before Christmas, it
celebrates the birth of Saint John the Baptist, herald of the New Era and,
as Jesus said, the greatest prophet among those born of women (Luke
0
0 100 200 Mi. 50
100 200 300 Km.
CARI B B E AN S E A
VENEZUELA
COLOMBIA
BRAZIL
GUYANA
TRINIDAD
LARA
CARACAS
MIRANDA
MONAGAS
El Tocuyo
Barquisimeto
Sanare
Curiepe
Caicara
Ciudad Bolivar
O
r
i
n
o
c
o
R
i
v
e
r
Map of Venezuela showing festival locations
7: 28). But San Juan, falling as it does on the 24th of June, also celebrates
the summer solstice and thus has led many to speculate that it predates
the Christian era by many centuries. Saint Augustine, writing in the fth
century, saw the advantage of locating this holiday on a date already
widely celebrated throughout Europe. He discouraged the church from
attempting to prohibit the inclusion of pagan elements, foreseeing that
their appropriation could accelerate Christianitys growth (Fuentes and
Hernandez 1988: 6). This openness resulted in not merely one of the
most widely diffused holidays but also one of the most syncretic. Domi-
nated by rituals of re and water, typical San Juan celebrations also in-
cluded divination, fertility rites, matchmaking, harvest ceremonies, and
even carnivalesque inversion (Burke 1978: 194195; Frazer 1953 [1922]:
720732).
2
With such a wealth of associations, San Juan was easily transported
to the New World. In each country throughout Latin America, it was
adapted to the particular character of the population that developed
there. In Argentina, for example, with its principally European popula-
tion, descended mainly from Spaniards and Italians, the festival was
celebrated with little variation. Bonres were lit for couples and individ-
uals to jump over and eventually, when the ames died, to walk through.
The forms of divination were also the same: eggs dropped in glasses,
mirrors read in the dark, cloves of garlic placed under beds, hair cut at
midnight, gunpowder and melted tin sifted into water (Coluccio 1978:
7476).
In the Andes, with its predominantly Indian population, however,
San Juan took a decidedly different turn. In Bolivia the saint was known
as Tata, or Father San Juan, and was revered as the protector of cattle,
llamas, and sheep. Although San Juan also served this function in Peru,
his identication with the Inca solstitial celebration of Inti Raymi pro-
vided the Catholic Church with an expedient mode of appropriation
(Morote Best 1955: 169170). In Ecuador the festival developed in still
another direction. Seen as an opportunity to momentarily reverse both
economic and social oppression, it became the occasion for a carnival-
esque satire in which all members of the community participated. Indi-
ans dressed and performed as whites, while the latter assumed the
28 t h e s e l l i n g o f s a n j u a n
subservient role of those they normally dominated. So important was
this counterhegemonic performance of political subversion that Muriel
Crespi refers to San Juan as the Indian Saint and to the zone surround-
ing Cayambe-Imbabura in northern Ecuador as a St. John culture area
(1981: 488, 501).
3
In Venezuela it was neither the mestizo population nor the indigenous
one that adopted San Juan. Rather, it was the large black population
inhabiting the many coastal plantations stretching west of Caracas to
Yaracuy and east to an area commonly known as Barlovento. However,
it was with the latter region, settled in the seventeenth century by cacao
growers and slaves, that San Juan became most closely associated. Apie-
shaped piece of land bounded by the Caribbean on the north and moun-
tains on the south and east, Barlovento is less a political or geographical
entity than a cultural one. Although it covers nearly 2,000 square miles,
its name, derived from a Spanish nautical term meaning whence the
wind comes, rarely appears on any map or legal document. Neverthe-
less, its population, descended principally from the African slaves
brought there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reveals a
striking uniformity both economically and culturally. Despite the im-
proved access to Caracas, which can now be reached in less than two
hours, and the dramatic rise in beach-front speculation, Barlovento is
still an agricultural area dominated by small landholders.
4
And although
each community has its own patron saint and local celebrations, the
region as a whole shares a cultural heritage, as witnessed in the perfor-
mance of such seasonal rites as the Easter Week processions, the Cruz
de Mayo, and the Parrandas de Navidad. But of all of these, none has
become so thoroughly identied with Barlovento as has that of San Juan.
In fact, so widespread and passionate is the cult among these coastal
communities that San Juan has become commonly known as the saint
of the blacks (Monasterio Vasquez 1989: 107).
Unlike the northern Ecuadorean celebrations of San Juan, which
joined landowner and Indian in a parody of quotidian life, the celebra-
tions in Barlovento have always been performed solely by the blacks.
This does not mean, however, that the festival was not also converted
into an important expression of resistance. The time allotted for San Juan
was the only free time allowed the slaves, who were compelled to work
six and a half days a week, 362 days a year. It was a time when they
were permitted to gather freely, not only to dance and play drums but
also to conspire and plan revolts. As the only moment of freedom given
them during the year, the festival could not help but become associated
with the reversal of an oppressive social order. As Bernardo Sanz, a
leading drummer in the community of Curiepe, recently observed:
The Festival of San Juan isnt just a festival. The Festival of San Juan
has its meaning. It was the three days given the slaves. And you know
why the 25th of June is so popular? For the following. . . . As they were
about to end the days given them to celebrate freely, they cried and
jumped all over. That was the most joyous day of all . . . because they
thought, Caramba, lets take advantage of this, because from now till
the end of next year. . . . Look, lets go. Were not going to serve that
man or that one or that one over there any more.
And Id ee. Id go up to one of those mountains there, and then the
next year Id come down just for those days. Because on those days no
one was put in jail. They were free.
And thats the way people would run off, taking advantage of that
chance. And that would be the day to enjoy and let loose. And some
would cry because it was the last day of freedom they gave us.
5
Recognizing these dangers, colonial authorities tried to prohibit the
mingling of slaves and free blacks during the festival. Yet as threatening
as these occasions may have been to the slaveholders, outlawing them
altogether was considered even more dangerous. It was seen as essential
to give the slaves some illusion of freedom, some release from their
insufferable social condition, some connection to an African past of dig-
nity and meaning (Acosta Saignes 1967: 201, 205).
But why was San Juan chosen as the saint with whom to express this?
Was it, as Norman Whitten suggests, that, as the prophet of a new era,
San Juan symbolized the transformation from savage (sinner) to civi-
lized (absolved Christian) (editors note in Crespi 1981: 502; see also
Monasterio Vasquez 1989: 108)? Or was it that his festival evoked the
memory of an African solstitial ritual in a climate not unlike that of
Venezuela? Certainly the cacao harvest and the initiation of the rainy
season encouraged the celebration of a holiday at this time. And as some
have suggested, along with Carnival, San Juan is the most plebeian
festival on the ecclesiastical calendar (Liscano 1973: 66). Its use of div-
ination, amulets, baths, and res was easily absorbed into a preexistent
African tradition. It was also, as Saint Augustine had observed centuries
earlier, a convenient means by which the church could sanction and
hence incorporate behavior that would otherwise be repellent. For San
Juan, in keeping with his syncretic and adaptive history, appears to have
been added to this celebration like a new frame through which to ex-
perience it (Fig. 2). Isabel Cobos, a teacher and organizer in Curiepe,
explained it this way: The twenty-third, fourth, and fth is San Juan.
And they gave them to the slaves to celebrate their saint. They played
their drums and sang malembe.
6
The whites, they had no idea what saint
that was. And so they said, You want a saint? Okay, here, take this.
And they set down San Juan.
Some have suggested that San Juan may actually be Shango, the Yo-
ruba god of thunder, whose color, like that of San Juan, is red.
7
But the
importation of slaves to Venezuela ended long before the Yoruba began
arriving in the New World. This greater separation from Africa, and the
fact that Venezuelas slave population was much more heterogeneous
than was that of countries like Cuba and Brazil, makes it difcult to
ascribe any prior native identity to this saint (Brandt 1978: 79; Garc a
1990: 87; Liscano 1973: 69). What is not difcult to ascribe is the African
origin of most of the festivals performative elements. For although cer-
tain features, such as bathing, divination, church liturgy, and propitia-
tion of the saint, do recall its Spanish heritage, the principal elements
remain those imported from Africa.
Beginning at noon on the 23rd of June and continuing almost nonstop
through the night of the 25th, the festivals activity focuses on two dif-
ferent sets of drums. The rst, called the mina, in memory, perhaps, of
the area in Ghana from which it came, is composed of two different
drums, the mina proper and the curbata. The mina itself is a six-foot-long
hollowed trunk set upon a cross brace of two poles (Fig. 3). It is played
with sticks on both the body of the drum and its deerskin head and is
accompanied by the smaller, upright curbata. The second set comprises
Figure 2. San Juan Bautista. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
Figure 3. The mina. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
three cylindrical, double-skinned drums called the culo e puya. Of prob-
able Bantu origin, these three-foot-long instruments are nestled between
the legs of the drummer, who plays them upright with a stick in one
hand and with the bare ngers of the other.
8
The corpus of rhythms, dances, and songs of each of these ensembles
is completely different, as is its structural relation to the saint. For it is
the music of the drums that satises the promesas that are repaid during
the three days and nights of the festival. These promesas, which may be
based on any favor granted by San Juan, require that a velorio be offered,
with the sponsoring household paying for all the alcohol and food con-
sumed. During the velorio, which lasts an entire night, the image of San
Juan, dressed in red and covered with owers, is installed in a place of
honor. Immediately in front of it, the culo e puya drums are played,
while outside, in the street, another group of celebrants dances and sings
to the mina and curbata. These velorios continue from house to house
until the conclusion of the festival.
s a n j u a n n a c i o n a l
While local colonial authorities may have seen an advantage to encour-
aging this unusual celebration of San Juan, the earliest written records
reported it with horror. Not only were the borders between San Juan
and the African deities he seemed to represent dangerously blurred, but
so were those between male and female. In short, the celebration ap-
peared too erotic. Hence when Bishop Mariano Mart visited the parishes
of Barlovento in 1784, he concluded that all such celebrations should be
strictly prohibited. Of Curiepe in particular he wrote:
These people are led by a passion for dancing, not just at parties or cel-
ebrations on holidays or when some baptism occurs but also at what
they call velorios, both for dead children and on the eves of festivals;
9
all
of which leads to a sorry disorder, with men and women in a confused
mess, especially at night. And they go on this way during these festi-
vals with endless dancing for nearly the whole night, so that they wake
up worn out and tired, unable and prohibited from satisfying the
Precept of Mass, burdening their consciences, and, knowing the risk to
which they expose themselves, still do not avoid these ridiculous and
earthly diversions. Therefore, in order to end these so-called disorders,
we must of course prohibit under penalty of excommunication such ve-
lorios, in which wild dances and other suspect gatherings occur; and
we must send and order that the priest of that congregation in frequent
sermons and exhortations make his parishioners understand the perni-
cious effects resulting from such dances of which one Church Father
has said, They are a circle whose center is the Devil and circumference
his Ministers. (Chaco n 1979: 33)
Such behavior was not entirely new to the Catholic Church, of course.
As Enrique Gonzalez pointed out, a fundamental role of saints had al-
ways been as substitutes for ancient deities.
10
In medieval Europe in
particular, they not only provided a more direct access to God but also,
through the dances with which they were celebrated, a critical re-access
to the body (Gonzalez 1989). The church, then, would seem to have vac-
illated between tacit acceptance of such rites and, as Bishop Mart im-
plored, unequivocal repression. As Michael Taussig noted in his work
among African-descended groups in neighboring Colombia, such am-
bivalence between license and restraint led to almost insuperable con-
tradictions that made social control difcult for colonialists everywhere
(1980: 44). It also led to the paradox of dominant groups appropriating
the very magical powers they were purportedly trying to destroythe
image of the Inquisitor with his African healer (1980: 42). Yet most sig-
nicant of all were the consequences of this attempted repression. With
numerous examples from throughout Latin America, but in particular
the Andes, Taussig shows how religious repression, time and again, has
stimulated cultural creativity, leading to the fashioning of new forms of
resistance from old structures of belief. And so it is too that, despite the
interdictions of Bishop Mart , the celebration of San Juan has continued
in Barlovento to the present day, responding rather than yielding to the
changing conditions in which it is performed.
Nearly 160 years elapsed between Bishop Mart s unattering report
of the festival and any other written mention of it. In 1939, however, a
young poet from Caracas named Juan Liscano began making regular
journeys to the village of Curiepe, in the heart of Barlovento. Curiepe
had changed little since the bishops visit there in the late eighteenth
century. To reach it, one still had to go either by mule or by foot or to
take a steamer to the port of Higuerote, just a few miles away. Its pop-
ulation too had changed little, rising to just over 3,000 people (Acosta
Saignes 1959). As in Mart s time, the villagers were mainly farmers with
small orchards of cacao, citrus, and avocado. And festivals too were still
times for social ties to be renewed, for families who spent much of the
year isolated in the mountains to come to town to visit friends and to
pay debts, both religious and otherwise. They were also times for people
to drum and sing, activities at which Curiepe was said to be the very
best. It was for this reason that Liscano went there, dragging his antique
record-making machine with him.
Liscano had grown up in France and Switzerland. His stepfather, who
had an enormous inuence on him, had been the Venezuelan ambas-
sador to the League of Nations. When Liscano returned home as a young
man in 1934, Venezuela was like a foreign country to him. After studying
law for three years, he decided to dedicate himself entirely to literature,
associating with a movement known as Nuevo Mundismo. This move-
ment, in response to the chaos that was engulng Europe, sought to
discover a new spiritual ideal disengaged from both war and politics.
The New World for these artists and intellectuals was to be an Amer-
icanist Utopia, free from all the contaminating ideologies now destroy-
ing the Old (Machado 1987: 4041). This desire to discover an authentic
American experience led Liscano to Curiepe and to the investigation of
its Afro-Venezuelan music and lore. Although Liscano is now credited
with initiating the scientic study of folklore in Venezuela, he insists that
this was never his intention. In a 1987 interview, he stated: I began
studying folklore as a real life experience, in order to get close to the
primitive, down-to-earth man, to what I thought to be that integrated
Venezuelan, because he was integrated with nature and tradition (Ma-
chado 1987: 47).
With this predisposition, it is little surprise, perhaps, that the San-
juanero described by Liscano is strikingly similar to that portrayed by
Bishop Mart a century and a half before. But his sexually liberated
celebrants were not objects of scorn to be condemned. Rather, they were
ideals for a newly emerging urban population who, dominated by Eu-
ropean cultural values, perceived in them an unrepressed and joyous
alternative. As Liscano wrote in La esta de San Juan el Bautista, Among
the blacks of Venezuela, the celebration of San Juan has lost almost all
religious inspiration and has been overcome by rhythmicity, orgiastic
power, and drunken energy. . . . The vital release achieved through fre-
netic dances, collective songs, velorios, and processions gave relief from
the tensions created by an exploitative social regime (1973: 47, 51).
Liscanos views, which reinforced not only the rupture between spirit
and body but also the stereotype of black eroticism and licentiousness,
were to have an important impact on both the future of Curiepe and the
celebration of San Juan. Continuing to work in the area of folklore, Lis-
cano was selected to head the Folklore Service when it was formed by
the revolutionary junta in the fall of 1946. And then, two years later,
when Ro mulo Gallegos was inaugurated as the rst popularly elected
president in Venezuelas history, it was Liscano who was asked to or-
ganize the ve-day Festival of Tradition, featuring the most represen-
tative groups from throughout the country. Of course, at this time the
notion of groups was foreign to those who performed out of religious
devotion in small and isolated rural communities. But Liscano, with the
help of a choreographer and dress designer, succeeded in presenting
sixteen different acts. There were Indians from the Guajira, Tamunan-
gueros from Lara, the Parrandas of San Pedro, the Giros of San Benito,
comparsas, jinetes, Diablos, Chimbangueles, and, of course, the drums of
San Juan. The event, held in a Caracas bull ring and attended by
thousands of people, was an extraordinary success. It was as if Vene-
zuela had suddenly discovered itself and, responding to the need of a
new democracy, created a people.
11
None of the groups presented had
been known nationally or even outside the particular regions in which
they resided. Yet, as a result of the festival, they had embarked on a long
transformation into national identity.
Within ten months Gallegos was in exile in Mexico, and the dictator-
ship of Perez Jimenez was installed. Liscano would renounce his position
at the Folklore Service and then, four years later, also ee. But the image
of San Juan, and particularly that associated with Curiepe, had become
part of the national consciousness forever. The changes brought about
by this new association were nearly imperceptible at rst. A group was
formed to represent the community nationally. Called the Conjunto
Folklo rico San Juan de Curiepe, it played at festivals in Caracas and
elsewhere. In 1950 the rst paved road was completed, making it pos-
sible to journey to and from Caracas in a single day. Four years later
electricity arrived. Dancers like Yolanda Moreno created arrangements
based on San Juan to be performed on television. Articles, records, and
even books appeared (Aretz 1953, 1955; Liscano 1947, 1950; Liscano and
Seeger 1947; Ramo n y Rivera 1951, 1963a, 1963b; Sojo 1943, 1959a, 1959b).
The media began to refer to the entire month of June as the Days of
San Juan, treating it as if it were a national holiday. And little by little,
tourists began to appear. By 1960 there were so many that the customary
velorios, held in private households, could no longer be performed. As
a result the community, under the leadership of a local doctor, decided
to construct a cultural center in which the saint would be housed. They
called it the Casa de Folklore Juan Pablo Sojo, Hijo, after the man who
had assisted Liscano and been the rst to write about local folklore.
San Juan would no longer be an intimate celebration, sponsored by
grateful individuals repaying promesas to a miraculous saint. It would
now, betting its new national status, be a public event organized by the
community at large and open to all. The three culo e puya drums would
still have a privileged position beside the saint, but it would be in front
of the stage at the Casa de Folklore. The mina and the curbata, mean-
while, would remain a half block away on a corner of the plaza. The
structural relation of the two drum ensembles would remain the same.
However, the space in which it occurred would move from the inside
out, that is, from private to public or household to square. While this
new manner of presenting the festival was certainly a radical change, it
was but a prelude to even greater transformations about to come.
s a n j u a n m o n u m e n t a l
Not all the tourists who came to Curiepe for the celebration of San Juan
were drawn by interests that articles or television programs had gener-
ated. Many were actually Curieperos who had migrated to Caracas and
were now returning to experience contact with their regional heritage.
Even blacks from other Barlovento communities began coming to Cu-
riepe, convinced by both media and friends that this was the festivals
most genuine expression. The fact that so many participants were emi-
grants on an annual pilgrimage to their homeland mediated San Juans
adaptation to its new conditions. Unlike descriptions of other festivals
that have been converted from local and subregional holidays to national
and even global ones, the increased popularity of San Juan did not result
in what John Kelly refers to as a heritage spectacle (1990: 65), a staged
event with a small core of traditional performers surrounded by a sea
of passive onlookers. Here the majority of those labeled tourists did
not come to observe and take photos. They came to participate, to dance,
to be transported from a life of enforced marginalization to one of active
centrality.
12
Although Barloventen os had been migrating to Caracas for genera-
tions, it was not until the mid-1950s that this movement took on large-
scale proportions (Pollak-Eltz 1979: 34). Attracted by new jobs in services
and construction, immigrants attempting to re-create the conditions of
family and support they had left behind began to ll up whole neigh-
borhoods. One such neighborhood was San Jose, located just blocks
above the Pantheon, where the national hero, Simo n Bol var, is buried.
It was here that the great majority of those arriving from Curiepe settled.
And it was here too that a group of them began to meet in 1969 to discuss
ways to help their community. It was the era of the Alliance for Prog-
ress, and Venezuela, like the rest of Latin America, was obsessed with
the notion of development. But Venezuela, unlike its neighbors, was on
the verge of an enormous boom. The price of oil alone, Venezuelas main
export, would rise by more than 700 percent between 1970 and 1974 and
then double again over the next eight years (Ewell 1984: 194). The Cu-
rieperos who met in the barrio of San Jose in Caracas thought it unfor-
givable that their community should be bypassed by this economic mir-
acle. Their philosophy, as Pedro Roberto Ru z, the self-proclaimedleader
of the group, explained, was simple: A village that does not progress
lives abandoned forever. Which is to say, communities must progress.
Its obvious. Yet exactly how to incorporate this remote agricultural
community into the growing economy of the rest of the country was not
clear.
After several months of discussion, Ru zs group concluded that Cu-
riepes main resource was culture, particularly the festival of San Juan.
They believed that it would be possible, with proper organization and
publicity, to promote this festival to the rest of the country. If they were
successful, enough tourists would arrive to generate a permanent infra-
structure of hotels, restaurants, and jobs. Eventually they dreamed of an
enormous drum park, so that tourists, as Ru z put it, could view the
festival in an orderly fashion, with better execution and preparation.
Drummers would be brought from all over Barlovento, and at the end
of each festival prizes would be handed out. Of course, at the time (and
even today), Curiepe had no accommodations whatsoever for tourists.
But the Curiepe Prodevelopment Center (Centro Prodesarrollo de Cu-
riepe), as Ru zs group was now known, felt the most important thing
was to rst put the village on the map.
The nine-member core of Ru zs group included individuals uniquely
situated to mount a national publicity campaign. Two were journalists,
while another worked in advertising, and still another in the census bu-
reau. Ru z himself was an ofcer attached to the accounting ofce of the
air force.
13
It was therefore not difcult for him to gain access to the
highest levels of government. After winning support from both the na-
tional and state congresses, he entered into an agreement with the Na-
tional Tourist Board (Corporacio n Nacional de Turismo), which had just
adopted a policy to promote festivals and other manifestations of local
culture as tourist attractions. They decided that the 1970 San Juan cele-
bration in Curiepe would be the centerpiece of an enormous folklore
festival rivaling that organized by Juan Liscano in 1948. It would be
promoted both in Venezuela and abroad and would be known as San
Juan Monumental, the greatest San Juan ever held.
Working together, they designed a poster that would soon become
the symbol of the festival. It showed three drummers playing culo e
puya. Shot from below like three great giants, they were dark and
sweaty, the image of the black campesino caught in a moment of
authentic celebration. But the poster, which won a national award for
photography, was by no means the only form of advertising. Ru z went
on a tour throughout the country, speaking to local groups and govern-
ment ofcials. Ads appeared on television and radio. There were articles
in magazines and newspapers. Automobiles with loudspeakers circu-
lated throughout Caracas and other cities, announcing the festivities.
And handbills oated through the streets everywhere. As Ru z recalled,
We were really proud of the advertising we did. It got all the way to
Japan. The Venezuelan ambassador there contacted us to say that the
word was reaching them and that the people there were really interested
in nding out more about San Juan Monumental.
The advertising campaign was so successful that it brought more than
100,000 people to the village of Curiepe in the course of an eight-day
period (Fig. 4). For San Juan Monumental included much more than the
three days of traditional drumming. It was a Semana Cultural, a Cul-
ture Week, with performances by musical groups from every region of
the country. As in the Fiesta de la Tradicio n, there were Diablos from
Yare, comparsas from the Oriente, and the Parrandas of San Pedro. There
were also groups that had not appeared there, such as the Calypso from
El Callao and Luis Mariano Rivera, a famous folksinger from Carupano.
And in the center of all the acts were the drummers of San Juan, playing
nonstop for three entire days. As described by one of the festivals or-
ganizers:
It was much greater than 1948. What we did was much more extensive.
Of course we respected that one, yes. But what we did was to put a
type of parentheses around our own folkloric tradition, which was on
the 23rd, 24th, and 25th of June, the days of the drums of San Juan.
There were no other folklore groups performing then. The days they
performed were the 20th, 21st, and 22nd and the 26th and 27th. Be-
cause the 27th of June, by coincidence, fell on a Sunday. And so that
day we presented Flor Garc a, a popular lyrical singer, who closed San
Juan Monumental at nine in the evening, singing his lyrical songs.
The strategy of locating the festival at the center of a new national
culture effected a brilliant recontextualization of meanings. From a local
saints day celebrating both religious piety and ethnic heritage the fes-
Figure 4. San Juan being carried from the church, preceded by the culo e puya
and celebrants. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
tival was converted into the main act of a national variety show. The
parentheses within which it was now enclosed formed an essential
part of the new meaning the festival organizers were trying to construct.
Illustrating what Goffman characterized as the problem of brackets in
relation to spectacles and games, San Juan Monumental had encased one
ritual event (the game) within another (the spectacle). The resulting am-
biguity, as to whether the outer or inner realms [were] of chief concern
(Goffman 1974: 263) was one the village of Curiepe was not yet ready to
confront. For those who had organized the event, however, the festival
had been an unqualied success. Their goal had been simple: to incor-
porate the community into the national economy. Yet their strategy was
to start with the culture, and to relocate it as squarely as possible at the
center of the national one. While San Juan Monumental clearly achieved
this end, its effect on both the festival itself and the local economy was
one neither the organizers nor the villagers had foreseen.
The following year, 1971, the festival was celebrated in much the same
way. A new committee, composed entirely of people living in Curiepe,
took over its organization. To differentiate their events from those of the
year before, they renamed the week of cultural activities San Juan Sen-
sacional. For most Venezuelans, this name evoked one of the countrys
most popular television shows, an eight-hour extravaganza of variety
acts broadcast on Saturdays and called Sabado Sensacional. This link to
the state media was yet another step in the nationalization process begun
by Juan Liscano in the 1940s. The government also continued its contri-
bution to this process by naming Curiepe the National Folklore Vil-
lage and at the same time instituting a system of nominal payments for
many of the festivals drummers, thus tying local performers not simply
to the patronage of the state government but, in a more dangerous way,
to the particular party that was giving it out.
14
While San Juan Sensacional was not quite the success of the previous
years event, it nevertheless established the festival as an annual attrac-
tion for people throughout the country. Hence, when the Culture Week
program was suspended altogether in 1972, it had little impact on the
number of visitors who still came to Curiepe to celebrate. Many of those
who came, however, were attracted less by an interest in folklore than
by what they perceived as an African bacchanal dedicated to drums,
drugs, and free love. It was the image Liscano himself had fabricated
twenty-ve years earlier, of a people overcome by rhythmicity, orgi-
astic power, and drunken energy (1973: 47). These stereotypes of black
hedonism and sensuality generated a new audience for the festival,
which in turn imposed its own carnivalesque denitions. Visitors from
Caracas regularly spent the day at the beach and then in late after-
noon appeared scantily clad in bikinis or shorts. They replaced the tra-
ditional dance, in which couples gracefully moved forward and back,
with long chains of whirling groups, all howling and shouting in unison.
Motorcycle gangs began to arrive, and knings and ghts were not un-
common. Villagers were scandalized and, by the mid-1970s, were spend-
ing most of the festival sheltered in their homes. As Angel Lucci, a com-
munity organizer who was then a young man growing up in Curiepe,
recalled:
In the nal years people didnt even participate. Motorcycle gangs
came and took over the town. It was an incredible disaster. . . . No one
could sleep. My mother and grandmother hid. They were totally terri-
ed because it had become really ugly. Curiepe had handed its San
Juan over to the tourists.
15
But it was not merely the tourists who had invaded San Juan. Com-
mercial interests had begun to arrive as well, particularly tobacco and
beer companies. On the days preceding the holiday, they sent groups to
hang posters and pennants, not simply to advertise their products but
to associate their names as closely as possible with that of the saint. As
the tourists entered, they passed beneath enormous banners welcoming
them to the drums of San Juan, courtesy of either a cigarette or a rum.
And the drummers were now dressed in T-shirts with the name of a beer
on the front and that of San Juan on the back. Those setting up stalls to
sell alcohol and food were not from Curiepe either, and none of their
prots remained in the community. The vision of Ru zs group had not
materialized. The village, which numbered less than 3,000 people
(Brandt 1978: 10), still had not a single hotel or restaurant. And instead
of enjoying the economic miracle it had been promised, Curiepe now
braced itself once a year to be invaded. Those studying the festival at
this time all wrote of its serious decline, predicting that, unless changes
were made, it would likely disappear (Brandt 1978: 333338; Chaco n
1979: 110; Liscano 1973: 52).
s a n j u a n c i m a r r o n
The mid-1970s was a time of enormous change, not simply in Curiepe
but throughout Venezuela. The tremendous inux of foreign currency
caused by the rapid ination of world oil prices was resulting in a mas-
sive demographic and cultural transformation. In her book Venezuela: A
Century of Change, Judith Ewell refers to this period as the petrolization
of the national problems (1984: 193226). It gave birth, she notes, to a
long list of new programs and organizations initiated by the govern-
ments of both Carlos Andres Perez and his successor, Luis Herrera
Camp ns. Many of these programs, such as the formation of the Bibli-
oteca Ayacucho in 1974 and the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (Na-
tional Council of Culture, or CONAC) the following year, were attempts
to distribute this new wealth to the cultural sector.
Other programs, however, were responses to the various forms of
social dislocation that had accompanied the economic boom. One such
program, sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, was the Cultural Divi-
sion of Crime Prevention. Despite its somewhat inauspicious name, this
small pilot program was a type of urban Peace Corps, sending out small
cadres of idealistic men and women to targeted marginal neighbor-
hoods. Their plan was to create centers of activity that in turn would
generate community leadership, pride, and autonomy. Although Cu-
riepe fell outside the urban mandate for this project, one of its organizers,
Jesu s Blanco, suggested that it nevertheless be included.
16
Blanco was aware from previous visits to Curiepe that its youth were
extremely disaffected from any organized cultural activities. In fact, the
predictions of Max Brandt (1978: 335) and others concerning the future
of San Juan were based on the lack of participation or interest of any of
the younger generation. Blanco began with an ambitious sports pro-
gram, bringing young people together to compete on basketball, volley-
ball, and other teams. It was the rst time that such sports had been
introduced in any organized way, and the youth of Curiepe responded
with enthusiasm. Once these groups had been formed, Blanco had little
trouble in translating their energy into other cultural realms. Many of
those who participated in the new sports program had been upset by
the invasion of tourists and the exploitation it had engendered. With
Blancos help, they developed a plan that would not only limit the im-
pact of these visitors but also restore the communitys control over the
festival. The group, with twenty-two core members, would eventually
become known as the Centro Cultural y Deportivo de Curiepe (the Cu-
riepe Culture and Sport Center).
The initial activities of this group, which began with the celebration
of 1975, were both educational and supervisory. They believed that if
tourists were only informed of the festivals history and religious sig-
nicance, much of the destructive behavior would disappear. They dis-
tributed lengthy pamphlets with histories of the community anddetailed
descriptions of each aspect of the festival. A small museum was created
in an old house just off the plaza. Brigades were formed to patrol the
village and to enforce a new dress code that would be more respectful
of a religious holiday. Shorts and swimwear were now forbidden, as
was the use of alcohol in the presence of the saint. The group also at-
tacked the festivals commercialization, and when attempts to discour-
age the hanging of pennants and banners failed, members pulled them
down themselves.
In time, the sale of food and alcohol was also controlled. In order to
prevent prots from leaving the community, organizers restricted con-
cessions to local charitable and educational groups. And when drum-
mers were nally convinced to reject all government stipends, a system
of food and beverage coupons was established. It was a brilliant rerout-
ing of reciprocity, giving the traditional velorio system new life. Instead
of being paid directly by a family sponsoring the velorio, drummers now
registered with the festival directorate and, after playing, were given
vouchers that could be used at the concessions of other village members,
who were in turn receiving payments from tourists. It took several years
before these innovations were fully in place. In fact, only after Jesu s
Blanco left in 1978 did the Curiepe Culture and Sport Center nally
assume total control of the festival, replacing the board that had directed
it since the time of Pedro Ru z.
One of the rst decisions of the new leadership was to revive the
Culture Week of 1970 and 1971. The groups intentions, however, could
not have been farther from those of Ru z and his San Juan Monumental.
Instead of trying to recontextualize the festival within a larger, national
framework, the Culture Week of 1979 would attempt to restore it to its
original one. As such, there were to be no parentheses, only a single
bracket or arrow leading back to what its organizers called its true
meaning. The events presented, therefore, would all precede San Juan,
making it clear that the festival should be understood as an end in itself.
They would also help to rmly relocate it within a single community
and people. The groups invited would no longer be a sampling of Ven-
ezuelas most popular folkloric acts. Instead, they would be a carefully
orchestrated demonstration of what the festival would now represent.
For the Culture Week was no longer meant to be a simple entertainment
devised to attract as many tourists as possible. It was now to be a heu-
ristic tool, as the slogan heading the program unequivocally announced:
comrade
we invite you to participate
in a full week of work and recreation
join and struggle
A wide range of activities was now presented, including movies,
plays, lectures, and even a book party.
17
Yet all of them shared a vision
of regional and ethnic autonomy. A special symposium on the question
of indigenism was held, and the lm Yo hablo a Caracas shown. This
lm, which Carlos Azpu rua had just completed, was a dramatic appeal
by the Yekuana Indians to have their land and culture respected.
18
This
show of solidarity with the indigenist movement underlined the feeling
of many that Barloventos culture had also been colonized and was in
the same need of protection. The language included in the Culture Week
program borrowed heavily from the indigenist literature that was just
starting to circulate. The culture now in danger, however, was the Afro-
Venezuelan, as statements such as the following made clear:
The cultural manifestations of the Barlovento area, which is to say those
of Afro-Venezuelan origin, have been heavily attackedat times to the
point of disappearingby so-called civilization. As such, we have seen
how the drum festivals of Barlovento have taken on a cheap and com-
mercial meaning, instead of those of solidarity and struggle. At the
same time, we have seen how our cultural and moral values have been
replaced by cultural values different from those of our Afro-Venezuelan
identity. All of which shows the transculturation and domination by
other cultures. (Centro Cultural y Deportivo de Curiepe 1979)
The Culture Week would now attempt to reassert these values. Sur-
rounded by a series of aggressively regionalist, Afro-Venezuelan per-
formances, the festival would be symbolically recast. It would shed its
image as a national extravaganza and be re-Africanized. If Curiepe
was experiencing a crisis caused by both the loss of citizens through
emigration and the inux of strangers through tourism, then the festival
would be a tool in reconsolidating its identity once again.
19
To do so, the
aspects of San Juan that would be emphasized were those of liberation
and resistance. For the Barloventen o, the festival would soon be as much
a historical performance as a religious celebration. As such, the focus
would now be less on the saint and more on the drums (Fig. 5). Or, as
the commonly quoted statement by Juan Pablo Sojo, a local writer, went,
The drum is the cross of the black Christ (1976 [1943]: 154).
Drums, of course, had served as images of resistance not only in Ven-
ezuela but throughout the Caribbean. In neighboring Trinidad they had
become the symbol of a carnival that had been transformed from a
high-society affair of elaborate balls to an ecstatic celebration of eman-
cipated slaves (Hill 1972: 10). When the former European masters at-
tempted to suppress these new expressions of liberation, they did so by
outlawing the use of drums, a strategy that was to have disastrous
though ultimately unsuccessful results (1972: 631). It is interesting that
when the steel drums that replaced the originally suppressed ones began
to appear in Londons Notting Hill Carnival in the early 1970s, their
symbolic power was much the same. As Abner Cohen describes, how-
ever, there was also an appropriate transformation:
The steel band has acquired a powerful symbolic signicance well be-
yond the making of loud rhythms. . . . In the rst place, there is a feel-
ing of pride and elation at its invention, and many Carnival leaders em-
phasize that the pan is the only musical instrument invented in the
twentieth century. . . . At the same time, with its rust, rough edges, and
clumsy appearance, the pan is the symbol of poverty and social disad-
vantage, a protest that in lands of plenty, endowed with so many so-
phisticated musical instruments, a people should be forced to pick up
abandoned shells to express their artistic feelings. (1980: 71)
20
The close symbolic connection of drums to expressions of freedom and
protest, particularly during carnival, has led more than one government
to convert this holiday into a celebration of political independence. In
Cuba, for example, carnival has been moved to the beginning of January,
Figure 5. San Juan drummers playing the mina. (Photograph by David M.
Guss)
where it now commemorates the overthrow of the Batista government
by Fidel Castro. And in Antigua it is celebrated not during the days
before Lent but rather on August 1, the date on which the slaves were
emancipated. It is therefore not surprising that its celebration is char-
acterized, as Frank Manning noted, by regional awareness [and] ex-
pressions of racial solidarity (1977: 269).
Although the Festival of San Juan should not be confused with car-
nival, it nevertheless has a similar historic relation to the experience of
liberation and slavery that many New World carnivals have. In rede-
signing the program for the new Culture Week, its organizers were at-
tempting to highlight this relation and to present a past not of docile
submission but rather of proud, resolute resistance. For them, San Juan
embodied this history, and the performance of the festival was a sacred
re-creation of it. Its performance was not simply the fulllment of a pro-
mesa or the reenactment of an ancient fertility rite; it was a magical
return to a moment of origin, which, as Duvignaud noted, following
Eliade (1959) and Caillois (1959), is what gives life to history (1976:
21). The transformation of the festival into such a paradigmatic event
(Eliade 1959: 34) depended on the invocation and recharging of a number
of symbolic associations. Most of these derived their power, however,
from a concept known as cimarronaje.
Difcult to translate into English, particularly because the closest
word we have, maroon, is already a Spanish cognate, cimarronaje is
the quality or ethos of a cimarron, an escaped slave. In Venezuela, as
elsewhere in the New World, the escaped slave, whether in a cumbe,
quilombo, palenque, or free village, was a source of inspiration for those
still in bondage (Garc a 1990: 53).
21
They represented a refusal to submit
either physically or culturally to the brutalizing institution of slavery,
for the cimarro n communities hidden away in the mountains and
swamps of the Americas often still maintained a rich African cultural
heritage (Garc a 1989, 1990; Guerra Ceden o 1984; Price 1983; Price and
Price 1980). When invoking the concept of cimarronaje today, the Afro-
Venezuelan refers not merely to a past history but to a living tradi-
tion still determined to resist the domination of a European ruling class.
It recognizes that the black Venezuelan remains a marginalized,
economically oppressed citizen who must nd solutions within his or
her own community.
Conversely, when elements of Afro-Venezuelan culture have already
been absorbed into the centralized system of power, it is claimed that
the community must cimarronear, or cimarronize them, which is to say,
they must re-Africanize them, repositioning both their control and
their meaning in the society that generated them. This, of course, is pre-
cisely what the new directors of the San Juan Festival were now trying to
do. They were attempting to cimarronize it by showing the festivals
direct links to an ongoing tradition of autonomy and resistance. Several
of the strategies used to connect the contemporary reality of Barlovento
to that of its cimarro n history have already been mentioned. With its per-
formances, lectures, and conferences, the Culture Week, which has con-
tinued with brief lapses up to the present, sought to effect this recontex-
tualization and to provide the people of Barlovento with a new language
in which to speak about both their traditions and themselves.
22
It was not
long, therefore, before people began to speak of the festival, as Bernardo
Sanz did, as the commemoration of the three days of freedom that the
slaves had in order to plan either rebellions or individual escapes.
Even the origin of the festival was rmly relocated in the cimarro n
experience (see Fig. 6). Participants claimed that the songs and other
musical powers of the celebration derived from an escaped slave named
Jose Larito. Larito, also known as Jose Hilario or Calvarito, had arrived
in Venezuela on a French slave ship from the Gold Coast. With him was
an African prince who, upon discovering that he was about to be sold
into slavery, took a piece of tin and slit his throat. As the prince was
dying, Larito reached down and scooped up the princes blood, quickly
covering his entire body with it. After a brief period of enslavement,
during which he was particularly abused, Larito ed into the mountains
and formed his own cumbe. But on the 23rd of June each year he would
appear in Curiepe for the celebration of San Juan, leading the drumming
and singing, and then, on the evening of the 25th, would escape once
more with a new group of cimarrones. The Spanish, of course, did all
they could to catch him. But the power of the princes blood allowed
Larito either to become invisible or to take another form.
Figure 6. Africa Is Also Our Mother Country, mural by Javier Rodr guez on
the Casa de Folklore, Curiepe. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
The tale of Jose Larito, which exists in both written and oral versions,
is a perfect example of the cimarronizing process (Sojo 1959b; Uslar
Pietri 1975). By locating the germinating force of the festival in the deeds
of a culture hero such as Larito, there is a transference in the locus of
power from that of a Catholic saints day to one of historical remem-
brance.
23
This is particularly signicant when one realizes that the name
Jose Larito is directly derived from that of Don Joseph Hilario Tinoco,
the priest sent to Curiepe in November 1731 to establish the rst church
there (Castillo Lara 1981b: 144; Chaco n 1979: 21). Thus, on another level,
the tale is also cimarronizing the communitys origin, converting the
priest credited with its founding into a cimarro n hero. But of all the
attempts to identify the festival with an African past of struggle and
liberation, none has been so important as the Africanization of San Juan
himself.
s a n j u a n c o n g o
The pale-skinned San Juan Bautista, with his burnished red cheeks and
painted nails, was not always the gure carried through the streets of
Curiepe and sung to for three days and nights. In fact, Curieperos,
though reluctant to speak of it, acknowledge that this saint is something
of a newcomer. Until at least 1870 there was another San Juan, the one
claimed to have been the original. Referred to as San Juan Congo, this
gure was also carved of wood and coated in plaster. Yet unlike the one
that replaced it, San Juan Congo is said to have been black. He also had
a phallus, a common feature for many African gures but totally un-
known for a Christian one. Like many other icons, San Juan Congo was
the personal property of a single family, who, on the saints day, lent it
to the community to be celebrated.
24
Toward the end of the nineteenth
century, possession of the Congo, as he is commonly known, passed
to a local doctor named Nicomedes Blanco Gil. At about that timethe
precise date is difcult to ascertainSan Juan Congo suddenly stopped
appearing. Some say he vanished because an indiscretion was directed
toward the doctors wife as she was walking through the streets. Enraged
by such disrespect, Blanco Gil decided to punish the entire community,
and he refused to lend them the saint from that moment on. Others,
however, claim that the church, upset by the saints phallus, pressured
the doctor to retire it.
Faced with the dilemma of having no saint with which to celebrate
their festival, members of the community approached the family of En-
rique Moscoso, who had just arrived from neighboring Birongo and was
the owner of a much-admired image of San Juan. This image now be-
came the ofcial one of Curiepe, and while San Juan Congo was still
celebrated on the fourth of August for several years, it was soon almost
entirely forgotten. Passing into the hands of Blanco Gils illegitimate
daughter, Mar a Poncho, the saint remained an almost hidden gure.
Then, in the late 1970s, nearly a century after it had been replaced, a
group decided to ask Poncho if they could borrow her San Juan and hold
a velorio.
Although the velorio coincided with the other innovations surround-
ing the celebration of San Juan, it was held not during the festival itself
but four days later, on the Day of San Pedro. This way, the organizers
avoided the intrusion of any tourists and succeeded, as they had hoped,
in re-creating the celebration as it had existed before the arrival of Lis-
cano and others. It was to become, as people said, our festival, the
one of the village, the real one, and it has been held in relative secrecy
since 1979 without any publicity or national attention. For while sub-
stantial changes could be made in the organization and performance of
the festival as it occurred from the 23rd to the 25th of June, the tourists
and national celebrity they represented were now a permanent (and not
entirely unwelcome) part of it.
25
The velorio to San Juan Congo, on the
other hand, permitted the village to complete the cycle of historical re-
cuperation already under way. The symbols surrounding this event,
therefore, were a powerfully orchestrated return to origins.
Instead of celebrating the velorio in the plaza, the participants held it
in the ruins of Curiepes former church, called the Capilla (chapel). Sitting
atop a hill overlooking the main square, the Capilla was Curiepes sole
church from the earthquake of 1811 until the construction of a new one
in the village center in 1959. At one time, members of the community
planned to construct a new school in its place, but after tearing down
most of the old structure and rebuilding some walls, they simply left it
as a shell. Today it sits as a symbol of the surrounding neighborhood of
the same name, a neighborhood associated with Curiepes poorest citi-
zens and best musicians. The people above (el pueblo arriba), as they
are known, have developed a certain resentment for those they call the
people below (el pueblo abajo), the towns more well-to-do and powerful
citizens, who live in the larger homes around the square. For many years
the people of La Capilla had complained that the celebration of San Juan
was too restricted, that it should not be limited to the main square but
should also be performed in the upper part of the village. Now, with the
new velorio of the 29th of June, the people above feel that they nally
have their own San Juan. Mar a Poncho herself lives in a small house
within two blocks of the Capilla, so this neighborhood takes sole re-
sponsibility for organizing the night-long event.
At 2:00 in the afternoon, a mixture of people, old and young, men and
women, begin to arrive to decorate the remains of the Capilla. They place
palm fronds against the walls, both inside and out, and create a thatched
ceiling, from which a selection of local fruits is hung. Above the altar
where the saint will be installed is placed the most important crop, cacao,
and then, spiraling out in an improvised hierarchy, are all the other
locally cultivated plants: a bunch of bananas, a long, curved pod of
guamo, shoots of sugarcane, pineapple, passion fruit, guanabana, al-
monds, cashews, coconut, and a score of other rich tropical fruits that
reach back to the entranceway, covering the entire ceiling. A few lights
are run from a lamppost, and the altar is modestly decorated with ow-
ers and a painted velvet hanging. At dusk a young boy arrives, nearly
unnoticed, with the saint. A group close to the altar begins to play culo
e puya and sing. And outside, 20 yards from the church entrance, others
start on the mina and curbata. Both ensembles will continue playing
throughout the night, with people coming from the entire village to
dance, drum, sing, and drink. And, of course, to see San Juan Congo, to
touch him, to ask him for a favor, to simply stand and silently pray.
It is signicant that this velorio, held annually since 1979, has escaped
the attention given the preceding three days of celebration. For if the
consistent arrival of outsiders converted the original Festival of San Juan
into a public event to be held in the village plaza, the new velorio has
restored it to a private (and, for the participants, authentic) one. It has
also returned the celebration to its original location, the Capilla, where
for generations Curieperos worshiped and met. This return is espe-
cially meaningful when one recalls that the move from the Capilla to the
new church coincided with the construction of the Casa de Folklore and,
hence, the move of San Juan from individual home to public square.
Both of these restorations, to private space and primary location, must
be seen as contributing to what is perhaps the fundamental restoration:
that of the original community.
But the most important element in this obvious primordialization of
the festival remains its return to the original saint, San Juan Congo. As
with the events surrounding the new Culture Week, the symbolism un-
derlying this restitution was also powered by its relation to cimarronaje,
although not simply because San Juan Congo was said to be black and
hence African. The story of his origins also linked him to a past of lib-
eration and struggle, just as that of the festival linked it to the cimarro n
hero Jose Larito. In the version recounted by Juan Pablo Sojo (1986: 168
172), two African princes, who are also brothers, arrive in the port of La
Sabana to be sold into slavery. They are brought to a plantation in Cu-
riepe owned by a hacendado named Blanco. Once there, they show a
remarkable if not uncanny skill in the growing of cacao. Although
treated with particular deference because of this, the younger of the two
brothers grows increasingly melancholy and nally takes his own life.
The surviving brother continues to bring prosperity to his master and
then one day is suddenly given his freedom, along with a small piece of
land. Soon after, Blanco dies and the former slave takes his name. The
fortune and prestige of the new Sen or Blanco continue to increase, with
slaves and free blacks coming to him for support and advice. Then, just
before the celebration of San Juan, he proposes that they form a society
to purchase the freedom of two or three slaves a year. He begins by
contributing enough to buy the freedom of at least three of the most
expensive. Moreover, he commissions a carver to make a saint for the
new order, a San Juan, said to cost 2,000 pesos and to include gold dust.
26
While this tale may exemplify what John Watanabe refers to as
myths of saintly origins [that] complete the localization of . . . once-
Catholic gures (1990: 138), it nevertheless contains many veriable
historical elements. In the record of his visit in 1784, Bishop Mart writes
of a slave freed by Don Alejandro Blanco Villegas in order to clear and
settle the area around Curiepe (Garc a 1985: 5). And documents brought
to light in 1981 by the historian Lucas Guillermo Castillo Lara verify that
the village was indeed founded by a group of free blacks. The leader of
this group, which arrived in Curiepe a full ten years before Father Joseph
Hilario founded his church, was named Juan del Rosario Blanco (Castillo
Lara 1981a, 1981b).
27
Even more signicant, perhaps, was the existence, not only in Vene-
zuela but throughout the Caribbean and Brazil, of what were known
as liberation banks. These emancipation credit unions, as Sheila
Walker refers to them, were set up by both slaves and free blacks in
order to make funds available for the purchase of free papers (1986:
2930).
28
It is precisely this form of sanctioned subversion that Blanco
and his collaborators set up in Curiepe and for which San Juan Congo
was to serve as a symbol. By fusing the history of this liberation move-
ment with the origin of the saint, San Juan is not simply Africanized; he
becomes the ultimate expression of cimarronaje, a precursor not simply
of Jesus but of freedom.
Because of my awareness of the special regard in which San Juan
Congo was held and the role that his blackness played in creating this
esteem, I was somewhat stunned when I nally had the opportunity to
see him. For in reality he was not black at all, a bit darker, perhaps, than
the porcelain-skinned San Juan of the Moscosos but certainly not black,
at least not like Venezuelas other black saints, such as San Benito de
Palermo and San Mart n de Porres. In fact, in addition to being light
skinned and having Caucasian features, the two-foot-high San Juan
Congo also had curly blond hair. When I discussed this issue with
friends of mine in the community, they appeared quite shocked. How
could I not see that he was black? Yes, perhaps a restorer had been a bit
overzealous in cleaning him, they conded. Nevertheless, it was still
clear that he was black. After several of these discussions, I began to
realize that the issues of blackness signied by San Juan Congo were
much more profound than simple pigmentation. In fact, I eventually
came to understand that it was actually the absence of color that made
San Juan such a powerful symbol of it. For the blackness represented
here was that of poverty and oppression. It was the economic and social
marginalization that had dened the African condition since the arrival
of the rst slaves in the early 1500s. And indeed, although San Juan
Congo might not have appeared black, he was certainly poor. His broken
ngers, the lack of any toes, the irregularity of his skin, all were in sharp
contrast to the elegance of his wealthy namesake celebrated by the peo-
ple below (Fig. 7).
But like all dominant symbols, the color of San Juan is loaded with
contradiction and ambiguity (Turner 1975). Hence, it also speaks directly
to Venezuelas resolute denial of any color at all. In what might be called
the myth of mestizaje, historians, philosophers, writers, and even an-
thropologists have consistently claimed that in Venezuela the issue of
race does not exist, that all ethnic groups have blended together in a
harmonious and indistinguishable new entity called the mestizo. Juan
Figure 7. San Juan Congo. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
Liscano, one of the rst to write about African cultures in Venezuela,
stated that Racial differences were absorbed in the cruel process of our
national formation, and today there is no black problem as there is in
the United States, with its unforgivable discrimination. What exists is a
class problem, just as there is everywhere (1950: 86).
This commonly held view, that discrimination is the result not of race
but rather of class, is the focus of Winthrop Wrights study, Cafe con leche:
Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (1990). In it, Wright makes a
distinction between what he calls the creed of racial democracy, which
maintains that no discrimination based upon color exists, and the idea
of racial equality itself, a belief somewhat less realized (1990: 111). It is
this seeming paradox that Wright addresses, showing that if blacks
were able to emerge from both racial and economic oppression, they
were able to do so not through acceptance but through miscegenation,
for the myth of racial democracys basic premise [was] that blacks
achieved great things in Venezuela only as they whitened themselves
and their offspring (1990: 115).
29
Racial democracy, then, was not the
absence of prejudice; it was simply the license to transform ones ethnic
identity. The awareness of any prejudice based on color was therefore
effectively masked by a belief system that did not recognize racial di-
versity. Instead, it insisted that anyone discriminated against was se-
lected because he or she was poor. But, as Wright points out, such rea-
soning was hopelessly circuitous, for the majority of blacks were poor
because they were black (1990: 5).
30
So widespread was this color-blind view of Venezuelan society that
even social scientists subscribed to it, insisting that even those identied
as black did not necessarily consider themselves to be. As one of Vene-
zuelas leading students of Afro-American traditions, Angelina Pollak-
Eltz, wrote:
In Venezuela there is little racial consciousness or discrimination due
to skin color. The fact remains, however, that the majority of Afro-
venezuelans belong to the lower strata of society. This is due to class
differences, lack of educational opportunities for the rural sector, and
little spatial mobility until recently. Africa has no meaning for Barlov-
enten os, who consider themselves criollos just like Venezuelans else-
where. (1979: 31)
31
For the people of Barlovento, such statements, along with the pattern
of denial they represent, are but another step in the systematic erasure
of the Afro-Venezuelans cultural and racial history. The fact that San
Juan Congo is such a powerful symbol of blackness without actually
being black, therefore, reveals much about the issue of race itself in Ven-
ezuela. To those celebrating at the Capilla, San Juan Congo is clearly
black. Yet it is a blackness that only they appear able (or willing) to
perceive. Like the cimarrones who continue to inspire it, it is dissembled
and hidden. But the power of San Juan Congo, like that of all religious
experience, is the power to make the unseen visible.
60
Chapter 3 Indianness and the Construction
of Ethnicity in the Day of
the Monkey
It has no European or African roots whatsoever.
This is native. Its the only festival in Venezuela, and
perhaps the world, which is celebrated on just one
day only: the 28th of December. And it has no
European inuence nor any African. Its native to
the indigenous Carib culture, and whats more, Id
say, to the region of Caicara. Descended from the
Chaima, the Guarao, and the Guaiqueri.
e d g a r b a q u e r o
They could have called it some other animal, but
they called it the Monkey.
a r g e l i a c a r d i e l
t h e p e r f o r m a n c e o f e t h n i c i t y
The myth of mestizaje has affected not only black populations in Latin
America, as witnessed in Barlovento, but also people of indigenous an-
cestry. This has been particularly true in various Andean countries,
where the seemingly all-inclusive discourse of mestizaje has been em-
ployed for the precise purpose of excluding those who do not conform
to national ideals of progress and a market economy. Just as Wright
t h e d a y o f t h e m o n k e y 61
(1990) and others (Burdick 1992b; Skidmore 1974; Wade 1993; Whitten
and Torres 1998) have shown that the language of mestizaje masks un-
equal social relations between blacks and whites wherein blanqueamiento,
or whitening, is the unstated physical and cultural goal, so too in the
Andes have Indians been subsumed into a national ideology that con-
tinues to exclude them. The most articulate expression of this sinister
process, whereby mestizaje excludes not only those who fall outside the
mixed category but also those who fall within it (specically, blacks
and Indians), may be Norman Whittens discussion of ethnic and racial
politics in Ecuador:
The practical process of excluding those considered to be nonmixed is
carried out by the very persons who espouse an ideology of inclusion
based on racial mixture, mestizaje, and the resulting contradiction is ob-
vious to ethnically identiable black costen o and black serrano Ecuadori-
ans as well as to indigenous Ecuadorian peoples. Additionally, the su-
percially inclusive claims of mestizaje ideology are further undercut by
a tacit qualifying clause which ups the price of admission from mere
phenotypical mixture to cultural blanqueamiento (whitening, in
terms of becoming more urban, more Christian, more civilized; less ru-
ral, less black, less Indian). This compounds the contradiction by con-
tinuously generating internal dissension and dissensus within mixed
categories. . . .
The designation blanco, white in terms of national standards, is inex-
tricably linked with high status, wealth, power, national culture, civili-
zation, Christianity, urbanity, and development; its opposites are indio,
Indian, and negro, black. The false resolution of the opposites is found
in the doctrine of mestizaje, the ideology of racial mixture implying blan-
queamiento. (1981: 1516)
1
In the double-bind situation described by Whitten, those who are in-
cluded in denitions of mestizaje will feel as excluded as those who are
not. For the mescolanza, or mix, is never an equal one, and the contri-
butions of blacks and Indians will continue to be undervalued or ignored
entirely. For those who retain a strong ethnic identity and either reject
or are refused entry into the national ideal, the cost may be even higher.
Beyond the likelihood of discrimination and derision are the accusations
of unpatriotic behavior and even sedition. Claims will be made that these
62 t h e d a y o f t h e m o n k e y
groups, through their relentless attachment to alternative values, and
particularly to alternative modes of production, are impeding the na-
tions ability to modernize and progress (see Guss 1994). Although these
tensions between ethnic and national identities, or what Cohen calls
particularist versus universalist (1993), may be found everywhere,
their resonance in Latin America is particularly strong.
As indigenous groups begin to organize around such issues as land
rights, environmental protection, constitutional representation, bilingual
education, and health care, initial governmental response, regardless of
the country, has been one of denunciation. The simple fact that groups
have been demanding consideration based on a collective ethnic inter-
est has been seen as subversive if not treasonous. In 1988, for example,
when two Kayapo leaders returned to Brazil from meetings in the United
States with World Bank and environmental leaders, they were arrested
and charged with violating the foreigners law. The outrageousness of
indicting Brazilian Indians under a law reserved for foreigners who in-
terfere with national politics was further compounded when judges
refused to allow the defendants into court unless they wore white
mens clothes (Cultural Survival 1989: 18).
2
Charges were eventually
dropped, and the following year the Kayapo were able to bring repre-
sentatives of more than forty tribes together in a well-publicized protest
against the construction of the Gorotire dam. This successful campaign
not only led to the suspension of the project but also helped to promote
the eventual demarcation of indigenous territories and the inclusion of
various amendments protecting indigenous rights in the new Brazilian
constitution.
3
While the Kayapos victory in Brazil may have signaled a turning
point in rain-forest politics, it also indicates a shift in the strategic use of
ethnicity as an organizing tool. In Belem, Bras lia, and, most important,
Altamira, the site where the dam was to have been built, the Kayapo
carefully orchestrated a series of well-publicized demonstrations in
which the performance of their ethnicity was the primary focus.
4
It is
little surprise, therefore, that Terence Turner, in documenting this pro-
cess of cultural self-conscientization and sociopolitical empowerment,
referred to the Kayapo as the consummate ethnic politicians (1991:
309, 311). Through a self-conscious dramatization of their culture the
Kayapo have been able to mobilize world support and attention for their
struggle and in so doing convert ethnicity itself into a powerful symbol
of resistance. Hence, even though ethnicity may be oppositional by its
very nature, the Kayapo, along with others, are using it to articulate and
defend rights that national governments refuse to recognize.
5
Is it possible, however, for groups identiable both objectively and
subjectively as mestizo to make use of the same ethnic politics that the
Kayapo have? If so, what strategies will be employed to differentiate
them as ethnically distinguishable? And which element of the three
availableIndian, African, or Europeanwill be selected as the most
prominent and meaningful? What will determine this choice and, once
it is made, give it legitimacy and authority? And nally, what are the
historical reasons for such ethnic manifestations? Is it simply, as Werner
Sollors claims, that ethnicity is the acquired modern sense of belong-
ing, replacing all others in an attempt to reestablish the ties of com-
munity (1989: xiv)? Or are these ethnic choices nesting hierarchies,
temporary perches from which to assess and redene new social rela-
tions and hence tools of empowerment and resistance (Cohen 1978: 395)?
All are questions one must ask when visiting Caicara, Venezuela, a small,
uniformly mestizo farming community in the easternmost state of Mo-
nagas, where a celebration known as El D a del Mono, or Day of the
Monkey, has been used to assert the singular Indianness of its partic-
ipants pasts. For the Day of the Monkey may not always have been an
indigenous celebration and, according to some Caicaren os, was very
likely not even known by that name. If so, it may be an irony of this
festivals current elaboration that, in seeking to establish the purity of its
origin, it has underscored its own syncretic invention. And instead of
creating solidarity through this ethnic construction, the festival has
merely given voice to the many competing interests it had once sought
to unite.
s a n t o d o m i n g o d e g u z m a n
Like most of Monagass rst towns, Caicara was established by Capu-
chin missionaries for the express purpose of settling Indians into one
location, where they could be both converted and put to work. But his-
torians and local residents are unable to agree as to exactly when this
occurred. Some put the date as early as February 1728; others claim that
it occurred the following year. Many, however, insist that the town was
not established until April 20, 1731, for its acknowledged founder, Father
Antonio de Blesa, did not even arrive in Venezuela from Puerto Rico
until January of that year. When an ofcial seal was designed for the
community, the debate was resolved by displaying all three dates with
equal prominence (Chitty 1982: 8587; Ram rez 1972: 1228).
The Indians, after whom Father de Blesa was continually chasing,
were from various groups: Pariagotos, Coacas, Cores, Karin as, and, most
numerous of all, Chaimas. Carib-speakers like the others, the Chaimas
inhabited a territory spreading from the coastal Turimiquire range to the
mesas overlooking the Guarapiche River, the site where the new com-
munity was to be placed. The towns ofcial name was Santo Domingo
de Guzman de Caicara, and it was Santo Domingo, the patron saint, who
was said to have saved the town soon after its founding.
6
As various
accounts, both written and oral, tell it, a large group of Indians had
gathered at the outskirts of the village and were preparing to overrun it
in the middle of the night. But as they approached, they were stopped
by the image of a huge gure in gleaming armor seated on a horse with
sword drawn. By his side was a snarling dog. So startling was this image
that the Indians ed in fear. To conrm what had happened, they re-
turned to Caicara the next morning. Finding the village asleep, they tim-
idly entered, arriving at last at the church. When they entered, they
found a statue of Santo Domingo with his dog and immediately recog-
nized that a miracle had happened. The date was August 4th and from
that moment on was celebrated as the ofcial Patron Saints Day of
Caicara.
7
The town grew slowly and more than fty years after its founding
still had only 400 inhabitants (Vila 1978: 97). But its location at the cross-
roads between larger commercial centers such as Matur n in the south
and Cumana and Barcelona in the north helped establish it as an im-
portant stopping point for mule trains and travelers. Even more impor-
tant was its access to the rich farmlands of the Guarapiche valley, which
soon began to attract large numbers of settlers. Cotton, corn, indigo, and
tobacco were the earliest crops, but as farms were broken up into smaller
holdings vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbage became
even more important.
8
By 1961 there were more than 4,700 people living
in Caicara and an equal number in the smaller surrounding communities
and hamlets (Ram rez 1972: 7). Almost none of them could be identied
as Indians.
9
Then, as now, the festival cycle revolved around two main holidays,
the Festival of Santo Domingo de Guzman, or Patron Saints Day, on
August 4 and the Day of the Monkey on December 28. While similar in
some ways, in most they are structurally opposite. For if the Day of the
Monkey, as many of its participants claim, is an expression of all that is
indigenous, the Festival of Santo Domingo commemorates the miracu-
lous triumph over the native. During the Patron Saints Day, all activity
emanates from the church. Diversions range from local rodeos to trav-
eling carnivals, but the principal events remain the mass and the lengthy
procession following it, in which the image of Santo Domingo is slowly
carried throughout the town. In recent years there have also been en-
actments of Santo Domingos miracle, wherein children dressed up as
Indians are rst vanquished and then converted by the sudden appear-
ance of the saint. Throughout the celebration the message remains the
samethe triumph of order over chaos and faith over paganism. The
Day of the Monkey is an inversion of this triumph and, rather than
emanating from the church, begins in the small outlying communities
and farms surrounding Caicara. It too is a reenactment of the battle
waged against Santo Domingo, except that in this version the outcome
is reversed, and the power of the church and the state is defeated. Cai-
caren os are well aware of the oppositional nature of these two celebra-
tions. Or, as one participant summarized it in a rather startling reference
to an earlier conict, Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and
unto the Monkey what is the Monkeys.
t h e d a n c e o f t h e m o n k e y
The performance of the Monkey Dance is relatively simple. Sometime
before dawn on the 28th of December, groups referred to as parrandas
begin to gather in various parts of town as well as in the smaller, outlying
hamlets. Most of the groups have danced together for years, with names
such as Garibaldo, Zanjo n, Gavilan, Eufracio Guevara, and Viento
Fresco. Some of these are place-names, indicating the village or section
of town from which the group comes; others are derived from famous
gures, most often well-known moneros (monkey dancers). Many are
wearing costumes with monkey masks, while some have simply painted
their faces blue with indigo. Ideally, they will be led by a woman in a
long owered dress or a white liquiliqui.
10
This is the mayordoma or
capitana, who, wielding a large machete, keeps order among the
group. But some are not led by women and instead have men parodying
mayordoma, dressed in skirts with oversized breasts and exaggerated
wigs. The most famous of these transvestite gures is Chilo Rojas, a
seventy-year-old monero who has been dancing for more than fty years
(Fig. 8). Like other groups, his is a mix of men and women. As he leads
his dancers, clothed in an elegant dress with purse dangling from his
arm, a young woman advances ahead, waving a banner with the groups
name and the number 28 painted on it. Equally important to each group
is its band, for as the parrandas wind through the streets on their way
to the main square, they dance and sing improvised verses:
Alla viene el mono
por el callejo n.
Abrele las puertas
a ese parrando n.
11
Here comes that monkey
down the narrow street.
Open your doors
to those dancing feet.
Arriving at different times and from different directions, the parran-
das enter with a ourish, parading in front of the review stand, then
mounting the stage to perform. Here is each groups opportunity to dis-
play its costumes as well as the skills of its band and the brilliance of its
singers improvisations. The order of the parrandas entrance is anything
but random, and although it does not remain the same each year, it still
Figure 8. Chilo Rojas and the Parranda de Gavilan. (Photograph by David M.
Guss)
retains a clear symbolic importance. In 1990 the rst group to enter was
the Parranda de San Pedro, a group which had not marched for several
years and, as Padre Freites, Caicaras priest, told me, had required a
superhuman effort to bring. In reserving this privileged position for the
group, festival organizers were able to emphasize the traditional char-
acter as well as indigenous roots of the Day of the Monkey. For not only
is the Parranda de San Pedro considered the oldest remaining group, it
is also the only one composed of Indians. It is also one of the only par-
randas still organized around a small rural community in the hills out-
side Caicara. Following the Parranda de San Pedro was the Parranda de
Gavilan, also known as the Negros de Chilo Rojas.
12
As with the San
Pedro group, the placement of Chilo, the oldest monero still dancing,
was both symbolic and honoric.
But the entrance of the parrandas is not a system of ranking. Many of
the larger groups, for instance, prefer to come later in the morning, when
bigger crowds have gathered. With much larger bands, such groups as
Garibaldo and Zanjo n can also remain onstage much longer. Yet even-
tually each is replaced by the next and leaves the stage, to be swallowed
up by the mass of revelers that has been steadily growing since dawn.
It is this much larger group, uniting both the public and the parrandas,
which is doing the Monkey Dance. Spiraling and swaying back and
forth, long lines of dancers are whipped about, hanging desperately onto
the belts or shirttails of those in front. The leaders of these long columns
swing belts, which they periodically use on any bystander they happen
to see. At times they crouch down, leading the dancers in difcult hop-
ping motions; at other moments they move so quickly that shirts are torn
through the mere effort to hold on. Others drink from skins of wine and
rum or carry paint cans of blue indigo used to splatter anyone they pass.
From the stage come warnings against ripping clothes or other rowdy
behavior. Nevertheless, by dusk the plaza is entirely lled with an in-
creasingly chaotic and inebriated mass of dancers. And then the groups
begin to drift off one by one, and the festival, as suddenly as it started,
without any pomp or ceremony, zzles to an end.
13
It may be difcult to imagine at rst glance what this apparent free-
for-all has to do with the indigenous traditions preceding the arrival of
the Spaniards. Without the focus of a recognizable ceremony or the cen-
tral image of a saint, the celebration seems improvised and undirected.
And indeed, my own impression of the dance when I rst saw it in 1983
was that of an antifestival. Yet many Caicaren os are quick to insist
that the Day of the Monkey represents the same ritual behavior that
Carib-related peoples of this area have practiced for hundreds if not
thousands of years. As evidence, they point to the style of dancing,
claiming that, whereas Europeans hold hands and move in pairs, indig-
enous peoples, in a more collective manner, form long lines. They also
point out that the musical form is a marisela, derived from the traditional
Carib or Karin a mare mare, and that the instruments used are of predom-
inantly native origin.
14
The ciriaco and the conch, the pan-utes and the
maracas, all of them are the same as those played by the original in-
habitants of the area (Fig. 9). A further indication of the dances indig-
enous origin is the use of face paint, even if somewhat chaotically ap-
plied. But the most important link connecting this dance to an Indian
predecessor is the gure of the monkey itself. For underlying all of this
Figure 9. A parranda playing the ciriaco. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
activity is the widely held belief that the dance is actually a harvest
celebration honoring an ancient simian deity. As one young man ex-
plained it:
It happens that the monkeys protected the harvests that the Indians
here in Venezuela had, basically corn, which originated here in Latin
America. The monkey was the one that frightened the birds away from
the harvest. The birds would drive those monkeys crazy. And so this is
what happened. They turned the monkey into a god. In gratitude, the
Indian made him a god. And they would dance. El Baile del Mono. The
Dance of the Monkey. You know how the monkey swings from branch
to branch in single le. And the Monkey Dance . . . the monkey walks
holding on to the tail of the monkey in front. And so thats the way the
Caicara monkey dances. Understand? Because the Chaima Indians from
here used to participate in that harvest. And were culturistas, follow-
ers of the Caicara culture. And were not going to let anyone from out-
side come in here and change our tradition.
Another person insisted that although the dance was indeed a harvest
festival, it was directed toward the God of Rain:
Look, sen or, this is a story that comes from generation to generation.
The Monkey goes back to the beginning of Caicara . . . Caicuara. Caicu-
ara, the name of the Indian cacique who founded Caicara, before the
Spaniards came. Yes, this was an Indian village. And they used to
dance the Monkey. But not for entertainment. They danced to the
God of Rain. This was their God of Rain, the Mono. And every 28th of
December they would dance to him, asking for rain. Thats why . . . I
dont know if this is your rst time here or if youll believe this, but
thats why people say that on the 27th, its bright and sunny. But on
the 28th when it dawns, its usually overcast and gray. Because this
was a rain dance. Well, this is what we know from what weve been
able to read.
15
What explanations such as these resolutely deny is that the Day of
the Monkey may also share its origins with an African or European past
(Fig. 10). Yet it is not difcult to discern howelements fromthese cultural
traditions have also contributed to the festival. In fact, in many ways, it
is the African and European inuence that initially impresses the ob-
server. The parrandas, with their marching bands, waving banners, and
masked dancers, are much closer to the African-derived carnival tradi-
tion from nearby Trinidad than to anything that existed among Vene-
zuelas native peoples. In fact, as Henry Corradini correctly observed
(1976), indigenous dance was usually circular and inward, unlike the
parranda style with its long lines moving from place to place. Such
claims are also supported by Chilo Rojas, who recalled the former im-
portance of black musicians and dancers and the African songs they
would bring:
Yes, they came from outside. There were lots of blacks who arrived
here from Guiria [near Trinidad] because I remember that black prepar-
ing his negritos [dancers]. They would sing a chant. Hed come out with
a chant and say to them:
Jale tamba
gongo to
And the dancers would respond:
Bamba caila
Figure 10. Monkey mask. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
Then
De mi
Bamba fe menor
And the dancers:
Bamba caila
. . . the negritos, I remember them as if I were seeing them right now,
understand? Which means theres an origin to that. That black came
here with his thing from someplace else.
In addition, it is possible that even the long bamboo ciriaco, that emblem
par excellence of Indianness, may be traced back to an origin in the
West African carangano (Hernandez and Fuentes 1992: 96; Mendez 1978:
11; Ram rez 1986: 60).
16
Yet equally if not more pronounced than these
African inuences is the relationship of the festival to one of Europes
oldest church celebrationsthe Day of the Holy Innocents.
t h e f e a s t o f f o o l s
Known also as Childermas, the Day of the Holy Innocents was estab-
lished to commemorate King Herods slaughter of every male child in
Bethlehem under the age of two. Although the Bible gives no date for
this event, the early church fathers established it as December 28, thereby
associating it with the four-day Roman Saturnalia concluding the year.
In many parts of Europe it was considered the unluckiest day of the year
and was commemorated by giving children (in order to remember
Herods deed) a sound thrashing (Hatch 1978: 1157). Called Cross Day
in Ireland and other parts of the British Isles, it was an inauspicious day,
on which altars were draped in mourning and no major event, such as
a wedding or a coronation, was ever held. A more common tradition
did not punish children but elevated them into a position of power. It is
quite likely that this latter custom began in abbeys and monasteries,
where the youngest cleric or nun was placed in charge for the duration
of the holiday. This inversion was soon to spread, however, into a more
generalized burlesque of all power. In England and France, young boys
were chosen to be bishops with all the authority that position entailed
(Mackenzie 1987). In Belgium, children locked up their parents, requir-
ing them to pay a ransom before they could be freed. But it was not only
children who joined in these games. Peasants, women, and other dis-
enfranchised groups also took advantage of this holiday, not only to
assume power but to mock it. What was once the unluckiest day of the
year was now the most absurd, and so the 28th of December also became
known as the Feast of Fools.
The church, it should be noted, did not appreciate becoming the target
of its congregants humor and as early as the seventh century began an
active campaign to prohibit it. But it would be nearly a thousand years
before the Feast of Fools nally began to disappear in Europe (Bakhtin
1984: 77).
17
In the New World, however, it had already taken hold, and
in countries like Venezuela it was extremely widespread. There Decem-
ber 28th was a type of April Fools Day in which newspapers ran false
headlines, wives put salt in their husbands coffee, and children were
sent on pointless errands. The names of objects were also changed. Rum
might be called water and the ag, dishtowel. In the coastal towns
of Barlovento entire governments of women were set up, parodying
male authority with absurd decrees and other actions such as cross-
dressing. In the highland communities of Lara, masked gures known
as Zaragozas danced through the streets behind miraculous images of
the Holy Innocents massacre. And in Caicara workers from the outlying
haciendas paraded into town, singing and dancing in the homes they
passed, until nally arriving in the plaza, where the landowners had set
up tables covered with liquor and food. At least this, according to some
accounts, was the way the Day of the Holy Innocents was celebrated
until around 1925.
18
It was at this point, elderly Caicaren os say, that an innovation in the
dance occurred. Indians arriving from the community of El Cerezo sud-
denly grabbed onto each other, forming a long line of hopping gures.
One man, who claims to have witnessed the event, says it was in fear of
getting separated from one another. In fact, Jacinto Guevara says, it was
Balbino Blancos daughter Veronica who rst clutched onto her father,
giving the dance its distinctive step. Then a bystander, perhaps Celestino
Palacios, screamed out, Alla viene el mono. Here comes the mon-
key. Although he meant it derisively, others took up the dance, and
within several years, it was the only step being done.
Chilo Rojas also insists that the Monkey Dance is a recent innovation,
but he remembers its origins somewhat differently:
How did that begin? There was a family around here named Palacios
who lived around El Cerezo. They lived up around the R o de Oro.
Okay, and on the Calle de la Casualidad there was a man named Jor-
gito Taylor who had a business. And he sold ponsigue rum, rum. A Mr.
Pen a Guzman lived over there as well. And Felix D az. And those peo-
ple, because that was the main street here, the Calle de la, de la . . . that
was the town . . . the Calle de la Casualidad!
Okay, they, well, they began to drink rum over there. That was an
enormous family, that Palacios family. Incredible. There were, no shit,
at least fty. And they were living in the farmworkers camp. There are
still a few old guys living over there on Calle Tracadero. They began to
drink rum, and they bought a carafe of rum. Theyre an enormous fam-
ily. And so they began to drink rum. And the old man said, Hell,
whoever doesnt leap from there to here, doesnt get a drink!
They were all over there crowded into the middle of the street. I was
just a kid then, around 17 years old.
19
And so they began coming. One
would leap and grab onto the bottle and take a drink and then stay in
front. And then the next. And they started in with that and before you
know it they were just about at Felix D azs corner with the carafe of
rum. They went on grabbing one another and then they really got go-
ing with that. They grabbed onto one anothers belts. Jesus! They belted
one another. Theyd jump, grab the carafe, take a drink of rum, and
keep on going. No shit, they took over the whole street. They held onto
one anothers belts and just kept on dancing. And monkey, by God!
And drinks, no shit . . . and I took off my own belt because that stuff . . .
thats the problem.
And thats the way the monkey began. But they didnt dance the
monkey before that. I remember . . . look, its as if I were watching it
today.
20
What is clear from these multiple versions of the festivals origins
is that Caicaren os do not agree as to what the celebration represents.
For even upon hearing the rst-hand accounts of such respected elders
as Jacinto Guevara and Chilo Rojas, many still claim that the festival
has absolutely nothing to do with the Day of the Holy Innocents. Even
the ofcial state historian, Juan Jose Ram rez, has chosen to ignore
these sources and instead construct an origin based on the uncorro-
borated account of a single eighty-two-year-old man. In it, Balbino
Blanco also appears, but the year is 1895 and it is to honor Santo
Domingo that he revives the ancient Monkey Dance beneath a giant
ceiba tree in front of the church. What is interesting in this depiction
is that Ram rez also reported interviewing such elders as Jorgito Tay-
lor and Domitila Campos Guzman, both of whom insisted that there
was no Monkey Dance. What did exist, they claimed, was a simple
mare mare, performed annually as part of the Holy Innocents celebra-
tion (1972: 6263).
In order to understand these conicting claims, it is important to con-
sider who is making each of them. Those who state that the Monkey
Dance was simply a craze that took over in the 1920s and eventually
silenced any reference to the Day of the Holy Innocents are predomi-
nantly older people with strong ties to Caicaras agricultural past. How-
ever, those insisting that the Day of the Monkey is a completely indig-
enous celebration, with no link whatsoever to any European or African
tradition, are, for the most part, young men who have left Caicara in
order to study or work. For this group, which continues to grow with
the changing face of Venezuelas economy, the Day of the Monkey is a
homecoming celebration or, as they themselves say, un d a de retorno.
It is on this day, conveniently situated between Christmas and New
Years, that every Caicaren o, no matter where he or she is, will make
every attempt possible to return to the village. Such sentiments are
strongly reinforced by the many lyrics now incorporated into the dance
welcoming these Caicaren os home. The following example, credited to
Mar a Maita de Guevara, is but one of many:
Caicaren o si estas lejos
vente corriendo el 28
no importa que tu estes viejo
o tu burrito esta mocho
Caicaren o, si no vienes
es porque no eres de aqu
tu sabes que el mono tiene
muchas cosas para ti
Caicaren o if youre far away
come running on the 28th today
it doesnt matter if youre old
or if your burros lame
Caicaren o, if you dont come
its because this isnt where youre from
you know full well
the monkey has many things in store for you
For those returning to la Patria Chica, or the Little Country, as it is
sometimes called, the dance is a symbol of identity, distinguishing them
from (rather than joining them to) a larger national tradition that contin-
ually threatens to engulf them. The Indianness of the Day of the Mon-
key, therefore, is the quality of being native and rooted. It is the ability
to localize the no longer local. Or, as a young dentist dressed as a priest,
who was also a Caicaren o living in the Andes, claimed, For me the
monkey represents the beginning, the essence. Why? Because its my
identity as both a Caicaren o and a native of this community.
The use of native here (ind gena in Spanish) is intentionally ambig-
uous. It indicates that he is native because he does the dance and a
Caicaren o because he is native. The fact that since the 1920s indige-
nous aspects of the festival have been selected as the most characteristic
and meaningful is no doubt a response to the socioeconomic changes
that have been occurring throughout this area. It is little surprise,
therefore, that the appearance of the Indians dancing in from El Cerezo
should coincide with the sudden appearance of another band of strang-
ersStandard Oil of New Jersey, who at the same moment was drilling
its rst wells in Monagas.
t h e s u l t a n o f t h e g u a r a p i c h e
The effect of the oil boom on the state of Monagas, one of Venezuelas
main oil-producing areas, has been tremendous.
21
It is signicant,
therefore, that Jesu s Guevara Febres begins his monograph on the Day
of the Monkey, Sobre las huellas de El Mono (1974), with an analysis of the
impact the oil industry has had upon Caicara and other rural commu-
nities in Monagas. After describing the original irresistibility of working
in the nearby oil elds, he tells of the tragic results when mechanization
arrived and this new labor force was suddenly unemployed.
22
Unable to
return to agricultural employment, the former oil workers soon became
part of a growing underclass in such exploding urban centers as Caracas
and Puerto Ordaz. What is particularly revealing is the illustration Gue-
vara Febres included in his study to dramatize this process: a drawing
of oil elds and reneries with a long row of hopeful campesinos, iden-
tiable by their straw hats, entering them (Fig. 11). One of them has his
hand raised as if to signal onward. Yet on the other side is the same
row of men (now wearing hard hats) coming out. No longer campesinos,
they are now workers, despondent, unemployed, and with their hands
in their pockets. Above this whole scene and lling the sky is the godlike
gure of the monkey, arms outstretched in an embrace of the entire
landscape (Guevara Febres 1974: 7). The symbolism of this image is both
powerful and clear. The oil industry has been a factory for the produc-
tion of urbanism, unemployment, and destabilized social relations. And
in such a world, it is tradition alone (particularly that of the monkey)
that can hold these various disintegrating elements together.
The illustration reproduced by Guevara Febres indicates another
powerful explanation for why this festival suddenly became a celebra-
tion of indigenous values and what exactly those values signify. For in
addition to being native, as suggested above, the indigenous is also
being used to indicate an Edenic pastoral past that no longer exists. It is
a reminder of another festival and another era, in which the dancers did
indeed come from the surrounding haciendas and hamlets. They were
campesinos who worked the land and used the festival as an important
occasion to join together on an annual basis. Yet today almost all of the
Figure 11. Transformation of the workforce, 1974. (Courtesy Jesu s Guevara
Febres)
parrandas come from the town and are largely composed of urban work-
ers who return simply for this day. As the man who claimed that the
monkey was a celebration of his nativeness also admitted, The San
Pedro Parranda is the only native one left that comes from outside. The
others now are all from town, and theyre like us. Were mestizos, but
they arent.
If it is true that the Day of the Monkey is being used to invoke the
memory of another, less-industrialized, reality, then it is one that many
Caicaren os insist was a much more prosperous one for their town. Cai-
cara before 1920, before the arrival of automobiles and the oil industry,
was still a rural hub for traders and travelers, a town with restaurants
and hotels, none of which it now has. As Freddy Natera, a longtime
Caicara resident, said:
Look, Caicara was even more important than Matur n [the state capi-
tal]. Caicara had an ice plant. It had a soda-bottling plant. Caicara de
Matur n, thats what it was known as. And why? One simple reason, it
was the agricultural capital of Monagas.
23
Chilo Rojas was even more emphatic in recalling the glories of this
former golden age, when Caicara serviced the needs of the many cam-
pesinos and traders who depended upon it:
It was an amazing town, lled with activity. Caicara had so much. . . .
Matur n was a pigsty compared to Caicara. And on the weekends . . .
even the president of the state would come to spend his weekends
here. Because Caicara was so important! Caicara had a tobacco shop,
which Matur n didnt, two shoemakers, four or ve sandal makers [al-
pargater as]. It had saddle and harness makers where they even made
buckles. It had a blacksmith. It had four soap makers. It had cotton
gins, corn mills, four or ve corn mills. And the rst soda-bottling
plant, where was it? Right here in Caicara de Matur n. La Liber-
tico. . . . Caicara had everything and now it has nothing. Look, now
theres not even a single store to buy a handkerchief in. In a town that
had more than a hundred shops!
But economic realities are always bound to social ones, and if the
Indianness of the monkey celebration is being used to signal an era
of pastoral plenty and well-being, it also resituates the participants who
wish, at least for the day, to recover that reality. In this sense, Indian-
ness may be seen as a classic instrumental use of ethnicity to restore
relations that have been ruptured or destabilized.
24
It resuscitates the
memory of a forgotten tribe long dispersed throughout Venezuelas
various urban centers. It creates distinctions where distinction has been
lost and makes Caicaren os unique among all others. Or, as Caicaren os
continually proclaim about their Monkey Dance, It has nothing to do
with the Day of the Holy Innocents or any other holiday, because the
only place where it is danced is here.
25
What is fascinating about the way the Day of the Monkey has been
used to express this new ethnicity is that those who identify with it most
closely do not consider themselves Indian or, for that matter, black or
European. They are mestizos.
26
Hence, not only do they see themselves
as unrelated to the members of the San Pedro Parranda, which is com-
posed of Indian-descended campesinos, they also see no contradiction
in the fact that their performance of the Monkey Dance is in many ways
unrelated to that of the group championed as both the oldest and the
most authentic (Fig. 12). For the aspects they claim make the Day of the
Monkey an indigenous celebration are generally absent from the San
Pedro presentation. Instead of dancing in long lines with each person
holding onto the one in front, the San Pedro performers dance in couples,
or, as many would say, European style. Even more signicant is the
absence of any reference whatsoever to the supposed Monkey God.
Masks, when they do appear, are fashioned from simple gourds. More
common are large straw hats with colored ribbons hanging from their
brim and fruits and owers on their top. Wearing the skirts of dried
banana leaves, these dancers evoke images of fertility and nature. It is
the same image Jacinto Guevara recalled when describing Balbino
Blanco and his dancers from El Cerezo in the 1920s: With Balbino all
you could see was his hat. Thats all. A straw hat all covered with wild-
owers piled on top.
27
But Caicaren os are not disturbed by such discrepancies. Although
they claim that the Indianness of the Day of the Monkey is supported
by such traditions as the collective style of dance, the instruments and
whips, the face paints, and the reverence for the monkey itself, it is not
Figure 12. San Pedro Parranda with gourd masks and straw hats. (Photograph
by David M. Guss)
authenticity as normally dened that gives it its real authority. In fact,
it may be an irony of this insistence on local, indigenous culture that the
most important validation is that derived from both national media and
the state. Without the historical depth or textual and artifactual records
of a festival like San Juan, the Day of the Monkey has had to legitimate
itself through other means.
28
This folklorization process has taken a
number of forms, all reiterating the same objective claim: that the
Mono is eastern Venezuelas greatest folkloric treasure. In fact, it is this
identical expression that has been used by one author after another to
describe the festival (Abreu 1984; Perez and Bermu dez 1978; Ram rez
1972, 1988; Zuloaga 1990). It is also the phrase used to announce ones
arrival in Caicara (Fig. 13). For at the towns entrance is an enormous
billboard with a monkey on it, accompanied by the following message:
Esta llegando a Caicara
Tierra del Mono
Maxima Expresio n
Figure 13. Billboard at the entrance to Caicara. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
Folklo rica del Oriente
Salud Amigo
You are entering Caicara
Land of the Monkey
Maximum Folkloric
Expression of the East
Welcome Friend
Such sentiments go well beyond the simple rhetoric of civic pride or
commercial promotion. They have become part of the vernacular which
Caicaren os employ to locate the festival and hence themselves. Or as one
member of the Parranda de Zanjo n put it: On the 28th of December in
Caicara, all roads lead to the monkey, which is the Rome of tradition
and the Mecca of Eastern Folklore. . . . The monkey is the Sultan of the
Guarapiche. Frequent statements such as these reect the way in which
an ofcializing discourse has been transformed into the common lan-
guage of shared perception. The strategies through which this has oc-
curred are a complex blend, mixing elements from almost every me-
dium. One of the most signicant of these is that of public art, discovered
not simply in the billboard at Caicaras entrance but on the walls
throughout the town.
If it is the case that the Day of the Monkey cannot be conrmed
through any historical or written evidence, the murals which now line
Caicaras streets may be said to provide this textual record (Fig. 14).
Created over the last fteen years, these murals tell the history of the
festival, aggressively asserting both its traditionalness and its Indian-
ness. Paintings commissioned by individuals, parrandas, political par-
ties, cultural organizations, and commercial interests, such as rum com-
panies, provide an inventory of the festivals diverse elements. The most
common of these images is that of the monkey, either its body contorted
in dance or a portrait of its head. Many paintings, however, simply de-
pict the instruments or a bowl of indigo with the image of a blue hand
next to it; others show famous costumes, such as that of Perucho Arcilla
and his twins. Yet there are also more complex images, such as the tab-
leaux of parrandas being led through the streets behind the leaping g-
ure of a monkey playing a cows horn. Almost all of these are accom-
panied by messages, exhorting participants to take care of your
monkey, to maintain your tradition, or to defend your cultural iden-
tity.
29
Together these paintings form a body of knowledge, a catalogue
on walls detailing exactly why the Day of the Monkey is such a unique
and important tradition.
The culmination of this complex public text, which has been added
to year after year, was the erection in 1990 of an ofcial Monument to
the Dance of the Monkey (Fig. 15). Designed by Jose Roca Zamora, a
Caicaren o now living in Puerto La Cruz, it was placed at the end of the
main square opposite the church. Standing on a pyramid-shaped base,
the monument depicts a two-headed monkey atop a 20-foot-high col-
umn. On one side the monkey is smiling, while on the other he is frown-
ing. Sculpted into the concrete column are the dances most emblematic
symbolsthe instruments, the belts, the cans of indigo paint, hand-
prints, the number 28. Although many Caicaren os have expressed dis-
appointment with the statue, insisting it is either too phallic or looks too
much like an ape instead of an indigenous monkey or simply was too
expensive, the monument remains a source of pride, an afrmation once
again of Caicaras specialness as the only place in Venezuela where this
festival takes place. It is also an important passage into what Eric Hobs-
bawm claimed is one of the principal ingredients in the invention of new
traditions. For the establishment of an alternative civic religion
Figure 14. Mural dedicated to the Day of the Monkey. (Photograph by
David M. Guss)
demands the creation of new sacred spaces in the form of public mon-
uments (Hobsbawm 1983: 269).
30
The billboard, murals, and monument were generated from within
the community, or at least in collaboration with its members, but many
forms of legitimation come from without. Such recognition has been
extremely important in conrming claims of authenticity. The fact that
radio stations regularly transmit the holiday throughout the state or that
television and lm crews come to record it is proof that the Day of the
Monkey exists as a unique folkloric entity. Similar importance is attached
to both national and regional folklore festivals in which parrandas from
Caicara have occasionally participated. To be invited to perform beside
such well-established groups as the Sanjuaneros of Curiepe or the Ta-
munangueros of Lara is recognition in itself of the special status of the
monkey tradition. Members of the community are conscious of this and
Figure 15. Monument to the Dance of the Monkey. (Photograph by David M.
Guss)
can easily cite the events at which moneros have danced and even won
awards. They also cite with mixed pride the names of performers, both
national and international, who have adopted the Monkey Dance for
commercial use: the Orquestra T pica de Venezuela, Billo Fro meta and
his Caracas Boys, the Dominican merengue star Wilfrido Vargas, and
Yolanda Moreno, the dancer who Guevara Febres claims is now a cap-
itana (1974: 26). Each of these is but one more demonstration of the
undisputed place of the Monkey as a national folkloric dance. Even
my own presence as an anthropologist was converted into a symbol of
authentication. If it was worth being studied, it must be real. Singers
would frequently comment on my presence in their quatrains. And an-
nouncers, whom quite often I had never met, would repeatedly acknowl-
edge me from the stage:
Welcome to the anthropologists from everywhere. Because today we
have an anthropologist with us from the United States . . . forgive me
if I cant remember from where . . . an anthropologist who has come
all this way to be here for the great folkloric expression of the Mono.
This modern sense of authenticity as bestowed by either the media or
academic recognition is regularly parodied by a group of performers
dressed as a television crew (Fig. 16). Despite the fact that their camera
is made of cardboard and their microphone an inverted beer bottle, it is
difcult to tell at rst glance that the three men dressed in blue coveralls
with ofcial identication tags are not from a national television net-
work. As they move through the crowd conducting mock interviews,
they never once break character. Although comic, their message is also
very serious. It announces that the Day of the Monkey is a momentous
folkloric and cultural event and hence must be documented and studied.
For those participating in the festival it dramatizes precisely those ele-
ments that the Monkey Dance is performed to evoke. Here play is put
in the service of the real work of creating an identity that only the weight
of authenticity will sustain. It is an identity where symbols are collapsed
together and the construction of ethnicity so tightly wound around the
town of Caicara that to be Indian and Caicaren o are the same. For in
the end it is neither race nor work nor ethnicity that unites these dancers
Figure 16. Mono performers dressed as a television crew. (Photograph by
David M. Guss)
but rather a sense of place. And while it is this sense that distinguishes
the monkey dancers, if just for an instant, from a larger national identity,
it is only by linking the festival to this greater reality that such sentiments
can be achieved.
The Indianness of the Day of the Monkey, however, is not simply
an oppositional strategy used to distinguish one group of mestizos from
another. It is also a powerful symbol of subversion, which, when joined
to the antisocial character of the monkey, succeeds in redening the Day
of the Holy Innocents in a way that is indeed unique to Caicara. Like
every Feast of Fools celebration, it maintains inversion as its most im-
portant element, mocking all symbols of authority and power with equal
abandon. Yet it does so in a way that evokes Caicaras own history. Now,
more than 260 years after its founding, the Indians succeed in over-
whelming the city. They nally triumph over Santo Domingo and the
power of the church he represents. And what is most signicant is that
they do so in a way that is indeed Carib, that celebrates the triumph of
nature over culture and elevates above all that most enduring symbol
of anticulture, the monkey.
The anticlerical nature of the Day of the Monkey is clear, of course,
to many of the celebrants as well as to the Church itself. However, if the
church was able to suppress the holiday in Europe, it has been unable
to in Caicara. Instead, it has tried to appropriate it as best it could and
has instituted a special open-air mass to los moneros difuntos (the dead
monkey dancers). But the transparency of this strategy has fooled few.
And as one monero stated:
The monkeys a challenge to the Catholic Church, and if they say a
mass to the departed dancers . . . look, the Catholic Church with all its
stuff, with its intrigues, may accept the monkey. But what is the mon-
key? The monkey is a manifestation of before . . . a manifestation so
great that the people just overwhelmed the church. And so the church
realized this. Okay, and they used that old saying, If you cant beat
them, join them.
It is here that Caicaras history of Spanish-Indian conict is wed to
the traditional ecclesiastical subversion common to all Feast of Fools
celebrations. Yet the inversion is not that derived from Europes rigid
monastic orders or courtly aristocracies, inversions characterized by the
weak and disenfranchised being given temporary power. Instead, it is
the inversion of a world where hierarchies are barely visible and festive
reversals are signaled not by parodying political or class distinctions but
by turning culture itself on its head and allowing nature to overrun it.
Such celebrations can still be found today among Carib groups in Ven-
ezuela. In the Wasai yadi ademi hidi festival of the Yekuana, for example,
travelers who have been away for long periods of time indicate their
inverted status by dressing as forest spirits. Clothed in palm skirts and
headdresses, they dance into the community, only to be attacked by
those who have remained behind. Similar costumes are also worn by the
Pemon as they perform the Parishira ritual in order to summon the wild
boar. Here dancers are transformed into wild and dangerous animals
who suddenly pounce on those who sit apart holding bows and arrows
(Guss 1977, 1985, 1989). It is in traditions such as these, perhaps, that the
true Indianness of the Day of the Monkey is to be found, not in the long
line of dancers clinging to one anothers shirttails nor in the memory of
some long-lost simian deity but in the specter of chaos which only the
monkey, with all his antisocial pandemonium, is able to conjure.
31
90
Chapter 4 Full Speed Ahead
with Venezuela
t h e t o b a c c o i n d u s t r y ,
n a t i o n a l i s m , a n d t h e b u s i n e s s
o f p o p u l a r c u l t u r e
Bigotts other crop.
To project our roots
We plant culture
and we harvest art.
t h e b i g o t t f o u n d a t i o n
This is what popular culture really is, and not
some alien corpus, anatomized for the purposes of
exhibit, prepared and quoted by a system which
reduplicates upon these objects the same situation it
has prepared for its living subjects.
m i c h e l d e c e r t e a u ,
o n t h e o p p o s i t i o n a l p r a c t i c e s
o f e v e r y d a y l i f e
If the histories of San Juan and the Dance of the Monkey appear to be
triumphant narratives of resistance and local autonomy, it should be
remembered that they continue to exist in real time and that it will not
be long until new forces arise to suggest alternative interpretations and
meanings. While these interpretations may continue to coexist and com-
pete with one another, each will attempt to naturalize itself and, in so
f u l l s p e e d a h e a d w i t h v e n e z u e l a 91
doing, portray the other as both inauthentic and spurious. Such conict
can lead to serious community divisions. Just as Blanco Gil removed San
Juan Congo from the annual celebration in Curiepe, so too have factions
removed themselves, choosing either to celebrate alone or perhaps not
at all. Even more common is the type of accommodation achieved by
Chilo Rojas and his Parranda de Gavilan. Although he criticizes the cur-
rent manner in which the Dance of the Monkey is celebrated, disputing
even its name, he still leads his dancers through Caicaras streets and
into the main square. But he refuses, in subtle protest, to mount the
review stand as all the other parrandas do. Such multiple readings are
the norm, and no matter how dominant any interpretation of a festival
may become, some members of a community will always challenge it.
Festivals, however, are no longer limited to the interpretations of a
single community. The enormous economic, demographic, and techno-
logical changes that have occurred throughout Latin America over the
last quarter of a century have guaranteed that such events as San Juan
and the Dance of the Monkey also engage in a national and even global
discourse. It was with this in mind that Garc a Canclini claimed that all
traditional or popular forms in Latin America today are doubly en-
rolled in two systems of cultural production, giving themsimultaneous
signicance at both community and extralocal levels (1988: 486; 1993:
45). As already observed, San Juan and the Dance of the Monkey have
each articulated and responded to numerous historical and economic
changes. Among them are the consolidation of a democratic form of
government, the increasing dominance of an oil-based economy, and the
rapid urbanization that has been taking place since the late 1960s. In
each instance, the festival became a vehicle through which participants
could dramatize such concerns as race, ethnicity, marginalization, and
oppression. And yet, as popular forms become increasingly doubly en-
rolled, they will also be subject to appropriation by newand unforeseen
audiences.
Until now, most discussions of the enlistment of popular culture by
new and nonautochthonous forces have been dominated by concerns
surrounding the state. And without doubt, the desire to develop a co-
herent identity has been a driving force in the way many popular forms
92 f u l l s p e e d a h e a d w i t h v e n e z u e l a
have been recongured. This nation-building model, however, may have
more relevance to Europe, from which so many of these studies have
emerged (Herzfeld 1982; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Wilson 1976),
than it does to Latin America. Although it is true, as the present work
attests, that states throughout Latin America have appropriated these
forms as instruments of ideological cohesion (Garc a Canclini 1993:
45), there are other forces which must be given equal if not greater at-
tention. The domination of multinational interests in cultural appara-
tuses as well as in basic economic production has created conditions that
did not adhere during the period of state formation in either Europe or
North America. As a result, William Rowe and Vivian Schelling argue,
it has been the electronic media rather than the state that have been the
greatest homogenizing agent in Latin America (1991: 100, 196).
Although it is certainly clear that global market forces are transcend-
ing national boundaries everywhere in the world, it is important to rec-
ognize that these forces do not act uniformly in every country. In rec-
ognition of this, Ulf Hannerz distinguished between what he calls
multinational and global corporations. Although each might strive for
the homogenization of its consumers, the former recognizes and exploits
local differences, whereas the latter steadfastly ignores them (1992: 234
235). Closely related to this process is what Arjun Appadurai identied
as production fetishism, the manner in which multinational corpora-
tions localize themselves. Or, as he denes it:
An illusion created by contemporary transnational production loci,
which masks translocal capital, transnational earning-ows, global
management and often faraway workers (engaged in various kinds of
high-tech putting out operations) in the idiom and spectacle of local
(sometimes even worker) control, national productivity and territorial
sovereignty. . . . The locality (both in the sense of the local factory or site
of production and in the extended sense of the nation-state) becomes a
fetish which disguises the globally dispersed forces that actually drive
the production process. (1990: 16)
Such production fetishism, which Appadurai does not elaborate
upon, could encompass a number of corporate strategies, from a Buy
American campaign to Nestles establishment of infant-oriented rest
stops throughout Europe.
1
What concepts like those of Hannerz and Ap-
padurai make clear, however, is that multinational corporations can no
longer be seen as simple cultural imperialists exporting anonymous
Western values at the expense of all that is local and indigenous. Al-
though one should not minimize the negative impact these corporations
may have, it is also critical to recognize that in the course of extracting
resources and manufacturing and selling goods, multinational corpora-
tions have also become extremely important cultural producers. The sim-
ple fact that the reserves of the ten largest corporations in the world
today are greater than those of the hundred smallest nations suggests
that the once undisputed role of the state is now being challenged by
another authority. Yet the interests each has in constructing a unied
national identity are not necessarily opposed. Whereas the state may
wish to achieve allegiance in order to transcend regional and ethnic dis-
cord (along with all the power and benets such transcendence brings),
a corporation may wish to become identied with the state in order to
win the allegiance of consumers. As the concept of production fetish-
ism suggests, if corporations can attach their products closely enough
to images of the nation, then to purchase them will be translated into a
patriotic duty. In Venezuela this is precisely what one corporation, the
Cigarrera Bigott, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, has done.
The multifaceted campaign initiated by Bigott in 1981 to achieve these
goals has converted Venezuelas most important producer of cigarettes
into an equally important producer of culture. While the company may
insist that it is simply engaged in the disinterested promotion of popular
culture in its most authentic and unadulterated form, the reality is some-
what different. The creation of new contexts and audiences, the selection
and promotion of particular events to the exclusion of others, and the
diffusion and massication through new technologies are only a few of
the ways in which Bigott has helped to redene the manner in which
these forms will be appreciated and understood. This does not mean,
however, that Bigott is simply another invasive force contaminating the
otherwise pristine and folkloric. What it does mean is that a powerful
multinational corporation has now become an active participant in the
ongoing debate over how cultural expressions should be performed and
interpreted. They join all those in communities like Curiepe and Caicara,
where musicians, dancers, promeseros, community activists, and gov-
ernment workers, to name but a few, have used festivals as a means to
articulate a wide range of personal and collective interests. To under-
stand this participation, therefore, one must analyze Bigotts campaign
within the same sociopolitical framework that one would use in exam-
ining a festival. For just as San Juan and the Dance of the Monkey have
responded to an enormous range of historical and economic changes, so
too has the campaign that has transformed the Cigarrera Bigott into one
of Venezuelas most important cultural producers.
t h e o r i g i n s o f a f o u n d a t i o n
As its name suggests, British American Tobacco did not grow from a
small local concern but originated as a transnational cartel with a specic
mandate to enter foreign markets. Founded in 1902, the company
emerged from a short but bitter struggle between the worlds reigning
tobacco monopolies, Imperial of Great Britain and American Tobacco of
the United States. In order to preserve control over their territories, they
agreed not to sell in one anothers markets and to band together to form
a new entity to handle all sales of their products outside Britain and the
United States. The company, to be called British American Tobacco,
would be located in England, while its rst chair and largest stockholder
would be James Duke of American. But in 1911 antitrust legislation
forced Duke to break up his empire, and American Tobaccos interests
in the new corporation were sold. British American, however, continued
to expand, and before long it was the largest producer of tobacco in the
world.
Today, with assets of well over $25 billion and more than 170,000
employees, British American Tobacco remains one of the worlds largest
manufacturers of cigarettes as well as Englands third largest industrial
enterprise (Directory of Corporate Afliations 1999: 78; Tucker 1982: 71).
Like many tobacco corporations, British American began to diversify its
interests in the 1960s. Since then, it has invested heavily in cosmetics,
retailing (including Saks Fifth Avenue, Gimbels, and Marshall Field),
packaging, paper, insurance, and nancial services. In 1976 the company
recognized its new makeup by reorganizing into six divisions and
changing its name to BAT Industries. Yet despite these changes, tobacco
remains the corporations most important concern. With manufacturing
in seventy-eight countries and sales in more than 130, BAT continues to
expand, opening new markets in Eastern Europe and China.
2
In at least
thirty-six countries (including Brazil, Mexico, India, Nigeria, Germany,
Malaysia, and Indonesia), it is the brand leader. And in the United States,
where its largest subsidiary, Brown and Williamson, markets Kool and
Viceroy, it ranks third (Chai, Campbell, and Spain 1993: 142143; Corina
1975: 304305; Tucker 1982: 7184).
Although British American Tobacco has been equally successful in
Venezuela, few if any of its citizens could identify it. Following a tactic
used in other countries, it acquired an already existing corporation with
a national reputation and simply adopted its name. This strategy proved
particularly successful in Venezuela, where Cigarrera Bigott, the com-
pany British American purchased in 1922, was not only the leading pro-
ducer of cigarettes but also recognized for its record of progressive phi-
lanthropy. Founded by Luis Bigott in 1898, the company had a long
history of investing in the welfare of its employees and their families.
After selling the company, Luis Bigott went on to a long career as a
distinguished philanthropist. In addition to constructing schools and
homes for workers, he also aided in the resettling of Dominican refugees
and the development of a national education program (Fundacio n Polar
1989: 375376). Needless to say, the company continued to benet from
whatever good deeds its former owner undertook. Yet British Ameri-
can never entirely abandoned the activities of its founder and in 1963
set up the Bigott Foundation (Fundacion Bigott) to aid workers in
the procurement and nancing of homes. Not until 1981, however, did
the new owners begin to pay serious attention to the work of this
foundation.
By this time Bigott and its perennial best-seller, Belmont, had rm
control of more than 80 percent of Venezuelas tobacco market. Its only
real competitor was the Tabacalera Nacional, a much smaller company
which, despite partial ownership by Philip Morris, was still Venezuelan
run (Gerente Venezuela 1990). In 1981, however, a different challenge
arose when the government of Luis Herrera Camp ns outlawed the ad-
vertising of all tobacco and alcohol on both radio and television (Licausi
1981). Bigott reacted immediately, deciding to use its foundation as a
means to promote its name without actually advertising cigarettes. As
Agust n Coll, one of the foundations rst directors, recalled, From the
moment of the presidential decree we knew we had to nd a way to
continue in broadcasting, and so we decidedbecause the idea was to
stay on television, but without mentioning the name of the cigarette
that the way to do it was through the Bigott Foundation, and so we said,
Lets change the whole focus of the foundation.
Bigotts parent company, of course, had been faced with an identical
crisis ten years earlier in the United States, where similar legislation had
been passed.
3
There, major tobacco companies had banned together to
form the Tobacco Research Council as well as the Tobacco Institute, the
rst to oversee efforts in all health-related research and the latter to co-
ordinate lobbying activities (Miles 1982: 5890). Bigott was still not sure
what area its redesigned foundation should promote. Yet, as Coll con-
rms, three criteria guided its search. First, whatever theme was chosen
should not conict with the issue of tobacco. Youth or sports-related
activities, for example, would be inappropriate, given the health con-
cerns that had already alarmed the public. Then there was the fact that
Bigott was a multinational corporation. The environment in Venezuela,
as in many other Latin American countries, had grown increasingly hos-
tile to foreign-owned companies throughout the 1970s. Some of these
companies had actually been nationalized, and it was with this in mind
that Bigott resolved to choose a sphere as closely associated with the
values of Venezuelan identity as possible. In short, it wished to nation-
alize itself before anyone else did. And nally, the area selected should
appeal to the masses. It should not be restricted to concert halls or mu-
seums nor to special audiences. As Coll himself said, It should not be
elitist.
The search for this new focus had actually begun in the late 1970s,
which explains how Bigott was able to react so quickly once antismoking
legislation was passed. As with all of the companys public relations
efforts, it was directed by Corpa (Corporacio n Publicitaria Nacional,
C.A.), the largest advertising rm in Venezuela. Like Bigott, Corpa is a
multinational corporation, owned by the Anglo-American giant Ogilvy
and Mather. Its director, James Steel, had foreseen the difculties that
tobacco advertising would soon face and had suggested that a contin-
gency plan be explored.
4
A survey was therefore conducted asking peo-
ple what area they would most like to see private industry support.
Based on the results of this survey, Steel convinced Bigott to restructure
its foundation. The previous loan program for employees would now be
part of a newly created foundation called Los Ruices, while the Bigott
Foundation, which bore the all-important name of the company, would
dedicate itself to the promotion of popular culture. So successful would
this campaign be that Bigott would not only nationalize itself but,
through it, become a synonym for all that was most authentically
Venezuelan.
The survey that Corpa conducted for Bigott, however, provides only
a partial explanation for the choice of popular culture as the foundations
new focus. To understand why this was perceived as such a fertile area
of exploitation, one must also recognize the tremendous convergence of
political and economic forces that came together in Venezuela at the end
of the 1970s. Some of these forces, such as those of demographic change
and technological innovation, have already been alluded to. Yet it is
important to reemphasize how much rapid urbanization throughout
Latin America and not simply Venezuela has helped to redene the na-
ture of traditional and popular forms. No longer the preserve of oral-
based rural communities, these traditions, once relocated in the city, be-
come active participants in new modes of production. Or, as Garc a
Canclini points out:
Urbanization and industrialization not only generate new cultural
forms but contribute to the reorganization of all symbolic processes.
The fact that 60 to 70 percent of the population is now concentrated
in big cities and is connected to national and transnational networks
means that the contents, practices, and rites of the pastincluding
those of migrant campesinosare reordered according to a different
logic. (1992: 33)
5
Part of what determines this different logic is the availability of
new media for both production and dissemination. Yet access to such
media as television and radio is often difcult, particularly for such his-
torically marginalized groups as those identied with folklore and pop-
ular culture. By the time Corpa conducted its survey, the pressure to
respond to these groups, now a large part of all audiences, had been
mounting for well over a decade. In the vanguard of those calling for
this democratization of culture were the many leftists formerly active
in Venezuelas guerrilla movement. In fact, the pacication of these
groups in 1969, after ten years of armed struggle, was directly related to
the growth of interest in popular culture throughout the country. Most
of these guerrillas were university students from middle-class, urban
backgrounds. Their years in the countryside and mountains had been
their rst exposure to the diversity and richness of campesino life. It is
little surprise, therefore, that, once demobilized, these former militants
were among the primary agitators for the interests of popular culture.
Many of their ideas were articulated at the historic three-day Cultural
Congress against Dependency and Neo-Colonialism. Held in December
1970 in the western oil town of Cabimas, the congress outlined what
became known as El Nuevo Viraje (the New Direction). Participants ar-
gued that it was time to move from armed to cultural struggle and called
for the recolonization of Venezuela (Chaco n 1973: 60).
At the heart of the Cabimas strategy was the conviction that popular
culture (which was the perfect union of the rural campesino with the
urban proletariat) represented the essence of Venezuelan identity and,
as such, was also a powerful agent of resistance. It alone could combat
the forces of cultural imperialism that had colonized the very souls of
the Venezuelan people. In fact, many Venezuelan leftists believed that
only through an initial cultural revolution would citizens be sufciently
liberated to imagine a true economic one. As Esteban Emilio Mosonyi,
a leading theorist, wrote, Without underestimating in any way the
other mechanisms for struggle, we categorically state the need for a cul-
tural revolution as the rst step in the creation of a truly integrated rev-
olutionary movement designed for the radical and denitive transfor-
mation of our reality (1982: 180).
All of these discussions, which continued throughout the 1970s in
various forms, recognized that the crisis in Venezuela was as much cul-
tural as economic. This became even more apparent during the tremen-
dous oil boom beginning in 1974, when prices quadrupled in a single
year. Over the next ve years public spending alone increased at an
annual average of 17 percent (M. Rodr guez 1991: 246). Arriving with
this sudden wealth was a massive importation of Western, and partic-
ularly American, consumer goods. For many, it was the age of the Mia-
mero, the Venezuelan who slavishly mimicked an American lifestyle, or
the couples who ew to New York City to shop for the weekend. It was,
as Carmelo Vilda put it, the era of the cultural dictatorship . . . when
even our hearts beat to the rhythms of Houston, a reference, of course,
to the numerous Caraquen os with American cardiologists (1984: 1516).
Yet many were also alarmed, warning that this new materialism was
obliterating all evidence of Venezuelan culture. The historian Bricen o
Iragorry echoed these concerns when he wrote:
Weve come even further now on our unconscious journey to destroy
the character of this nation. The wave of Anglo-American commercial-
ism has taken over our criollo values and replaced them with exotic
symbols. . . . Today even Christmas in Venezuela is no longer the old
holiday of our criollo grandfathers. Its a holiday of invading Yanqui
grandfathers. No one wishes Felices Pascuas any more. Today they
send cards with English jingles wishing Merry Christmas. (quoted in
Vilda 1984: 15)
Eventually a second wave of congresses was held, repeating for a new
generation many of the same ideas expressed at Cabimas. The rst of
these, billed as A Meeting for the National Defense of the Culture,
took place in Barquisimeto in 1977. Once again performances of music
and dance were interspersed with discussions about popular culture and
the need to develop an alliance among campesinos, workers, and stu-
dents that would be based on true Venezuelan values. Or, as the orga-
nizing document stated it: To arrive at a dynamic and transformative
denition of Venezuelan culture in all its diversity and potentiality, and
to nd the bases for an alternative cultural project that is aligned with
our own anti-imperialist and patriotic process of struggle (Comisio n
Nacional 1977: 1). Out of these meetings came a new national organi-
zation, El Movimiento sobre los Poderes Creadores del Pueblo, Aquiles
Nazoa. Its name was taken from the line of a poem by the beloved
writer and humorist Aquiles Nazoa, who had died in a car crash the
year before. I believe in the creative powers of the people, it read,
expressing with eloquent simplicity what for many was the essence of
popular culture, both as an alternative culture of resistance and as a
unifying force in the struggle against imperialism.
6
Movements and organizations were now springing up everywhere,
each one professing solidarity with the culture of the masses. Many of
these were music or theater troupes dedicated to the study and pro-
motion of what they considered the true national art forms. Un Solo
Pueblo, Madera, Luango, Convenezuela, Vera, all of them crossed the
country many times, searching for the best examples of this work. It is
likely that the efforts of these groups in not only reviving and adapting
but also performing and educating did more to fuel the interest in pop-
ular culture than did those of any others. Another important stimulus
to this explosion of interest was the model provided by the many artists
and musicians forced into exile from the south. For several years, groups
in countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Peru had been transforming
popular musical forms into expressions of solidarity and protest. When
a wave of military dictatorships forced many of them to ee, Venezuela
became an asylum of choice. Like the numerous artists and intellectuals
who ed Europe for the United States during World War II, these exiles
were also to have an enormous inuence on the culture of their adopted
country.
7
By now, the government too was starting to play an important role
in what was quickly becoming a national crusade for cultural renewal.
The nationalization of the steel industry in 1975 and the oil industry the
subsequent year helped unleash a groundswell of patriotic fervor. It also
stimulated adoption of Venezuelas rst comprehensive cultural plan, a
key aspect of which was the formation of CONAC, the council empow-
ered to coordinate cultural and artistic activities for the entire country.
Groups actively working in the area of popular culture were now given
support for the rst time. Much of this assistance was earmarked for
projection groups (grupos de proyeccion), such as Un Solo Pueblo and
Luango, who were engaged mainly in performance. But efforts were also
made to establish workshops where students would be taught a variety
of these popular forms. Most of these activities, however, remained
extremely localized or were suspended altogether with subsequent
changes in the government.
8
In 1980 an attempt was made to institu-
tionalize this instruction for all Venezuelans with the passage of the Ley
Organica de Educacio n, a national education plan which required,
among other things, that folklore and popular traditions be taught as
part of the curriculum in every school (Ley Organica de Educacio n 1986:
12). Resources for implementing this plan never materialized, however,
and by 1980 years of overborrowing and reckless spending had nally
caught up. The debt crisis had begun.
It was into all of this that the Cigarrera Bigott entered in 1981, when
a presidential decree banned all advertising of tobacco and alcohol on
television and radio. In many ways it was a perfect equation: a decade
of escalating interest in popular culture, a huge vacuum left by a gov-
ernment unable to respond, and a large multinational corporation in
search of a theme with which to reinvent its own identity. There was
also by now an availability of experienced people from both government
and academia who were eager to nd new outlets for their skills. Of
course, working for a multinational corporation, particularly one that
produced tobacco, presented certain moral and political concerns. After
all, if popular culture was by its very nature an oppositional strategy
with which to resist imperialist domination, then how could a British-
owned corporation such as Bigott be responsible for its production?
The tensions surrounding these questions about the denition of pop-
ular culture, as either counterhegemonic discourse or an apolitical ex-
pression of a simpler folkloric age, were to remain central to the devel-
opment of the foundation for a number of years. The debate over this
issue also replicates in many ways the type of contestation that perform-
ers commonly articulate through festivals. In this sense the history of
the foundation is much like that of a festival, a performative reality in
which competing interests are continuously challenged and negotiated.
As Tulio Hernandez, a sociologist who studied the history of the foun-
dation, said about this period when all interests seemed to collide, Each
one was looking for a solution, an enrichment, a pretext, a key, a road.
Which is to say, there was a gold mine there [in popular culture] . . . and
each one approached it in his own way.
To understand how Bigott was able to resolve these conicts and in
so doing transform itself into an actual site of cultural production, it is
best to focus on the histories of the two principal aspects of the campaign:
the workshops and the television programs. As already noted, Corpa,
the company responsible for Bigotts public relations and advertising,
had been planning for this contingency for some time. When the presi-
dential decree was passed in 1981, therefore, Corpa was prepared to
redirect the foundation into its new role as an advocate of popular cul-
ture. The campaign that followed, however, grew as much from trial and
error as it did from any single master plan. As a result, the ve major
areas in which the foundation is currently active each developed in re-
sponse to different needs and circumstances. The publications program,
for example, continued the work of the in-house magazine, Revista Bigott.
By 1985 the magazine was dedicated entirely to popular culture and,
with its well-researched articles and beautiful illustrations, was a highly
coveted journal. Added to this program was a series of calendars and
deluxe annual books, each one concentrating on a different folkloric
theme.
9
Although these works were distributed free of charge, their au-
dience has rarely extended beyond the companys favored clients or the
handful of intellectuals and artists who search them out.
A different though equally restricted audience is that for the agricul-
tural program. Although the only area of the foundation not dedicated
to popular culture, it maintains the companys historic ties to farm-
related issues. Administered at a separate location in Valencia, this pro-
gram was initiated in 1986 to provide technical assistance to farmers in
the tobacco-growing states of Cojedes, Portuguesa, and Guarico. It has
subsequently become involved in tree planting as well as a special radio
series entitled My Friend the Agricultural Producer. But this program re-
mains extremely small, accounting for only 4 percent of the foundations
annual budget.
Slightly larger, though with a much broader outreach, is the foun-
dations grant program. Open to any individual or organization wishing
to apply, the program is exceptionally competitive, funding just over 1
percent of all requests. In 1992 more than 5,000 applications were sub-
mitted, but only 60 won support.
10
While most of these grants were for
culture-related activities, those chosen included cinema clubs, museums,
folk groups, schools, aquariums, childrens books, and libraries.
As important as these three programs have been, it is the remaining
two, the workshops and the television campaign, that have been the
most instrumental in accomplishing the goals for which the foundation
was established. Not only has two-thirds of the budget been devoted to
them, but it is primarily through these that Bigott has succeeded in both
constructing and projecting its new image.
11
Of course, it was the desire
to remain on television that had originally inspired Corpa to suggest
popular culture as a focus for the foundation, but the programs pro-
duced did much more than simply keep the company in the public eye.
In documenting and presenting these traditions, they also helped to re-
dene them. And in the end Bigott also redened itself, becoming for
many a symbol of national values and identity. The lengthy process by
which this occurred can be traced through the three generations of tele-
vision series the foundation produced. Yet just as important were the
Talleres de Cultura Popular, the Popular Culture Workshops, where
so many of these ideas were rst tried and developed. It was here that
the initial struggle over the very nature of popular culture was rst
waged. And it is only through analyzing the history of both of these
programsthe workshops and the television campaignthat one can
begin to understand how the worlds largest manufacturer of cigarettes
also became Venezuelas leading agent of cultural production.
t h e w o r k s h o p s : w h e r e t h e p a s t
a n d t h e f u t u r e c o m e t o g e t h e r
Although the primary purpose of the foundation was to maintain Bi-
gotts position in both radio and television, it was not with the media
that the new program was launched. In fact, it would be a number of
years before any of the now famous documentaries or radio series were
aired. In the meantime, Bigott sponsored an ambitious program of work-
shops in which traditional forms of Venezuelan music and dance were
taught. Within months of the creation of the new foundation three cuatro
workshops, two for adults and one for children, were being offered,
beginning what would become one of the most successful educational
experiments in all of Latin America.
12
As already noted, the demand for
such courses had been felt for some time, and with the ready availability
of personnel to direct them, it was not difcult to launch a program.
Even so, the response was overwhelming. In just seven years, the num-
ber of students would grow from less than 200 to 1,300 and the work-
shops offered, from 3 to more than 80. But such growth would also bring
many problems. For while it may have transformed Bigott into the coun-
trys primary sponsor of traditional arts, the nature of this sponsorship
would remain extremely contested. In addition to the issue of curriculum
would be the even more difcult one of deciding how the new school
was to be structured. Would the fact that its content was popular culture
demand that the relations among faculty, administration, and students
be redrawn? And how important was context and lifestyle in teaching
what until now had only existed in an alternative realm of society? Such
questions would soon become critical in the debate over how the rst
school ever of popular culture should be organized and run. They would
also signal an even deeper division between two radically different
views as to what popular culture was.
As with much of the foundations early operations, Corpa, which had
suggested the workshops, was now entrusted with setting them up. But
they were publicists, not art educators, so they contracted Rafael Salazar,
a leading arts administrator who had worked to promote popular cul-
ture during the rst presidency of Carlos Andres Perez. Since leaving
government, Salazar had organized a national association of musicians
and artists called the Federacio n Nacional de la Cultura Popular. It was
this group that Salazar now wished to use in an ambitious nationwide
program wherein workshops would be established throughout the coun-
try to teach different regional forms. In Maracaibo, for example, they
would teach chimbangueles and gaitas; in Barquisimeto, Tamunangue and
golpes; and in the llanos, joropo and bandola. Beyond recognizing the plu-
ralistic nature of popular culture, this plan would also maximize Bigotts
exposure, for the companys investment would not be limited to one
school situated only in the capital. Salazar, however, was never able to
coordinate this complex program, and, within three months of being
named director, was let go.
The Clavija and the Cultural Reforestation of the City
Corpa now turned to three musicians who had established their own
musical institute just over a year before. Known as La Clavija (The
Peg), a name referring to the fact that each of its members played a
stringed instrument, the institute had been created to confront the prob-
lem of teaching traditional musical forms.
13
It was the Clavijas conten-
tion that Venezuelan popular culture would only be respected once it
was taught in the same way that other artistic styles were. At the same
time, they recognized that these traditions were integrally connected
with the religious and social matrices that had produced them. In fact,
it was these alternative modes of social organization, as much as the
music itself, that had attracted them. Until now, conservatories andother
art schools had been unwilling to make the type of changes necessary to
accommodate these popular forms. But the Clavija was determined to
discover a pedagogy and structure appropriate to the demands of what
until then had been considered either unworthy or incapable of being
taught. It is little surprise, therefore, that the press quickly dubbed the
Clavija the school that teaches the music that other schools dont.
14
For the members of the Clavija, teaching was to be much more than
simply a professional commitment. It was to be a total expression of
ones reality, in which transformed social relations would be as impor-
tant as any other element in the learning experience. Hence, if popular
culture was to be apprehended at all, it would have to be embodied,
becoming as much as possible a lived experience. The Clavija continually
emphasized this integrated approach, claiming:
We dont teach popular culture. We are popular culture. Or lets just
say, what were proposing has to do with our lives. It forms a part of
our lifes work. . . . Its not an experiment. Its life. Its a way of being.
For us its just everyday life and when youre living you cant say that
youre an experiment. . . . And so when we moved the Clavija over to
the talleres we moved a lifestyle.
Such statements clearly placed the Clavija in the vanguard of the cul-
tural revolution Mosonyi and others had been insisting would have to
take place if Venezuela was to transform itself into a more democratic
and egalitarian society. Here were the ideas of Cabimas and Barquisi-
meto put into practice, the alternative cultural project aligned with an
anti-imperialist and patriotic process of struggle (Comisio n Nacional
1977: 1). Yet it was completely reliant upon the support of one of the
worlds largest multinational corporations. Given such a scenario, it is
not surprising that this unlikely alliance eventually came apart and that
the interests of each collided in a series of bitter accusations. However,
the nal rift did not take place until the fall of 1989, giving the Clavija a
full seven years of almost unlimited support within which to experiment.
In part, it was the administrative structure that allowed the talleres
to continue operating under the leadership of the Clavija for as long as
it did. With Corpa in charge, Bigott had almost no contact with the day-
to-day operation of the workshops. Beyond the annual Christmas con-
certs, company executives rarely if ever visited them. Even Corpa had
little contact, for all communication was the responsibility of a single
administrator. This position was held by Teresa Zapata, the wife of a
well-known Venezuelan artist and a childhood friend of Cristo bal Soto,
one of the cofounders of the Clavija.
15
It was Zapata who had initially promoted the idea of the workshops
at Corpa. And although the advertising rm is said to have doubted
whether the project could actually succeed, it authorized Zapata to go
ahead. She immediately contacted Soto, asking who he felt could best
direct it. But when his suggestion, Rafael Salazar, failed, Zapata returned
to offer the job to the Clavija itself.
While Soto characterized the events that brought the Clavija to the
Talleres de Cultura Popular as something of an accident, their success
once there was meteoric (Fig. 17). Expanding on the original three cuatro
Figure 17. The Talleres de Cultura Popular, Caracas. (Courtesy Fundacio n
Bigott)
workshops, they quickly added courses in harp, bandola, guitar, man-
dolin, maracas, percussion, violin, voice, dance, mask making, and even
theory. They brought the best musicians and performers from through-
out the country to offer seminars and intensive workshops. Conferences
on folklore and popular culture were presented by the nations most
outstanding scholars and writers. Within a year the rst of many groups
was formed, giving students and teachers the opportunity to present the
work they were learning. Like other projection groups, such as Un Solo
Pueblo and Madera, the ones from the Bigott workshops became im-
portant forces in a process of cultural renewal. Touring throughout Ven-
ezuela, they were to bring both the workshops and the foundation in-
creasing renown. Before long it would be nearly impossible to nd a
single musical group without some members trained at Bigott. It would
also be difcult to visit a festival or dance where a busload of students
from the foundation was not in attendance to observe it.
Enrollment soared. With courses costing only a nominal amount and
lasting the entire year, it soon became necessary to hold auditions. But
the success of the workshops cannot be judged simply by the number of
offerings or the quantity of students. It was the social experiment that
converted them into a magnet for students and musicians from through-
out the country. Here for the rst time was a school devoted to Vene-
zuelan culture, free and open to all, where students, faculty, and admin-
istration were each treated as equals. The lack of hierarchy and sense of
social belonging, the feeling of mission and excitement, of great national
purpose, all of these created an environment that participants simply
did not want to leave. As Tulio Hernandez said:
The level of voluntarism and cooperation, the sense of belonging and
unity that were there at the talleres is something I have rarely if ever
seen in a Venezuelan social organization. People were there because
they wanted to be, because there were people there who just refused to
leave, people who had nished their courses and then wanted to start
another instrument. The solidarity was absolute. It was an explosive,
electrifying movement.
Such loyalty and sense of community was precisely what the Clavija
intended their teaching strategies to instill. By being exible, spontane-
ous, and direct, they would approximate as much as possible the dy-
namic conditions of everyday life.
16
Large meetings, bureaucracies, and
paperwork were to be avoided at all costs. In fact, according to them,
they were agraphic, like the Selknam or other peoples who didnt like
to write. This distaste for publishing anything, from long-term project
goals to class plans, would eventually contribute to their undoing. But
for the moment it was an essential ingredient in creating an open, in-
tuitive space, one that mirrored as much as possible the orality of the
popular cultures they were trying to teach. It also reinforced what they
commonly referred to as their commitment to horizontality, an orga-
nizational structure that would guarantee maximum access and equal
treatment for all. The success of this commitment was attested to in a
statement made by Arturo Garc a, a harpist from Tuy and one of the
rst teachers recruited:
We were one big family. . . . Everyone was connected. There was a per-
fect democratic structure where no one was more than anyone else,
even if you were my boss . . . the camaraderie thats born from true de-
mocracy or the democracy thats born from that camaraderie, because
its an ambivalent thing, that.
As conceived by the Clavija and their supporters, this horizontality
would eventually extend well beyond the connes of the workshops. It
would promote an efecto multiplicador, a multiplication effect, whereby
graduates of the workshops would teach what they had learned in less
formal settings. Bands, street corners, schools, city plazas, all of them
would be converted into new workshops where Bigott-trainedmusicians
would continue to pass on traditional forms of Venezuelan popular cul-
ture. Only then would the Clavijas real vision of a cultural reforestation
of the city start to be realized and the most disenfranchised elements
of society be reempowered as musicians and artists once again. But this
reforestation would not simply mean colonizing the urban with the
rural, nor the imported with the native. It would represent the triumph
of a new synthesis, a union of local, popular forms with the many new
ones that had now taken root in the Venezuelan cultural landscape (Es-
cauriza 1989: 7). It would mean that those elements discredited as folk-
lore would end their long exile at the margins of society and become the
dynamic centerpiece of a new national form.
17
Commodity versus Community, or Popular Culture Goes to School
By 1987 the success of the Talleres de Cultura Popular had become so
great that Bigott no longer wished to leave the administration of the
program in the hands of Corpa. The foundation itself would nowassume
responsibility, and although Teresa Zapata would remain as adminis-
trator, she now reported directly to it. For the rst time the Clavija was
starting to be monitored, and the freedomthey hadformerly experienced
challenged. It was clear to Bigott that the workshops had become too
great a resource and could no longer operate independently of the rest
of the foundation. Tensions mounted. At Bigott concern grew that it had
lost control and that the direction of the Clavija might no longer repre-
sent the companys interests. In order to decide what course to take, the
foundation commissioned Tulio Hernandez, a young sociologist and for-
mer student of Alfredo Chaco n, to undertake a detailed study of the
operation, goals, and effectiveness of the workshops. It was this inves-
tigation, along with a shorter, follow-up one (Hernandez 1986, 1989),
that helped determine the workshops fate. For in late 1989, while meet-
ing with Bigott to negotiate their contract, the Clavija suddenly read in
the newspapers that INDASE (Instituto de Asesoramiento Educativa),
an educational consultant, had been hired to take their place.
It was soon after this that I rst met the Clavija and began my inves-
tigation of the Bigott Foundation. I had been attracted in part by the
similarities to my own experiences at the California Institute of the Arts
when it was founded in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Although not a
school of popular culture, Cal Arts was driven by similar utopian ideals
of the 1960s (Adler 1979). The combination of radical avant-garde artists,
many of them transplanted from New York, and a conservative board
of trustees dominated by the Disney family, who were the schools pri-
mary sponsors, had concluded in an equally disastrous fashion. Yet in
the North American case, many faculty and administration members did
not survive the rst year, as the trustees, eager to reassert control, red
them.
18
I recounted these events to the Clavija during our rst meeting, when,
in a reversal of roles, they cautiously interviewed me. The conict with
Bigott had left them understandably anxious, and they wanted to know
why this American was so curious about the fate of an obscure experi-
mental music school in Caracas. In addition, each party had agreed as
part of the nal settlement to refrain from making any public statements
about what had transpired (a condition making ethnographic eldwork
particularly difcult). With time, however, both sides made it abun-
dantly clear that the primary issue was that of control. From the moment
administration passed from Corpa to Bigott in 1987, relations had
quickly deteriorated. The Clavija, like many at the workshops, had been
forced to reconcile the fact that their radical project was being completely
underwritten not only by a multinational corporation but by one that
manufactured cigarettes. To do so, they had maintained as much inde-
pendence as possible, treating the support as if it were a grant and in-
sisting that their efforts not be co-opted in any way to promote the in-
terests of the company. On the other hand, Bigott also experienced
difculty in reconciling its support for what was commonly identied
with leftist interests and hence hostile to corporations such as itself. It
was a delicate balance for both and as Enio Escauriza, one of the Clavijas
founders, made clear, worked only as long as each felt it was using rather
than being used by the other:
Theres a reality. Bigotts a company with a very high social cost. Its a
harmful product. And one has to think about that. We were developing
a project around popular culture and having a real impact. But we were
doing it through a company that sells dangerous products. Thats some-
thing that has to be considered. Now, we had the opportunity to do
this through Bigott and as far as possible, weve tried to separate our-
selves, one thing from the other. However, they were able through the
workshopslets say the workshops as an important part of their cam-
paign, of their corporate image projectto rescue the image of Bigott.
Because the product had swallowed the company. Bigott didnt exist.
What existed was Belmont. . . .
Now the anxieties that were generated in them over nancing a proj-
ect devoted to popular culture, which was actually turning into a center
full of activity and life, where there was popular culture, perhaps that
was uncomfortable, just as for us the question of cigarettes is uncom-
fortable. Yet we could create some distance between one thing and the
other. We dont know how uncomfortable the issue of popular culture
was for them, because maybe they had no idea what popular culture
was. And clearly they still dont know, but whatever it is, they dont
like it very much.
Others, less hindered perhaps by the gag order of a separation agree-
ment, were more candid in elaborating on the conict between the two
parties. Arturo Garc a, for example, who was present during all seven
years of the Clavijas direction, saw the issue as that of popular cultures
ongoing struggle against the forces of neocolonialism. For him, a nal
confrontation was inevitable, especially when Bigott realized the mon-
ster it had created was about to devour it. Like Dr. Frankenstein,
the scientist had simply lost control of his experiment or, as Garc a de-
scribed it:
What happened is that when Bigott opened the door there was a gigan-
tic monster there who was devouring the company, which is to say, it
was swallowing it. That is, the Bigott Foundation with its popular cul-
ture workshops was swallowing the cigarette corporation. And from a
publicity point of view, from an image point of view, it wasnt work-
ing. . . . It was slipping out of their hands. Look, lets be clear about this.
It was slipping out of their hands from an ideological point of view.
Even though Bigott is the British Tobacco Blah Blah Blah Multinational
Neocolonialist, they were supporting a project whose members were fa-
mous for being communists and so on. And what they were preaching
through the popular culture workshops was the recovery of our iden-
tity, which is to say, anticolonialist values.
Although ofcials at Bigott were somewhat more circumspect in dis-
cussing what had transpired, they too acknowledged that the issue of
independence had helped accelerate the nal rupture. The Clavijas re-
fusal to provide detailed budgets and written plans, along with their
general ideological unaccountability, had continued to infuriate the com-
pany, leaving them to feel like little more than clients in receipt of a
service. The Clavija, of course, maintained that this was the proper
relationship, and it might have been had Bigott simply been interested
in training musicians in popular forms. But British American Tobacco
was primarily interested in producing an image. To be separated rather
than linked to the project they were sponsoring would therefore be coun-
terproductive. Agust n Coll, the director of the foundation during
this period, explained Bigotts frustration with the Clavija in the follow-
ing way:
They kept saying it was a service wed contracted, and the comparison
theyd use was that it was like taking your car to a mechanic, that one
paid when the car was xed but that you didnt ask how much the me-
chanic made or how much this cost or how much that was. You just
paid and got it. That was the comparison.
But we said, look, thats not possible. You cant make that compari-
son in our case because this involves a problem of the Bigott Founda-
tions image. Each one of the professors of this institution is one of the
bearers of our image, because theyre representing the foundation in
front of the students and in front of the entire community as well. So
its not so easy as just saying, You give me that money and Ill give
you this. It doesnt work that way.
In its public statements, Bigott claimed simply that the problems were
administrative. And indeed, the most common criticism voiced
against the Clavija had been their highly personalized andinformal man-
agement style. From the documents produced by Hernandez (1986,
1989), it is clear that the foundation no longer wanted the future of the
workshops to depend on the charisma of several individuals. The ex-
traordinary energy and communitas of the rst seven years would now
have to be channeled into institutional norms and rules. As Hernandez
concluded, The workshops simply cant go on being administered and
directed in a random fashion (1989: 20). If the reproduction of the work-
shop experience was to be guaranteed, either in Caracas or elsewhere,
then it would have to be taken out of the hands of individuals and placed
in the norms of an institution. It is little surprise, therefore, that every
one of Hernandezs recommendations required that the activity be care-
fully committed to writing. Whether class plans, evaluations, catalogues,
or mission statements, each aspect of the school would now have to be
systematized and codied (Hernandez 1986: 55; 1989: 1113). In some
cases, the difculties of applying such standards to popular culture were
enormous, especially when they required campesino artists with no for-
mal training to begin submitting detailed course plans.
19
To Arturo
Garc a, this idea was particularly offensive:
I dont have any written method. My methods not written down! Any-
way Im very jealous with that. When I die no one will know shit about
how I gave classes, or what I based my classes on. Method? Are you
crazy! Where? Ask the people at NASA to give it to you. Thats the way
they do things. Its like asking for formulas. Its the same thing. . . . Be-
sides, people have been learning music without writing it down for ten
thousand years, so why do I have to now?
Underlying these issues of systematization was much more than a
simple conict of leadership styles or even the yearning for structure,
which Victor Turner has claimed all such spontaneous communitas
will inevitably provoke (1969: 131140). It was part of a much larger
debate, in which orality and literacy became markers for two very dif-
ferent points of view as to what the nature of popular culture and folk-
lore was. For the Clavija was not simply mimicking popular culture with
its aversion to writing; it was trying to ensure a context in which the
most important thing produced would be social relations themselves. In
this process-oriented environment, popular culture and folklore would
be determined by neither authenticity nor content. They would be by-
products of a dynamic social reality, what de Certeau called a style of
social exchange (1980: 4) in which every individual is actively engaged
as a creative and participatory being. Unlike other programs organized
to promote popular culture, the workshops would not be concernedwith
simply bringing art to the masses. Their preoccupation was to turn the
masses into artists.
While Bigott was also concerned with providing excellent training for
workshop participants, its notion about what was being produced was
radically different. To the foundation, folklore was primarily an artifact,
a set of discreet traditions bound by either rural isolation or religious
superstition. It was an entity dened not so much by social relations as
by content and origins. This view of folklore as commodity became par-
ticularly apparent with the administration that succeeded the Clavija.
Although attitudes toward folklore like those of the Bigott Foundation
are often characterized by a great deal of fetishizing around issues of
purity and authenticity, the new directors actually spoke of the need to
de-folklorize. Through this concept the folklore event would be
cleaned up. It would be colorfully recostumed and dramatically recho-
reographed. In short, it would be repackaged so that it could compete
onstage with other art forms no matter how classical or rened. Only
then would folklore nally be de-marginalized and, taking its rightful
place in the pantheon of the arts, be able to be appreciated by all strata
of society, from the highest to the lowest. While this notion may seem
more progressive than the normal strategy of consigning these expres-
sions to the status of a museum, underlying it is the same assumption
that folklore is a detachable object, to be harmlessly moved from one
social context to another.
20
In fact, rather than being dened by its en-
vironment, the implications of de-folklorization are that it is handi-
capped by it. However, Bigott would now be its liberator, making avail-
able to the middle and upper classes what until now had been too
unkempt to be appreciated. Such views, of course, were critical to Bi-
gotts campaign if the foundation was to successfully market the prod-
ucts of its philanthropy.
To Nelly Ramos, who also conducted a study of the workshops in-
dependent of that of Hernandez, the difference between these two views
of folklore is what distinguished the Clavija from any other cultural pro-
gram (Ramos 1987). For her, the workshops had been a direct response
to the very notion of an alienated bourgeois art in which audiences are
relegated to the role of passive consumers, too apathetic to engage in
any critical thought. They had been a radical cultural alternative to this
paradigm, reempowering people with the tools to create their own cul-
ture.
21
Unlike other conservatories, therefore, the workshops did not fo-
cus on the soloist or the virtuoso. Here the emphasis was on participation
and the need to generate a new cultural ideal, particularly among those
who were rarely able to attend such schools. The Clavija had referred to
this process as the cultural reforestation of the city. For Ramos it rep-
resented no less than a revolution, in which the working class would
once again regain control of the means of cultural production (1987: 2
6). And in the end, it was the struggle over this control that was the true
source of conict between Bigott and the Clavija and the critical element
that led each to dene popular culture in the manner in which it did.
The workshops reopened once again several months after the Clavija
left. Almost all of the old teachers remained, and demand among stu-
dents continued to grow. INDASE undertook the restructuration that
Hernandez had recommended. A clear division among faculty, staff,
administration, and students was now set in place. Evaluations, along
with limits as to how long individuals could remain in the workshops,
were also imposed, but in most ways little changed, at least outwardly.
Students, from mainly working-class neighborhoods, still ocked to the
workshops, enthralled with the privilege of learning an instrument that
their grandparents had often played in the countryside just a generation
before.
22
Teachers too continued to come, gaining certication for the
folklore component required by the public schools. And while musi-
cians, dancers, mask makers, and others were brought in from the coun-
tryside to lead special workshops, other cities like Valencia and Maracay
continued to implore the foundation for talleres of their own. More pro-
jection groups were formed, with larger tours and international perfor-
mances. And within all of this, it was difcult to recognize the loss of
energy and excitement of those rst years, when the Clavija had created
a community inspired by a vision of popular culture as a transforming
and liberating agent. But if this strange partnership between big business
and popular culture continued, it would now be popular culture as Brit-
ish American Tobacco dened it. For the company had decided it was
time to integrate the workshops into a much more unied and public
promotional campaign. Attitudes toward multinational corporations
and foreign investors were beginning to change dramatically. It was time
for Bigott to come out of the closet and, as Hernandez advised, start
maximizing its investment (1989: 26). The Talleres de Cultura Popular
could no longer exist independently of the rest of the foundation. In-
stead, they would be promoted as one of its greatest triumphs, partic-
ularly in its television series, where the workshops were about to become
a star.
t h e i m a g e o f c u l t u r e
Although it was more than four years before the rst television series
began to appear,
23
Bigott quickly reestablished itself as a presence on the
air. In place of mentioning the name of its most popular brand, each
program prominently displayed the companys logo of three tobacco
leaves, along with the name of the Fundacio n Bigott. In all, 140 programs
were produced over the next ve years. Organized into three formats or
series, each one built upon the others until the foundation became much
more than a simple cultural apparatus. For, in the end, it was to become
the subject of its own study, a producer of popular traditions like the
communities it had originally sought to document. Essential to this
transformation was the creation of a unied campaign incorporating not
only the workshops but all of the foundations projects, from publishing
to tree planting. In this sense, Bigott was applying the same strategy of
vertical integration used by its parent company, British American To-
bacco. Producers, suppliers, and distributors, in this case of culture,
would now have to be subsumed into a single organization if prota-
bility was to be maximized. Key to understanding how this process oc-
curred is an analysis of the different television series and the manner in
which each promoted a new vision of the foundation and its work. Only
then can one begin to understand how Bigott, in wedding its name to
popular culture, was able to convert itself into a synonymfor the nations
most traditional values.
Encuentro Con . . .
The great majority of the programs were part of Bigotts rst series,
called simply Encuentro con . . . (Encounter with . . . ). The initial encoun-
ters, which would eventually total 120, did not distinguish between pop-
ular and mass culture and were dedicated mainly to presenting the work
of such pop urban musicians as Billo Fro meta, Gualberto Ibarreto, and
Cecilia Todd. While several of these performers did draw heavily on folk
traditions, it was only in the series third year that the programs assumed
their exclusive focus on traditional forms of popular culture. It was these
nal Encuentro cons, aired between 1987 and 1988, that eventually be-
came most associated with the series. Shown each Saturday at noon, they
presented a steady weekly catalogue of every major folkloric genre in
dance and music throughout Venezuela.
24
Each program, produced by Corpa, had the same half-hour format,
with twenty-seven minutes devoted to exploring the subject and three
minutes reserved for publicizing the work of the foundation. It was for
these three minutes of commercial time that Bigott paid the television
stations to have its programs aired. And yet, if Bigott was promoting
itself, it was careful, during this rst series, to remove any mention of
its name from the main body of the program. Only at the beginning and
end did the companys logo of three tobacco leaves ll the screen (Fig.
18), and a narrator announce in a deep baritone voice:
The Bigott Foundation, as a contribution to the diffusion of our nations
music, history, and traditions, presents Encounter with . . . Our Musical
Expressions.
The creation of this distance between content and sponsor was an
important element in the overall strategy used to establish Bigotts le-
gitimacy as well as that of the programs. For these were not meant to be
sound bites but serious documentaries chronicling as faithfully as pos-
sible the nations most important, if neglected, cultural treasures. Every-
thing was calculated to reinforce their objectivitythe narrators deep
reverential tone, the experts thoughtful, if often ponderous, analyses,
the interviews with performers, even the monumental backdrops of cas-
tles and churches. Wherever possible, performances were lmed on lo-
cation and songs and dances presented in their entirety. In the program
devoted to the Tamunangue celebration, for example, a short history of
the colonial community of Tocuyo precedes the actual dance. A local
scholar then comes on to explain the performances structure and mean-
ing. Specialists as well as local participants continue to appear through-
out the program, offering both commentary and insight between seg-
ments. It is a careful, didactic style, whose sole purpose seemingly is
to educate the Venezuelan public about the origins, beauty, and depth
of its own traditions. How could one help but believe the narrator,
therefore, when, at the conclusion of each program, he announces: Fun-
dacio n Bigott . . . en pro de la cultura popular, the Bigott Foundation
. . . in support of popular culture.
The Micros
In 1989 Bigott introduced a new series. With Encuentro con . . . complet-
ing its fourth season and the foundations other programs gaining in-
creasing recognition, Bigott decided it was time to embark upon a new
campaign. In many ways, it was the conict with La Clavija that precip-
Figure 18. Bigott-sponsored concert, showing the company logo, Caracas.
(Courtesy Fundacio n Bigott)
itated this decision. Hernandez and others who had analyzed the rst
several years of the foundations work concluded that Bigott was not
deriving as large a return on its cultural investment as it should be.
Foundation projects were simply acting too independently of one an-
other. What Hernandez in particular recommended was that a global
campaign be initiated, in which each aspect of the foundation be used
to promote every other (1989: 39). Only by creating such synergies, in
the language of contemporary corporations, would Bigott begin to take
advantage of the considerable symbolic capital it had now accumulated.
For it was clear that the workshops, documentaries, and publications
had all attained large followings among the Venezuelan public and, in
so doing, had dispelled many of the early suspicions with which they
had been greeted. The new television series, it was hoped, would now
begin to exploit the special relationship that had been rmly established
between Bigott and popular culture.
25
One of the rst considerations of the new series was that it be aired
during prime time. However, the current format was too slow and pon-
derous for most Venezuelans, especially if it was to compete with the
popular telenovelas shown during that hour.
26
There was also the question
of cost. Until now the networks had classied the programs as educa-
tional and charged Bigott only a nominal fee for airing them. If they
were to be shown on Sunday nights, as Bigott wished, the stations would
insist that they pay for a full thirty minutes of advertising. The solution
to these problems was the micro, a slickly edited two-minute slice of
folklore in which Bigott and popular culture were so brilliantly inter-
woven that the viewer could not distinguish between them. Unlike the
previous generation of documentaries, which were shot in video in a
slow, deliberate style, the micros were to be state of the art. The rst
were actually lmed in 35 millimeter and made by some of the countrys
leading directors. But the costs soon exceeded those of the half-hour
programs, so 16 millimeter was used for the remainder of the series.
Even more signicant than this technological innovation and the pro-
grams increased visibility was the organization of the information itself.
For each of the micros conformed to a precise structure, heralding a new
stage in the relation between Bigott and popular culture. The objectivity
of the rst series was now replaced by a radically altered image, in which
Bigott was inextricably linked to the production of popular culture itself.
The site of this production, of course, was the Talleres de Cultura Pop-
ular, which, free from the obstructive leadership of the Clavija, could
now be incorporated into the larger designs of the foundation. Although
Bigott still travels out to the campo in these programs, it is no longer
simply to document the performance of traditional forms. Now, in an
eerie parallel to the manufacture of cigarettes, the forms are harvested
like any other raw material and brought back to the workshops to be
processed.
27
This theme is repeated in each of the micros, where simple titles rst
announce the names of the artists, along with their specialization. The
artists are then shown in their native habitat, surrounded by images of
campesino lifebarnyard animals, horses, cows, rows of corn, dramatic
landscapes. As they play their instruments, often surrounded by neigh-
bors, the narrator comments on the history of the tradition, as well as its
location. Then, as if by magic, the performers are suddenly transported
to the workshops, where, in place of neighbors, eager students surround
them. The narrator now afrms that it is at the Talleres de Cultura Pop-
ular that these traditions are passed on from one generation to the next.
Although these statements are tailored to the individual artist, they are
the key moment in each program, consecrating the workshops as the
legitimate site of cultural transmission. In the program dedicated to the
Tuyera harpist Fulgencio Aquino, for example, the narration states:
In the Popular Culture Workshops of the Bigott Foundation, under the
wise guidance of Maestro Aquino, the rich Tuyera tradition of music
and dance ows into the blood of new generations.
The organic metaphors encourage the audience to associate the work-
shops with a living community and the traditions discussed with age
and naturalness. And yet, if the participants are portrayed as members
of a single family, it is the invocation of the nation that ultimately binds
them together. The ever-present tension between regional traditions and
national identity is both resolved and mediated by the workshops, as
the structure of each of these minidocumentaries makes clear. In the
program on Anselmo Lo pez, one of Venezuelas most famous folk art-
ists, the musician is rst shown playing his bandola in front of a cam-
pesino house with cowboys chasing cattle nearby. After a description of
his instrument, along with his contributions to it, Lo pez is transported
to the workshops, where enthusiastic students greet him. Then, as the
class begins, the narrator says:
In the Popular Culture Workshops of the Bigott Foundation, where the
present and the future come together, Anselmo Lo pez transmits the se-
crets of the bandola llanera to the followers of a musical tradition with
deep Venezuelan roots.
The image now shifts back to the llanos, with Lo pez once again sur-
rounded by cattle and horses. As he lies in his hammock, playing the
bandola, the nal words of the narrator are heard:
In Anselmo Lo pezs hands the bandola llanera has transcended the
western plains and become an instrument of universal dimensions.
As the screen goes black, the companys logo of three tobacco leaves
appears for the rst and only time. Then, with the words Fundacio n
Bigott and Encuentro con . . . ashing quickly beneath it, the program
ends. It has all taken just two minutes. But the uniform movement from
country to city and back again presents the viewer with the unequivocal
if multilayered message that culture is nowmediated by the large centers
of urban power. Although Bigotts new programs introduce the work-
shops as the symbol of that power, it might as easily be that of any
number of multinational corporations, or the state, or the mass media in
general. What is certain is that they are all partners, willingly or not, in
a new cultural equation where local and global, regional and national,
popular and elite, oral and electronic (La Clavija and Bigott, the list is
endless) are constantly interacting in the reinvention of self and nation.
28
Of course, the fact that these programs were emblems of a new cultural
paradigm was of little importance to Bigott. To Bigott the micros simply
chronicled the evolution of the foundation, signaling its new role as both
a transmitter and producer of popular culture. They announced that it
was now at the Talleres de Cultura Popular that the nations most im-
portant folk artists came to pass on their traditional knowledge and
wisdom.
The Cun as
After producing ten micros, which were aired regularly at 8:20 on Friday
and Sunday evenings, Bigott decided to introduce yet another series.
29
Exactly ten years had passed since the foundation dedicated itself to
popular culture, and the situation in the country had changed dramat-
ically. No longer were politicians and others calling for the nationali-
zation of foreign enterprises. A wave of neoliberalism had swept the
entire continent, and multinational rms such as British American To-
bacco were suddenly more welcome than ever. The original motivation
of the company to conceal its British identity had lost its urgency. On
the other hand, the success of the campaign had encouraged others to
start their own programs in popular culture. Bigott was beginning to
experience competition. If it was to maintain its preeminence, it would
have to become more aggressive in both promoting its accomplishments
and staking out the eld as its own. Antonio Lo pez Ortega, the foun-
dations new director, explained these developments and their inuence
on Bigotts decision to change course in the following way:
When the foundation chose popular culture as its niche in 1981, it was
a very clear choice. In this country in that year, at that time, no one was
interested at all in the issue of popular culture. Right now, though,
were starting to see something else. Were starting to see a growth of
interest from other private-sector companies in the area of popular cul-
ture and also a growing interest in city and regional governments in
supporting popular culture events. . . . All this would have been impos-
sible ten years ago, but right now were in an area where were starting
to feel a little competition. And the foundation has to watch out. Be-
cause fortunately up till now weve been all alone in this eld, and that
has really let us stand out. Which has been the fundamental change
from 1991 till now, when the foundation decided to completely aban-
don its old course and start coming out in public and begin speaking
really clearly about our programs, our achievements, and the various
objectives weve accomplished.
Look, this is a multinational corporation, with British and American
capital, and I think that at the beginning, in 1981, it was very smart for
a multinational corporation to create a socially responsible program as-
sociated with the countrys most traditional values. But right now the
situation has changed. Today the concept the country has of a multina-
tional company is very different. Today the government is telling the
world, Come on, foreign investors. This is the place. And so the situ-
ation is a little different.
30
The most important decision I think that the foundation has made is
to speak out very clearly about its programs. Before we hid them. But
now weve decided we have to speak. We have to put them on display
and keep on doing it. Because in the end its been a program thats
lasted over time, a costly one, yes, but one thats brought a lot of recog-
nition to the company. And so thats the policy were going to continue
to follow from now on.
Of course, Bigott had already shifted the emphasis of the television
programs onto the workshops, focusing only on artists who worked
directly with them. It was a strategy Hernandez had referred to as clos-
ing the circle, a way in which each foundation program was used to
champion the accomplishments of the others. But the micros still por-
trayed the workshops as intermediaries in a cultural process. The talleres
may have had the power to transform local artists such as Anselmo
Lo pez into national (if not universal) gures, yet they remained a
place where great musicians and dancers visited, and then left. In the
new series about to be introduced, all of this would change. Now the
foundation would become the tradition itself and the object of its own
study. The countryside and the mediating role of the workshops would
merge into one, and, after ten years of cultural intervention, they would
be viewed, as would all of the foundations programs, as a single, self-
contained space in which production, consumption, and distribution all
took place.
The new programs were called cun as (spots) and were even more
condensed than the previous two-minute series. Only forty-ve seconds
in length, each one focused on a different area of the foundations
workthe calendars, the publications, the workshops, the agricultural
projects. In all, Bigott made nine of these programs, airing them during
the same Friday and Sunday evening slots as they had the micros. Like
the previous programs, these too adhered to a consistent format whose
closely repeated structure communicated a single message. At the heart
of this new structure was the image of a book, its two covers symbol-
izing the self-containment with which Bigott was now beginning to
represent itself. Of course the book also indicated knowledge and wis-
dom, and the passage of its traditions from one generation to the next.
As such, each cun a was organized as a small story, a tale told about
the way the foundation was transmitting the countrys most cherished
values.
The opening image of each program shows the same enormous green
book lying on a table. Its title, clearly visible above the corporate logo of
golden tobacco leaves, is La otra Siembra de Bigott, Bigotts Other Crop.
As the book begins to open, suggesting the unfolding of a story, the
narrators deep voice wraps the title into a quatrain of neat organic meta-
phors, wherein past meets future and producer, consumer:
Bigotts other crop.
To project our roots
We plant culture
and we harvest art.
Or, in the program on publications:
Bigotts other crop.
To preserve the countrys living memory
We plant testimonies
and we harvest history.
The subject of the program is identied, and as the next page appears,
a carefully framed black-and-white photograph comes into view. The
camera zooms in, and the photograph not only comes to life but also
turns to color. The gure, with less than half a minute to speak, makes
a statement about the history and importance of his or her activity at
Bigott. After displaying several aspects of this work, the image suddenly
freezes, returning to the original black and white. As the book closes
once again, the narrator repeats the title and then the slogan, Una se-
milla mas de la Fundacio n Bigott (One more seed from the Bigott Foun-
dation). A small toy passenger train now rolls into view. As its steam
engine turns to ll the screen the corporate logo can be seen once again
displayed on its front. The booming voice of the announcer concludes
by reading the message that appears below it, A todo tren con Vene-
zuela! . . . Full speed ahead with Venezuela! (Fig. 19).
The Encuentro con . . . title has now been replaced with the powerful
new image of a train. The fact that it is a steam engine representing the
technology of another age enables the program to identify with both
progress and tradition at the same time. In place of a backward image
of folklore there is a dynamic view, in which popular culture seems to
catalyze the nation into action. Within the cyclical connes of the book
(and hence Bigott) there is a constant movement between past and fu-
ture, young and old, black and white and color. The text too resolves
this same polarity, making it clear that Bigott is in the vanguard of sup-
porting popular culture for the benet of the nation. Inspired, perhaps,
Figure 19. The Bigott train. (Courtesy Fundacio n Bigott)
by the Clavijas original slogan calling for the cultural reforestation of
the city, the cun as now employ a steady barrage of telluric references,
in which the word culture is once again reunited with its agricultural
origins (Wagner 1981: 21). According to the new programs, it is a natural
resource which, if properly cultivated and cared for, will continue to
bear fruit. Yet the metaphor of planting the past in order to harvest the
future is employed to evoke other associations as well. As Lo pez Ortega
explained, Bigott was now using these programs to stake out its territory
and, as such, was announcing in no uncertain terms that this was its
crop. The message not only unites the past with the future, therefore; it
also joins Bigott to popular culture and, what is most signicant, in a
way that suggests the companys historic ties to the land. The effect of
all this polysemy is a calculated confusion in which viewers are suddenly
uncertain as to exactly what it is this corporation produces: tobacco and
cigarettes, or culture and community?
31
In the program devoted to the Talleres de Cultura Popular, the nar-
rators voice announces:
Bigotts other crop.
To preserve the countrys living memory
We plant tradition
and we harvest the future.
After the title page is shown, a black-and-white photograph of a young
girl around eleven or twelve years old appears. As the camera zooms
in, the image comes alive with dance and song. She is then shown in a
sequence of activitiesparticipating in a workshop with other students,
writing at her desk, leaving home on her way to the talleres. These snap-
shots quickly locate her as coming from an Afro-Venezuelan working-
class background. As the images roll by, she speaks of the things dearest
to herfamily, friends, school, and music. She explains that she rst
came to the workshops at the age of six and that it is here alone that all
of these things come together. She is then shown happily surrounded by
friends, singing at a rehearsal of the Grupo Zaranda, the foundations
concert group for youth. The image now freezes, returning once again
to black and white. As the book starts to close, the announcer says, The
Talleres de Cultura Popular . . . Another seed from the Bigott Founda-
tion, and then as the toy train rolls toward the center of the screen,
Full speed ahead with Venezuela.
In a macabre transformation of the Clavijas vision, the workshops
have become a community based on the democratizing values of popular
culture. It is where the programs young and underprivileged protago-
nist receives, produces, and transmits knowledge. It is the center of her
social relations, her education, and her creativity, the extended family
with whom she has now spent more than half of her life. As a locus of
social and cultural production it replicates the national community, be-
coming the legitimate heir to traditions that were formerly associated
with small, rural villages. It is only logical, therefore, that a television
series that once scoured the countryside for examples of such expres-
sions should now turn its cameras on the work of the foundation itself.
And yet in doing so, the circle has truly closed. While the company may
have begun its association with popular culture in order to promote its
name and conceal its foreign identity, it has now become its very em-
bodiment. As the language of the cun as, with its reliance on the epito-
mizing symbol of the land, makes clear, the nation and the tobacco com-
pany are now one.
129
Chapter 5 From Village Square
to Opera House
t a m u n a n g u e a n d t h e t h e a t e r
o f d o m i n a t i o n
San Antonio went out
from the city where he was,
taking just a little drum.
Up to the mountain he came
playing oh so sweetly
singing to them the yeyevamos.
And the ones in the mountains
said, What is this?
And Antonio answered, Estangu e,
the same thing youll dance to.
v e n e z u e l a n d e c i m a
Tamunangue, ower of our mestizo nation.
j u a n l i s c a n o , f o l k l o r e
d e l e s t a d o l a r a
t h e p o l i t i c s o f p e r f o r m a n c e
The Bigott Corporation may have initiated its ambitious program of cul-
tural sponsorship in order to identify itself with Venezuelas most tra-
ditional expressive forms, yet the consequences of this campaign were
to be much more far-reaching. As the foundation intervened in more
130 f r o m v i l l a g e s q u a r e t o o p e r a h o u s e
and more areas of popular culture, its responsibility for the production
and circulation of these forms continued to grow. Magazines, books,
calendars, concert groups, grants, workshops, and, of course, the daily
televising of documentaries and micros guaranteed that Bigott would
now play an increasingly important role in how these traditions would
be interpreted. Until recently most scholars discounted the aesthetic im-
portance of such cultural interventions, insisting that they marked the
passage into an antiseptic, dehistoricized reality. Once disembedded
from the communities that inspired them, popular traditions have be-
come suspect. Dismissed as little more than bourgeois spectacle and
tourist art, these performances have been considered too inauthentic to
have any real communicative power or to participate in the ongoing
elaboration of new forms.
1
But recent scholarship has begun to challenge
such views and, while acknowledging that these mediations do change
traditions, argues that they also be considered a part of them. As dis-
cussed earlier, recent theories of hybridity (Garc a Canclini 1990, 1995;
Clifford 1987), creolization (Hannerz 1989b, 1992), cultural recon-
version (Garc a Canclini 1992: 33), and public culture (Appadurai
and Breckenridge 1988, 1992) have resisted previous stereotypes of pop-
ular forms as fragile constructs unable to exist outside a limited cultural
biosphere. Instead, a rich process of resemanticization is offered in which
new meanings are constantly being negotiated.
In the case of the Bigott Foundation, much of this negotiation centered
around issues of performance and presentation. Beyond the question of
repertoire and the selection of forms to be taught or presented were the
many directorial decisionschoreography and staging, amplication
and sound, even the role of a master of ceremonies.
2
In each instance,
choices were made that would eventually affect the entire tradition from
which they were derived. For these performances were not simply for
the benet of urban audiences curious to learn more about the beliefs
and customs of their rural forebears. Whether onstage, in a workshop,
or mediated through print and the electronic media, the performances
invariably returned to the communities in which they were originally
performed. Just as an Encuentro con . . . or a micro could be seen on the
television sets of those participating in a festival in any part of Vene-
f r o m v i l l a g e s q u a r e t o o p e r a h o u s e 131
zuela, so too could the same participants be found in the foundations
workshops and concert groups in Caracas. This does not mean that the
directorial interventions imposed by Bigott and others have been either
welcome or positive. It does mean, however, that the type of folkloric
aestheticization discussed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998: 75)
and others ought to be recognized as an important part of the ongoing
practice of these traditions.
As noted above, such acknowledgment has rarely been forthcoming.
Yet, as the analysis of popular culture and folklore continues to shift
away from one of origins and authenticity to that of social relations and
practice, forms previously ignored are beginning to be studied. Along
with such changes has come the recognition that festive behavior is not
simply multivocal but also multilocal.
3
As expressive forms are repeat-
edly appropriated by the state, political parties, the church, the enter-
tainment industry, multinational corporations, and other such forces, the
notion of privileging a single site becomes less tenable. This is not to say
that a San Juan celebration performed in a secular context in Caracas is
the same as one that takes place in Curiepe on the 24th of June. Yet if
the same musicians and dancers perform in both, then the strategies
demanded by each will invariably inuence the other. Also inuenced
will be those who watch the event in one context (be it on television or
stage) and then later perform it in another. In this sense, meaning is not
only historically but also spatially contingent. For while it may be ob-
vious that a specic context will determine the aesthetic choices em-
ployed by the performers, it has not been obvious how these choices
affect the overall meaning of the tradition itself. In large part, this is
because most analyses of such performances have insisted on the sepa-
ration of one from the other, maintaining that they be understood either
as instances of pure, local production or as dislocated, contaminated
ones.
For the Colombian scholar Jesu s Mart n-Barbero, the importance of
seeing all such performances as part of the same tradition is twofold.
Not only does it undermine a hierarchical, progress-driven notion of
culture in which forms are dened as either preindustrial and rural, or
urban and modern, it also recognizes the particular condition of emer-
gent cultures in the postmodern reality that is Latin America. Mart n-
Barbero claims it is this cultural phenomenon, rather than any ethnic or
racial one, that is the determining feature of mestizaje. As he explains:
Once we take as the starting point of observation and analysis not the
linear process of upward social progress but mestizaje, that is, mestizaje
in the sense of continuities in discontinuity and reconciliations between
rhythms of life that are mutually exclusive, then we begin to under-
stand the complex cultural forms and meanings that are coming into
existence in Latin America: the mixture of the indigenous Indian in the
rural peasant culture, the rural in the urban, the folk culture in the pop-
ular cultures and the popular in mass culture. In this we are not trying
to avoid contradictions but move them out of established schemas so
that we can take a fresh look at them in the process of their composi-
tion and decomposition. We are looking for the revealing gaps in the
context and the context of the gaps. (1993a: 188)
An important element in this new orientation, as Mart n-Barbero con-
ceives it, is a focus on the key role of communications systems as spaces
in which these new forms are negotiated. No longer seen as mere agents
of a hegemonic discourse, the media, whether radio, television, or lm,
provide a complex arena in which a range of cultural interests are not
simply appropriated but also mediated (1993a, 1993b). It is in this
sense that hierarchical notions of high and low, popular and elite, urban
and rural (the list goes on) are simultaneously challenged and recycled.
Similar discoveries were also made by Julie Taylor in her investigation
of Brazilian Carnival, where competing cultural interests often repro-
duce one another in the very attempt to establish distinctiveness. Yet, as
Taylor indicated, the circularity of these expressive forms only intensi-
ed the debate over tradition, making the politics of aesthetic meaning
a central part of carnival itself (1982: 301).
Studies such as these by Mart n-Barbero and Taylor clearly reinforce
the need to track the movement of expressive forms through both space
and media. While it has been shown how festive behavior has continu-
ally responded to historical changes, enabling it to address such issues
as race, ethnicity, and nationalism, it must also be shown howconcurrent
versions of the same tradition are employed to present competing mes-
sages. By doing so, one can begin to appreciate the aesthetics of perfor-
mance as more than simply a response to new technological demands
or a result of the degeneration of the tradition itself. Instead, formal
aspects of performance are to be seen as part of a highly charged ideo-
logical process, participating in the same discursive behavior as every
other aspect of the tradition.
4
Although the embrace of such varied ex-
pressions under the banner of a single tradition may prove difcult, it
will be necessary if festive forms are to be portrayed as they arecom-
plex, emergent, and even contradictory. It is also essential in order to
recognize that today festive discourse occurs across communities,
classes, technologies, and even national borders and that the elaboration
of one contributes to the creation of the other. Or, put another way, with
every deterritorialization comes a respatialization.
In Venezuela there are a number of festive forms whose study now
requires that they be acknowledged as participating in several symbolic
systemsSan Juan, the Devils of Yare, the music of the llanos. Yet none
has been as successfully and frequently adapted to as many different
performative contexts as has that of Tamunangue, a suite of dances per-
formed in honor of San Antonio de Padua on the 13th of June.
5
Although
originally restricted to the southern part of the western state of Lara,
Tamunangue has now been presented at folklore festivals, state fairs,
popular culture workshops, international concert tours, museums, pres-
idential inaugurations, television, radio, and even the Caracas opera. The
dramatic transformations that have accompanied this ongoing migra-
tion, however, have not eliminated the forms ability to communicate
new and rich ideas. In fact, by multiplying both its audiences and ven-
ues, Tamunangue has increased the scope of this dialogue. Hence, it has
become an important focus for debates on issues not only of race, class,
and national identity but also, and even more signicantly to those who
perform it, of gender. In this sense, one could easily say, as did Taylor
about carnival in Brazil, Debate about the corruption or destruction of
a symbol of national identity does not signal that its signicance is di-
minishing. Rather, the debate itself raises the scale of the social space
within which the symbol is meaningful (1982: 311). Yet to understand
this meaning requires that one also increase the scale of the social
space to be investigated and that the entire range of performative con-
texts be included.
t h e c h o r e o g r a p h y o f m e s t i z a j e
Cultural promoters and folklorists have long recognized the difculties
in extracting religious celebrations from the communities in which they
originally evolved. Not only are these events characteristically long and
repetitive, demanding great numbers of actors, but they are often ritually
obscure, lacking the dramatic focus required by a theatrical context.
While Tamunangue was not immune to such difculties, it nevertheless
proved an ideal subject for appropriation. Apart from its intrinsic
beauty, it already combined those elements most prized by the stage:
music, drama, song, and dance. It was also organized around a small,
easily transportable troupe, providing numerous opportunities for in-
dividual virtuosity. Unlike with many other rituals, it was easy to create
a dramatic focus and to rearrange the dancers on a proscenium stage,
where they would now face an audience instead of a saint. Just as im-
portant, it could be performed in forty-ve minutes to an hour and was
divided into discrete segments that could be interrupted for intermis-
sions or announcements or, if need be, abridged. This modular quality
proved invaluable as performances were either expanded or contracted,
depending on the demands of the situation. For Tamunangue was no
longer performed for the sole pleasure of San Antonio. It was now an
event with multiple audiences and, not surprisingly, multiple meanings
as well.
However, in the communities of southern Larain Sanare, Curari-
gua, El Tocuyo, Carora, and San Miguelthe festival remains a time
when individuals and families repay the saint for a gift or blessing he
has bestowed.
6
Although certain variations occur within each of these
communities, the core elements around which every Tamunangue is or-
ganized are still easily recognized. The household that is to pay the pro-
mesa rst invites a Tamunangue group to play at their home, preferably
on June 13, the saints day. The group itself, which is often organized
around a single family, comprises between seven and nine musicians,
who play three or four cuatros, a six-stringed cinco, a maraca, and at
least one or two drums. One type of drum is small and double skinned,
and is hung from the shoulder. A second, a long, hollow one known as
a cumaco or tamunango, is laid on the ground and is played by two mu-
sicians, one beating the trunk and the other the head. The dance also
requires at least three couples, often supplied by the household paying
the promesa (Fig. 20).
As musicians and other visitors begin to arrive, the sponsors busily
prepare the altar, at its center the image of San Antonio with the child
Jesus in his arms and owers and fruits carefully arranged around them.
It is to this household image, whether statue or painting, that the Ta-
munangue is directed. This special relation between performer and saint
is immediately established with the solemn chanting of the Salve Regina,
a traditional part of church liturgy learned with the catechism of every
child.
7
As the prayer concludes, the musicians begin the lengthy pre-
amble that will accompany the Batalla (Battle). Separate from the suite
of seven dances that follow, this highly stylized sword ght is acted out
by a male couple wielding two-and-a-half-foot-long sticks called varas
or garrotes. Their handles braided with rope, hair, and colored tassels,
the sticks are rst crossed and then, as the men sweep and lunge at each
other, gracefully pushed away (Fig. 21). As this martial ballet continues,
with other dancers periodically relieving those who have been ghting,
the musicians sing four-line duets, each one punctuated by the haunting
refrain:
Adorar, adorar, adorar
y adorar a San Antonio
8
To adore, adore, adore
and adore San Antonio
The Battle ends with a dramatic ourish as the dancers kneel together
in front of the altar and cross themselves with their heads lowered. This
signals the start of the seven sones, or dances, that make up the main
body of the tradition. The rst is appropriately named the Ayiyivamos,
Figure 20. Musicians performing a Tamunangue. (Photograph by David M.
Guss)
no doubt from Ah la llevamos (Okay, lets go).
9
In this extremely high
energy dance lled with twirls and quick steps the man retains the
wooden vara and, with hands periodically raised, tries to encircle the
woman. As in square dancing, the couple follows the instructions of
the lead singer, while the other musicians respond to each call with the
phrase, Oe bangue. Like most of the sones, the length of the Ayiyi-
vamos is not xed and can simply be extended by adding more verses
to accommodate the new dancers who replace those at the center.
La Bella (The Beauty), which in some communities precedes the Ayi-
yivamos, is the next in this suite of dances. Considered by many to be
Tamunangues son par excellence (Gonzalez Viloria 1991: 96), La Bella
has many similarities to the Ayiyivamos yet is more graceful and uid.
The woman, dancing with one hand on her hip while the other delicately
lifts her skirt, takes small, rapid steps as the man, with the stick cradled
in his arm, continually approaches, withdraws, circles, and spins. As in
the other sones, the dancers rarely touch, yet the dance is lled with
Figure 21. The Batalla. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
coquettish and suggestive movements. The music, on the other hand, is
arranged in couplets and quatrains which are performed as duets. Com-
bining both xed and improvised verses, the singers continually return
to the main theme, La Bella:
Ay bella bella,
a la bella bella
ay bella va;
ay bella bella,
ay bella va.
Ah beauty beauty,
to the beautiful beauty
ah there goes the beauty;
ah beauty beauty,
ah there goes the beauty.
La Juruminga, which follows, contains its own special music and cho-
reography, as does each of the Tamunangues other sections. The mu-
sicians do not sing in alternating duets but, similar to the Ayiyivamos,
respond in choral form to the lead singers instructions. These direct the
dancers through a set of carefully orchestrated movements, each one
mimicking the tasks appropriate to the performers gender (Fig. 22). As
such, the dance is divided into two parts: In the rst the man is instructed
to clear the land, plant, harvest, and build a home; in the second the
woman is commanded to cook, wash, sew, iron, and clean.
The next son, La Perrendenga, is also sung in responsive form. How-
ever, the instructions issued by the lead singer are more like those of the
Ayiyivamos, telling the dancers how to move their feet and in which
direction to turn. The music for this section is also much slower, per-
mitting an intimacy and suggestiveness that has led many people to label
it the most irtatious and erotic of all the Tamunangues parts. Juan
Liscano, in particular, called it a passionate dialogue in which the
varas, wielded in some communities by both the man and the woman,
become like Cupids arrows in a game of love (1951: 21).
The fth section returns to the narrative style of La Juruminga, acting
out a different set of relations between men and women. Like the earlier
son, the Poco a Poco (Little by Little), is divided into two parts, each one
an elaborate pantomime lled with both humor and tension. The rst is
called Los Calambres (The Cramps) and tells the story of a man who falls
in love with a woman and then becomes so sick he almost dies. The
woman must now nurse him back to health and, following the detailed
instructions of the lead singer, gives him herbs, injections, drinks, and
even an enema. Finally the man is seized by an uncontrollable t of
shaking (the cramps), which only the womans tenderest strokes and
care can cure. At this point the music suddenly changes, signaling the
recovery of the patient and the return of the couple to their former selves.
This stirring nale, which also concludes the second part of the Poco a
Poco, is called the Guabina, after a common Venezuelan sh. As the cho-
rus sings:
La guabina me mord o
en la palma de la mano.
Figure 22. Directing a dancer in the Juruminga. (Photograph by David M.
Guss)
Si no me quieres creer
mira la sangre chorreando.
The guabina bit me
in the palm of my hand.
If you dont believe me
look how the blood ran.
The Poco a Pocos second part, called El Caballito (The Pony), now
begins. While the man gets down on all fours in imitation of a horse, the
woman takes out a kerchief to be used as both a bridle and a rope (Fig.
23). The lead singer now instructs her in the taming of the horse, warning
that he is both wild and dangerous. As she tries to approach, the horse
kicks and tries to bite. The musicians respond to each command with a
loud As , and the audience screams its approval with laughter and
mock advice. Then, as the horse settles down, the woman loops her
kerchief around his neck and prepares to mount:
Now youve tamed him
Steady horse
Ah good horse
Ah what a devil
Ah what a thoroughbred
Pat his shoulder
Be careful now
hes got a bad foot
Be careful
Pet his shoulder
Pet his mane
Didnt I tell you
hes really tame
Try the saddle
and the blanket
You know how to get on
Go ahead and try
(Gonzalez Viloria 1991: 118)
If the Poco a Poco is the Tamunangues most amusing section, then
the Galeron, which follows it, is its most athletic. Related to a widespread
Figure 23. Attaching a kerchief in the Caballito. (Photograph by David M.
Guss)
tradition that Luis Felipe Ramo n y Rivera claimed is part of Venezuelas
oldest dance form (1953: 24), the Galero n introduces elements not seen
in the rst ve sones.
10
As the musicians return to singing alternating
duets, the couples join hands and, instead of dancing independently,
actually embrace and twirl one another. But it is the men who use this
section to exhibit their great physical strength and agility. As Liscano
wrote, It is a time for the men to show off (1951: 21). With their feet
moving at a quicker and quicker tempo, they crouch down like dancers
in a Russian ballet. Then, just as suddenly, they rise and, lifting their
legs high, clap their hands beneath their thighs with each step. It is an
exhausting, frenetic display that is not only a great crowd pleaser but
also an excellent preparation for the great nale about to come.
Whereas the rst six movements of the Tamunangue limit the dancers
participating at any given time to a single couple, the nal son, known
as the Seis Corrido, is performed by six dancers, three men and three
women (Fig. 24).
11
In what is clearly the dances most complex part, they
execute a series of gures with names like the Wheel, Basket, Cor-
ners, Chain, and Arch. The singing is in a responsive form similar
to that of other parts of the Tamunangue, but the lyrics are not tied to
the steps themselves. Nevertheless, the complicated gures appear to be
related to other traditions, such as square dancing and contradancing,
in which callers guide the performers movements. Here, in a whirl of
intricate bridges, circles, and columns, the dancers gracefully move
through one bafing formation after another until nally, with hands
over each others shoulders, they kneel in a row before the image of the
saint and cross themselves. After this dramatic ourish, the only re-
maining part of the Tamunangue to be performed is that of the nal
Salve, a restrained and solemn coda that once again focuses attention on
the main purpose of the dance, San Antonio de Padua.
During the entire performance of the Tamunangue, one usually nds
a large crowd pressing in around a semicircle organized so that it faces
the altar of the saint. For once again, it is San Antonio who is the main
audience for the event, not the onlookers who have squeezed into the
patio of those who are paying the promesa. This large crowd often fol-
lows the musicians and dancers from one home to the next, particularly
Figure 24. The Seis Corrido. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
on June 12 and 13, when the demand for individual Tamunangues is at
its highest. But Tamunangues can be repaid at any time, and they can
also be performed in front of churches, on street corners, or in open
elds. In some instances promesas require that two Tamunangues be
played consecutively or that a particular son be repeated. Given this
highly compact and mobile structure, which can so easily be recong-
ured, it is no surprise that Tamunangue has been so readily adapted to
situations beyond the original context in which it developed.
Yet even more important than the structural pliability of Tamunangue
has been the forms aesthetic reception. From the moment it rst came
to national attention in the early 1940s, it has been repeatedly hailed as
Venezuelas richest and most beautiful dance (Tamayo 1945: 77). In
fact, not only do many writers claim that it is the countrys premier
folkloric form, they also suggest that it may be one of the continents.
As the Chilean music scholar Eduardo Lira Espejo proclaimed upon rst
seeing it performed in 1941, Tamunangue is one of the most original
dances in the entire Americas (Lira Espejo 1941; also see Bricen o 1990a;
Salazar n.d.; Silva Uzcategui 1981 [1941], 1990 [1954]).
While there is little dispute that Tamunangues unusually complex
and varied structure merits the type of attention and praise it has re-
ceived, it is also clear that this adulation has been charged by a much
larger discourse about the nature of Venezuelan identity. For Tamu-
nangue has not been promoted as the nations most beautiful dance as
a result of its choreography, music, and lyrics alone. Just as important
has been its ability to synthesize and project a set of values that, for
many, captured the essence of a new national ideal. In short, its beauty,
as well as its Venezuelanness, is in the fact that it is so resolutely mestizo
and that it joins together the three primary ingredients of national iden-
tity: the indigenous, the African, and the European. It is this mestizoness
that has impressed nearly every critic and writer who has observed the
tradition, beginning with Liscano in 1940. Even before his work with the
Sanjuaneros of Curiepe, Liscano had traveled to Lara to both record and
lm the dance.
12
It is little surprise, therefore, that when in 1948 the new
president, Ro mulo Gallegos, asked Liscano to organize a folklore festival
to celebrate his inauguration, he immediately included Tamunangue.
Particularly revealing are the comments Liscano made in the program
accompanying this event:
Tamunangue constitutes one of the most important expressions of our
folklore inasmuch as all the elements that came together in its forma-
tion have lost their original physiognomy and assumed a completely
new one: the Venezuelan criollo. Tamunangue is a true crucible of cul-
tural forms, afrming through its very existence and the process of its
formation, the dynamism of American folklore and its endless power of
creation. (1950: 212)
13
Such sentiments were echoed by one observer after another, with Ta-
munangue serving as a metaphor for the creation of the Venezuelan
nation itself. Its very performance was likened to an alchemical act
whereby three races were magically transformed into one. A synthesis
of Americanness, wrote Olivares Figueroa, in which our great spiritual
currents converge (1960: 121). Folklorists and other scholars meticu-
lously dissected the dance, demonstrating the provenance of each of its
elements. Some names, like Juruminga and Perrendenga, were said to
clearly be African, as was the use of call and response and the presence
of such refrains as Oe bangu e, Tombira, and Tome ay to. Even
the name Tamunangue was said to be of African origin, derived, ac-
cording to Liscano, from certain parts of Yaracuy where blacks and
mulattos do an African dance to the sound of a drumcalledtamunango
(1947: 24).
14
Of course, the drum music, along with the rapid dance style
of certain sones, was also identied as unmistakably African.
In contrast to these elements were the many traces of European court
dances, of fandangos, square dancing, and contradancing. There were
La Bella and the Galero n, with their interlocking pairs and more reserved
styles; and the Seis Corrido, with its various complex gures, directly
related to a number of Spanish forms. Equally identiable with Euro-
pean traditions was the stick ghting found in the Batalla. Buffones,
Matachines, Moriscas, Danzas de Espadas, Paloteo, Seises, and even
Morris dancing were but a few of the many forms found throughout
Europe that employed the use of sticks or swords in a similar way.
15
But
the most European element was the devotion to the saint and the em-
ployment of such liturgical forms as the Salve.
The indigenous element of Tamunangue, beyond its originating in
Venezuela, was not so evident. Some writers, like Jose Anselmo Castillo
Escalona (1987) and Rau l Colmenarez Guedez (1966), claimed that it
could be detected in a certain reticent, if not somber, attitude.
16
Still,
many noted that the maraca was an indigenous instrument, which, when
combined with the African drum and the European chordophone, cre-
ated a perfect musical synthesis. However, in the end, it was the union
of all these elements that helped transform this extremely local Larense
dance into a paradigm of the national racial ideal. The poet and dance
promoter Manuel Rodr guez Cardenas summarized it best: Today one
could say that Tamunangue is as black as it is white, as Indian as mestizo,
as colonial as republican, because there are elements from every age and
every race in its deep roots. Because Tamunangue is a foundational
dance . . . which is to say, an ancient expression of our collective soul
(1966 [1956]: 13).
There is a striking similarity here to the Brazilian discourse around
samba, whose elevation to the status of national dance also required that
it be linked to the origins of mestizaje. According to Barbara Browning,
not only is the ideal female sambista a mulatta, but, in popular mythol-
ogy, the term samba is claimed to come from zamba, mean[ing] a
mestico child, offspring of an African father and an indigenous mother
(1995: 16). According to one early account of the origin of samba,
The dance is a function of dances: the samba is a mixture of the jongo of
the African percussive ensembles, of the Sugarcane dance of the Portu-
guese and of the porace of the Indians. The three races are melded in the
samba as a crucible. The samba is the apoplexy of the court, it is the pyr-
rhic victory of the bedroom. In it, the heavy sovereign conquers the
light mameluca [a woman of mixed African and indigenous race]. In it
are absorbed the hatreds of color. The samba is if you will permit me
the expression a kind of pot, into which enter, separately, dark coffee
and pale milk, and out of which is poured, homogeneous and har-
monic, the hybrid cafe-com-leite: coffee with milk. (Quoted in Browning
1995: 17)
As in all invocations of racial democracy, however, one wonders
just how homogeneous and harmonic this new hybrid mix really was.
In Venezuela, there were some who still challenged the view that Ta-
munangue was the result of a perfect synthesis of three unique
traditions. On one side were those like Rafael Domingo Silva Uzcategui,
who refused to believe that something as sophisticated and beautiful as
Tamunangue could be anything other than European. A native Larense
from a wealthy, landowning family, Silva Uzcategui was one of the rst
intellectuals to write about Tamunangue. In various articles, as well as
in his two-volume Enciclopedia Larense (1981 [1941]), he attempted to dis-
prove that Tamunangue had any African origins whatsoever. In support
of his argument that the dance had been introduced by missionaries, he
pointed out various stylistic parallels to a number of Spanish forms,
particularly from Galicia and the Canary Islands. The nonvocables he
located in different Andalusian songs of Arab origin. He even suggested
that the term Tamunangue was not African but Indian, derived from
an indigenous site near Curarigua called Los Arangues (1981 [1941]:
175). But it was the grace and beauty, the sheer nobility of the form that
convinced him more than anything that it must be of European deriva-
tion. Or, as he condently wrote: The elegance of these dances clearly
states that they must have come from a culture far superior to our own
Indians or African slaves (1990 [1954]: 2).
Although Silva Uzcateguis position may be considered extreme, even
those who have rhapsodized over the multiracial virtues of the dance
have often done so by reinforcing various negative racial stereotypes.
The African contribution, therefore, was always said to be sensual and
frenetic, whereas the indigenous was submissive and downcast. The Eu-
ropean element, on the other hand, was invariably dignied, reserved,
and cerebral. And it was not only folklorists and social critics who held
such views. Performers too were soon describing the dance as transcend-
ing racial and local boundaries, yet, ironically, by doing so they uncon-
sciously reafrmed them. A good example is the following statement by
Colmenarez Guedez, one of the rst Tamunangueros to perform nation-
ally: In Tamunangue one nds the melancholy of the Indian, the joy
and sensuality of the black, and the royal and spiritualized attitude of
the white (1966: 8).
One group that has begun to challenge the popular mythology sur-
rounding Tamunangues rapid diffusion throughout Venezuela over the
last fty years is the Afro-Venezuelan community. They question not
only its appropriation as a national dance but also how mestizo it is and
whether its enshrinement as a symbol of racial harmony is but another
example of the erasure of African-American culture and identity. Such
views, which have been expressed by various scholars and community
activists, cite a range of evidence linking the dances origins to the slaves
who worked the sugar plantations of southern Lara. As part of this ev-
idence, they note that the termTamunangue was only introducedwith
the work of Juan Liscano and Isabel Aretz in the 1940s and that before
then the dance was commonly known as Son de Negros or Baile de Negros,
The Dance of the Blacks.
t h e c h o r e o g r a p h y o f r a c e
a n d t h e d a n c e o f t h e b l a c k s
The difculty in determining the legitimacy of the name Tamunangue
is compounded by the lack of any historical records. According to Aretz,
who began her exhaustive study of the form in 1947, the childhood
memories of elders who saw it performed as adolescents is as far back
as we can go (1970 [1956]: 20). Even then, Aretz believed that Tamu-
nangue as presented in the 1940s was already a choreographic recon-
struction of a number of dances collected by unknown sources. What
some of those dances may have looked like is described briey in Julio
Ramoss 1936 novel Los Conuqueros. However, real documentation of the
dance only started four years later, with Liscanos expeditions to Cura-
rigua and El Tocuyo. Within a short time a urry of articles began ap-
pearing from such writers as Lira Espejo (1941), Silva Uzcategui (1941,
1954, 1956), Francisco Tamayo (1945), Olivares Figueroa (1949), and of
course, Liscano himself (1947, 1950, 1951). Then, in 1956, Aretzs book-
length study was published as a special issue of Folklore Americano.
17
In
each of these works, the dance was unequivocally identied as Ta-
munangue, ensuring that it would now be the name used throughout
the country.
Yet, in the small towns where the dance was actually performed, the
term Tamunangue was relatively unknown. For most, Negro, or
black, was enough to identify the dance. Participants simply said Va-
mos por los Negros (Lets go up to the Blacks) or Vamos a bailar un
Negro (Lets dance a Black). As Mar a Gonzalez recalled in 1979:
Before they just said there were Negros, Negros of San Antonio. Its
only now that they say Tamunangue. But for us here, well, before
everything was Lets go dance some Blacks. One got out their wide
skirts, their pleated blouses, their embroidered sandals. (Quoted in
Gonzalez Viloria 1991: 55)
Jose Perez, from Curarigua, claims that the people in his community
could not even pronounce the term when it was rst introduced in 1964.
They referred to it as Tamonangue and greeted it with undisguised
resentment:
The name, Tamunangue, was very counterproductive at rst. The peo-
ple in my community didnt even say, they didnt even call it Tamu-
nangue but rather Tamonangue.
A group from Barquisimeto came. I told you how they celebrated the
San Antonio Festival in my community. Every year the same people
from the community would celebrate it, but for some reason they were
sick or something and those people couldnt do it. So a group from some
other place came, and I remember, that was when Angel Mar a Perez
came with his group. They were really well organized. Yeh, with liqui-
liqui, and the women, the women with long, colorful skirts. It was the
rst time the community wasnt really able to enjoy a Tamunangue be-
cause the group was the only one allowed to dance. No one else was
permitted.
Everyone was really disgusted with that, the fact that the Tamu-
nangue was so bad. There was no participation, no one could dance.
Everyone there really looked forward to their festivals, just like you
wait for your birthday, to have a good time. And the way to do it was
to dance, and a lot of people werent able to . . . at that moment at the
end of a son when youre passed the vara and given a chance. Thats
when Tamunangue stopped being so popular. It started to lose its pop-
ularity. And, yes, I think that was in 1964. I was seven years old, yes,
64, 65. Im trying to remember now, I was in the third or fourth grade.
How was it, then, that Tamunangue was so quickly adopted as the
term of choice for this complex dance form? Where did it come from,
and why was it imposed if the dance was already known by another
name? For those attempting to revive what they believe is the forms
authentic name, the answer is quite simple. If the dance was to be ele-
vated to the status of national symbol, it would have to be stripped of
its historical associations with a single segment of the population, par-
ticularly when that segment was so closely tied to a history of margin-
alization and oppression. Or, simply put, the name Son de Negros
was too black. Tamunangue, on the other hand, was not only more
exotic and mysterious but, just as signicant, had none of the negative
associations with black suffering and poverty. As such, it could convey
notions of an idealized mestizaje that were impossible for a term like
Son de Negros.
Doing the work of mestizaje has meant that the name Tamunangue
is used to mask the actual origins of the form as well as the many
divisive elements underlying it. One of the people most dedicated to
reclaiming this tradition as part of the Afro-Venezuelan experience has
been Pedro Linarez, a curator and activist from El Tocuyo. Like many,
he has critiqued the discourse of mestizaje, noting that its sole purpose
is to serve a national agenda while discouraging any other. As Linarez
claims, this is precisely what occurred with Tamunangue:
They were looking for a way to hide the Negroid character of the Son
de Negros or Tamunangue, making it seem like the product of that per-
fect blending of races in which the main ingredient, of course, was the
Spanish Colonial. Its for that reason that J. R. Colmenarez Peraza came
up with the denitive slogan for Tamunangue as The mix of our race,
made with a shout and a drum. (1987: 6)
18
The they being invoked here are the folklorists and promoters who,
according to Linarez and others, conspired to transform the dance into
a deracialized, national spectacle. It was not enough, therefore, to simply
rechoreograph the dance for a proscenium stage. Its very history would
have to be rewritten, particularly if it was to appeal to a national audi-
ence. This mnemonic imperialism, as Eric Van Young has called it
(1994: 367), was the work of specialists like Liscano, Aretz, and Olivares
Figueroa, sent out to identify Venezuelas most representative forms. Or
so Linarez claims, insisting that the dance could only be successfully
promoted once it was detached from its legacy of slavery and exploi-
tation:
What happened was that Son de Negros changed its name and now,
with its spread as Tamunangue, became a protable business. We still
dont know the exact date when its real name was changed to that of
Tamunangue. Nevertheless, we have to recognize that with its massive
promotion came a new level of economic activity that also demanded
the introduction of changes not only to its name but to its choreography
and words. (1987: 21)
Others had certainly acknowledged the African contribution to Ta-
munangue, but it was always characterized as a single element in a larger
cultural mix. Linarez, however, insisted that the dance was primarily
African, with only a few European components added. According to
him, the dance had originated among the slaves of the colonial sugar
plantations surrounding El Tocuyo. Founded in 1545, El Tocuyo was
only the fth Venezuelan settlement established by the Spanish and the
rst located in the interior. As the Spanish brought increasing numbers
of slaves to work their plantations, the black population soon rose to
nearly 20 percent (Linarez 1987: 15; Troconis de Veracoechea 1984). And
just as in Barlovento, here too blacks were permitted to form their own
religious societies, or cofrad as. Yet instead of adopting San Juan as their
patron saint, the black cofrad as of El Tocuyo chose San Antonio de
Padua.
Linarez believes that the Son de Negros, or Dance of the Blacks, began
in the celebrations of these cofrad as. As in other areas, African gods
were thinly disguised as Catholic saints, permitting old traditions to
continue undetected. Linarez supports these claims with various pieces
of linguistic evidence, connecting words such as juruminga, angua, and
a tome to Mandingo. Even the word Tamunangue is given African
provenance, as poetically deciphered by Mar a Magdalena Colmenarez
Losada, the rst Folklore Queen: Dissected by its roots, Tamunangue
means Ta people, Mu our, and Nango bitterness, leading us to
translate it as bitterness of our people. The word comes fromthe Mende
language of Sierra Leone, Africa, which makes us conclude that at the
time of its origin, the dance was already an expression of longing by
groups of African slaves (quoted in Linarez 1987: 16).
Linarez also points to specic lyrics supporting this idea that the orig-
inal performers were slaves wishing to return to their native land. In the
Batalla, for example, one nds the following stanza:
Ay, Father San Antonio,
Virgin of Chiquinquira,
you took me from my land
now bring me back.
(Linarez 1987: 19)
19
But the most important piece of semantic evidence is the fact that all
of the participants are referred to as Negros. In each of the sones,
dancers are summoned with calls of Viene otra negra (Here comes an-
other black) or Sale otro negro (Another blacks coming out). Moreover,
all of the singers instructions are addressed to la negra or el negro,
as in the following verses from the Ayiyivamos:
Ayiyivamos
Ay, lets go
These are the steps
of my San Antonio
The little blacks come out
come out to dance
Ah, good black
Now hes got her
These are the steps
Listen to me, Negro . . .
Were good friends
leave her to me
leave her to me
come on, lets go
come on, Negro
get em up, my little black
get em up, my black
Now listen to me, Negro
Lets dance and dance
to my San Antonio
(Gonzalez Viloria 1991: 9394)
Even the musicians are called a band of blacks and the director or
captain of the dance, the negrero, the slave trader. And nally, San
Antonio himself is commonly referred to as El Negro Antonio and
El Negro de Padua. Of course, many Venezuelans claim that negro
is simply a term of endearment commonly applied without any real
racial content. But others support Linarezs argument that the real im-
plications of the dance would be too threatening if its true history were
acknowledged. As a result, the recovery of the original name, Son de
Negros, has been seen as an act of resistance to an ideology that sys-
tematically ignores the place of black culture in Venezuela. One attempt
to rectify this was the Popular Culture Congress held in Yaracuy in 1990.
Among the various motions adopted was a demand to respect the name
Son de Negros in the San Antonio cult of the midwest region. There
was also a call to question the term folklore for its discrimination and
demeaning treatment of traditional production (Proposiciones apro-
badas 1990).
One of the organizers of this conference was the Barloventen o activist
Jesu s Garc a, who, not long afterward, chastised me for using the term
Tamunangue. Like many Afro-Venezuelan intellectuals, Garc a has
been heavily inuenced by the pioneering work of Miguel Acosta
Saignes. Trained in Mexico, Acosta Saignes insisted that Tamunangue
had its origins as a black dance. He also recalled a previous minister of
education asking, Why study folklore when its just about blacks?
(1983: 1617). Such statements reafrm Linarezs belief that it was nec-
essary to transform Son de Negros into Tamunangue in order to make
it suitable for popular consumption.
Linarez is well aware of the parallels between his argument and that
of the San Juan Congo devotees of Curiepe. Both have used their re-
spective festivals to expose the racism in a society where the constant
celebration of mestizaje is equated with a false racial democracy. And
yet, although the racial politics denounced by Linarez, Garc a, andothers
may be indisputable, the vehicles for exposing them remain somewhat
less determined. Even Aretz, the folklorist Linarez blames most for im-
posing the term Tamunangue, insists that the dance oscillates between
its European and African roots. It is the performance context, according
to Aretz, that determines which aspect of the tradition will dominate. In
urban settings, for example, the more courtly, reserved Spanish style
seems to surface, whereas in rural environments one nds the more
provocative and sensual African-inspired elements. It is the latter
Tamunangue, wrote Aretz, that deserves the name Son de Negros,
where the descendants of the slaves dedicated their dances to San An-
tonio, just as they still do with San Juan (1970 [1956]: 156).
This ongoing debate over the origin and meaning of Tamunangue
may reect an even deeper struggle, one driven by the agonistic nature
of the dance itself. For if Tamunangue is really the perfect expression of
racial democracy, its association with the Spanish tradition of Moors
and Christians makes it clear that it was also forged in war and conquest.
Only in this version, it was not the forces of a newly united Catholic
Spain that had vanquished the Moors but, rather, the lone gure of San
Antonio de Padua. Here, as the verses remind us, it was San Antonio
who, with nothing but a drum, went to Africa to conquer the Moors.
The dances repeat this conquest and, like the act commemorated in the
Moors and Christians celebrations, also subjugate all that is wild and
untamed.
t h e t h e a t e r o f d o m i n a t i o n
San Antonio and the Moors
Of all the dance traditions introduced into the New World by the Span-
iards, none spread as far and as fast as that of the Moors and Christians.
Appearing rst in northern Spain around 1150, the dance commemorates
the reconquest of the country from the North African Muslims who rst
invaded in 711. Only when this reconquest was completed in 1492, how-
ever, did the dance gain in national popularity. In each area it took on
different characteristics and was celebrated at a different time. Often
included as part of a villages patron saint festivities, the dance reen-
acted, in allegorical form, the victory of the forces of righteousness over
those of the pagan horde. Some versions included sword ghting and
equestrian contests; others featured elaborate pageants and songs known
as embajadas. In Andalusia the dance took two days to perform. On the
rst, the Muslims, or Moors, as they were known, attacked the Christian
celebrants, absconding with their patron saint.
20
On the second, the
Christians counterattacked and, after retrieving the sacred image, either
converted or killed the indels in mock battle.
For Spain, this dance marks the creation of a unied, modern state
and, as such, represents one of its most important foundational myths.
By joining the political reunication of the country to a higher religious
purpose, the new nation was also elevated to a special sacred status. It
may be little surprise, therefore, that Franco and the Falangists also at-
tempted to use this dance, casting their forces as the Christian saviors
out to reconquer Spain from the new Republican Moors who had over-
taken it (Baumann 1988). But the morality tale reenacted by the Moors
and Christians was easily transposed onto countless other situations as
well.
The recent victory over Muslim forces, encoded in dramatic dances
and pageants, was one of the rst evangelical tools used by the Spaniards
upon their arrival in the New World. As early as 1538, versions of this
dance were being performed in Mexico City (Champe 1983: 3). As it
spread throughout the continent, the Moors were quickly replaced by
other groups in need of conversion, particularly Indians. However, the
dance, which pitted good against evil in such stark terms, was able to
accommodate any number of adversaries and soon featured Romans,
Jews, blacks, monkeys, and even French grenadiers (Bricker 1981; Car-
rasco 1976). While part of this shift reects the simple resemanticization
into a new environment, it also indicates another dislocation. Performers
and audiences were soon to change places, and instead of Spaniards
dancing for native peoples, Indians were performing for Spaniards. As
this reversal occurred, the message started to change too, and, rather
than glorify the work of the conquest, the dance now began to under-
mine it (Rodr guez 1996: 144 passim).
21
These new versions were less religious parables than brutal stories of
ethnic strife. Like Sylvia Rodr guez, Victoria Reier Bricker believes that
indigenous communities transformed these celebrations into meta-
commentaries on both race relations and domination. Analyzing Mexi-
can Carnival plays derived from Moors and Christians traditions,
Bricker concludes that the dances have become rituals of ethnic con-
ict (1981: 129):
All the events dramatized during this festival have in common the
theme of ethnic conict. The towns differ in the conicts portrayed dur-
ing Carnival and in their choice of symbols to represent them. But the
underlying structure in each case is one of ethnic conictwarfare,
death, rape, soldiers, weapons, reworks, and the division of people
into two groups: the conquerors and the conquered. (1981: 133)
22
Although Tamunangues relation to the Moors and Christians tradi-
tion may be difcult to ascertain at rst, once made, it becomes easy to
understand why the themes of ethnic conict and conversion are so
central to it. Among those who have written about the dance, only
Norma Gonzalez Viloria, a folklorist who has studied and danced Ta-
munangue for twenty years, has emphasized its critical importance. And
while Aretz acknowledges the connection, most other scholars ignore it
entirely. This is somewhat odd, for participants are quick to assert that
the form has its origins in the defeat of the Moors. But instead of taking
place in Spain, the events occur in Africa, and in place of a large Christian
army, we nd San Antonio alone.
In reality, San Antonio did go to Africa in the early thirteenth century
to work as a missionary. However, he immediately fell ill and was forced
to return to his native Portugal. Along the way, he was shipwrecked by
a storm and ended up in Sicily. From there he headed north, eventually
joining the Franciscans, which is where he gained his great fame as a
preacher, particularly in Padua. It was said that even the sh and ani-
mals stood still to hear him preach and that on several occasions he
actually stopped the rain. Known as the Hammer of the Heretics and
wonder worker, he was canonized in 1232, the year after his death.
23
In tales recounting the origins of Tamunangue, San Antonio remains
in Africa and single-handedly confronts the Moors (Fig. 25). No one has
been able to subdue them, yet San Antonio succeeds with the power of
song and dance alone. These musical weapons form the basis of Tamu-
nangue. The details of this story are included in the following account
by Jose Humberto Castillo. A famous storyteller from the village of Sa-
nare, Castillo is affectionately known as El Caiman (The Alligator). He
recounted this tale to me in June 1990, just as the festival was getting
under way:
They say that when the Conquest happened, there was no one who
could conquer the Moors . . . a people, they say, who were really, really
bad, very wild and savage. So no one, absolutely no one would go, be-
cause theyd kill them. . . . Yes, sir, a really wild people. They were sav-
ages. And anyone who fell into their hands, theyd chew them up . . . if
they were whites, now, because blacks like them they didnt eat. But if
you were white . . . well, with yuca no less!
Now, San Antonio was really brave. You have to imagine the cour-
age San Antonio had. He said, Im going alone. Im not going with a
Figure 25. San Antonio being carried through Sanare. (Photograph by
David M. Guss)
group. Because if you go with a group, theyll ee. They wont like
that.
Are you so macho youre going to go alone? Because, you know,
they eat people.
They wont eat me, said San Antonio. And he went.
The rst day he went, he went there with a vara, like the ones the
dancers use [in the Batalla]. So he went and he looked. And of course
they were watching too, because those chiefs had lots of lookouts. They
were all chiefs of the blacks. . . . They had their army too, and they fol-
lowed him along. And each time they looked at him in secret like that
. . . his clothes so different . . . with his cassock . . . Jesus! And they were
all going around completely naked. And what they saw, my friend, was
a completely different kind of person. And they all hid with their ar-
rows. At times, they really wanted to shoot him. But no, nothing. Thats
the courage that God gave him, my son.
Sometimes theyd look at him, because he was black too. He was
black. This man was like us, brown, . . . He knew that because of his
color they wouldnt do anything. Each time San Antonio approached,
nothing. Thats what San Antonio said. What am I going to do, what
am I going to do to attract them?
So he came back, because they wouldnt come, they were so wild. . . .
Then he came back, and they asked him, How did it go, San Antonio?
How did it go, Antonio? Because his name was Antonio.
It went ne, he said.
Did you see the gourds there . . . the people, the savages? Didnt
you see the Moors?
Yes, I saw them.
And they didnt come?
No, they signaled to me, but nothing else, that was all. Im going
back. Tomorrow Im going to play a little something. Im going to
play some music with a drum because it doesnt work with a vara.
They wont come. Lets see how it goes with music. Ill bring a little
drum tomorrow and play some things, some pretty pieces . . . for the
women. And he took them some presents, a big box like this. . . . Be-
cause, look, when you go out you have to be kind too with everyone,
with presents and everything.
As he was getting there he started to play the drum. Thats why they
play the drum, pum, pum . . . ijiii, ijiii. They did it, pum, pum, ijiii, ijiii.
Thats the way the people did it. Then they started to arrive. They were
dancing as they came. They liked the music, and thats what was at-
tracting them.
And with that music he kept on bringing them. He led that whole
group back. He led that whole group right into the city, my friend. He
tamed them all by playing like that. He played for them, and his gifts.
. . . And the music went on taming them. With that little drum he
brought them all, right up to the prince. Thats when he conquered
them. Thats why they speak of conquering the Moors. Thats the
story.
24
In other versions of this event the leaders of the Moors are identied
by name, each one corresponding to a different son. La Bella, for ex-
ample, is said to be the princess of the main chief and the most beautiful
woman the Moors possessed. Poco a Poco, on the other hand, is the
most handsome of the chiefs, who arrogantly proceeds little by little. As
Castillo explained it, Each one of the names is a Moor. They are the
Moors San Antonio brought back with him. They are the seven sones,
each name. . . . It all has to do with the Moors. Each one, each one has
its own thing. But no one understands that, what it means that music,
that all of it, all of it had its name.
Some, such as Americo Escalona, claim that Juruminga and Galero n
were friends of San Antonio who actually helped him play the rst Ta-
munangue. However, all agree that it was San Antonio who invented
the dance in order to subdue the Moors. As such, the Batalla may rep-
resent his initial, inconclusive battle, after which he returned with a new
strategythe irresistible music and dance of Tamunangue.
25
This would
also explain the use of the term Negros, referring not to the slaves but
to the Moors who were the rst to perform the dance.
Like the Moors and Christians dances of Spain, Tamunangue marks
a foundational event, signaling the beginning of a new nation. However,
to do so, San Antonio had to do more than simply vanquish a horde of
invading indels. He had to create a completely new people, who, dif-
ferent from the European, African, or Indian, were a unique combination
of all threethe Venezuelan criollo or mestizo. This explains why the
stories of San Antonios epic deeds conate the conquest of the Moors
with that of America, converting them into a single event. Such expla-
nations also fuse indigenous peoples with Africans, just as in other
Moors and Christians traditions adapted to the New World.
26
Yet here
San Antonio literally uses Tamunangue to blend these groups, along
with the European, into a new race, a process which in Spanish is called
enrazar (to mix, hybridize, or enrace). It is the same term used by Castillo
to describe San Antonios visit to America, particularly the Guajira,
where one of Venezuelas ercest native groups still lives:
He passed through Spain. He went through various villages. I think he
came to the Guajira. Yes, I believe he did. He had to go through there
because at the time we still werent mixed up [enrazado] . . . at the time
of the Conquest, yes, right, were talking about the Conquest of Amer-
ica. We werent enraced [hybridized] yet. We were, we were pure.
There were pure, pure Indians, pure stuff. Its certain that San Antonio
came as they say.
Like others, Castillo points out that San Antonio was able to accom-
plish what he did because of his color. At rst he claims that the saint
was black but then quickly adds, This man was like us, brown [mo-
reno]. This semantic difference is important as Castillo, a typical mes-
tizo, wants to underline the fact that San Antonio was actually creat-
ing a new race in his own image. Today people still affectionately refer
to this upper-class, thirteenth-century Caucasian as el Negro San An-
tonio. But what is signicant is not his color. It is his role as a catalyst
in joining all races and peoples together. It is for this reason that Liscano
and others have celebrated Tamunangue as a triumphant event, signi-
fying the emergence of a new culture.
27
And yet for others, like Pedro
Linarez, interpretations such as these simply continue the colonial legacy
of racial oppression and denial.
The Choreography of Gender, or the Hegemony of the Smile
In many ways, the debates surrounding the origins and meaning of Ta-
munangue simulate the agonistic nature of the dance itself. What may
have begun as a commemoration of the Spanish struggle to reunify their
nation and rid the country of Muslim invaders has become a powerful
metaphor for other types of conquest as well. As Bricker and Rodr guez
demonstrate, not only did the new conquerors readily transform the
Indians into Moors, but indigenous groups also adopted these dramatis
personae, with the role of savage being played by any number of
actors. As such, Tamunangue is not simply a tale of ethnic conict but
a morality play in a constant state of reinventiona theater of domi-
nation wherein all that is savage and wild is made tame and civilized.
Although the debate over Tamunangues racial politics continues to
rage, it is not the only controversy consuming its participants. For many,
an even greater problem has been the performative adjustment imposed
upon the dance as it shifted onto a national stage. Many of these issues
are mirrors of the same conict between Son de Negros and Tamu-
nangue. For, as the dance moved into the national spotlight, it too be-
came subject to the same civilizing project. Every aspect of the dance,
and not simply its history, would have to conform to a new aesthetic.
Performance decisions would now be determined by the needs of the
stage rather than by those of community and devotion. To do so would
require what Kirshenblatt-Gimblett called an aestheticizing of the mar-
ginal (1998: 76), whereby all that is wild, improvised, and unpredictable
is carefully controlled and choreographed.
For Tamunangue, this process began as early as 1940, when musicians
and dancers were invited to Barquisimeto to perform at an agricultural
fair. By February of the following year, Tamunangue was already being
showcased in Caracas. While many praised the form for its unique and
multifaceted quality, others, particularly Larenses, charged that suchsec-
ular performances were a disgrace. Lira Espejo, who had both studied
and admired the dance in Lara, criticized its new adaptation, concluding
that there are some things that should never leave their village (Ortiz
1983: 33). Even more dismissive was Faustino Moreno, who, after at-
tending a performance at the Municipal Theater, lamented that one of
the countrys most picturesque dances had been patiently and scienti-
cally mutilated (quoted in Silva Uzcategui 1990 [1954]: 2).
But the changes demanded by this new context had been set in mo-
tion, and by the time Tamunangue was selected for inclusion in the 1948
Festival of Tradition many were already in place. Instead of a ritual
performance, the dance now became a theatrical spectacle. The distanc-
ing that occurred between performer and audience was similar to
experiences documented in other cultures and traditions.
28
Dancers and
musicians were given a special status, elevated onstage and dressed in
uniform costumes. For the men this meant wearing the high-collared,
white liquiliqui. The women, on the other hand, dressed in fringed
blouses called garrasi and wide, colorful skirts that lifted as they spun.
29
Those onstage were invested with special skills, and participation by
anyone else was all but eliminated. As Jose Perez, who has been both a
promoter and devotee, observed, In the community the excitement and
the color is in the participation of the people, but on the stage its dif-
ferent. There it depends on the costumes and movement.
Now musicians had to be carefully miked and their instruments prop-
erly tuned. Improvisation gave way to nely scripted performances,
which had to conform to whatever time was allotted. Television pro-
grams were particularly demanding, for only brief selections were usu-
ally shown. But Ivan Querales, a Tamunanguero from El Tocuyo,
proudly remembers at least one television appearance in which he con-
densed an entire dance into twenty-seven minutes. And we did the Seis
Corrido in less than eight, which was a real record!
30
The ow of the
dance was also broken by announcers, who introduced and interpreted
each son. Then, after every section, there was loud applause, creating
even further interruption. Some performers, such as Nerio Sangronis,
considered this response extremely inappropriate: More than a folkloric
act, Tamunangue is an act of faith. Tamunangue is not applauded. You
applaud with your heart because faith is great.
However, the public had now replaced the saint as the focus of atten-
tion. For the dance was no longer being done for San Antonio, and the
audience was not in attendance to pay a promesa. It was there to be
entertained. And while an image of San Antonio might still adorn the
stage like a prop, the dancers energy was directed elsewhere. As Sa-
nares chronicler, Anselmo Castillo, noted, When its for exhibition, they
eliminate the saint. They eliminate the candle, eliminate the incense and
everything. They take all that away and then it has another meaning.
Yet many in the audience at Tamunangue performances are still con-
fused by this distinction. For although such events are driven by the
need to create distance between actors and observers, a great number of
those who attend are from homes where the tradition is still practiced.
Spectators, therefore, are just as likely to cross themselves and chant the
Salve as they are to applaud and shout Viva Lara! This is especially
true in Caracas, where performances are often used to invoke state pride
and where the boundary between stage and audience is easily blurred.
This distinction between what Nerio Sangronis calls the saint tra-
dition and the public tradition is reinforced in a number of other
ways, however. In the former, participants are organized into a tight
semicircle facing the saint. In staged performances, dancers and musi-
cians are discouraged from turning their backs to the viewers. The semi-
circle is pried open, and frontality becomes the dominant aesthetic.
Everyone onstage must continuously face the audience, with absolutely
nothing concealed.
31
Viewers are no longer engaged by inner devotion
or a deep emotional attachment to the tradition. What nowcompels them
is the immediacy of the visual experience, the energy and excitement of
colorfully costumed dancers furiously whirling about with precise
movements and high kicks. Personal religious communication is re-
placed by a muscular yet sensuous athleticism, unrelenting in its opti-
mism and joyousness. For this experience has no dark side. It is healthy,
wholesome, and beautiful. Performers must communicate much more
than skill; they must announce with every step and a never-ending smile,
This is fun.
Such performative strategies underline once again the dangers sig-
naled by Kirshenblatt-Gimblett when complex local traditions are re-
duced to purely aesthetic events (1998: 72). As she correctly observed,
issues of conict, poverty, and stress are inevitably erased. The danc-
ersall healthy, young, and well dressedemerge from a magical
never-never land, a paradisiacal place where the forgotten world of folk-
lore still exists. This is the same observation made by Jose Perez, who
said of such events:
The main purpose of Tamunangue, for me, is in bringing the commu-
nity together. But thats not the concern in these performances. The con-
cern here is that everyone present say, Look how beautiful that is.
The entire focus is on creating a choreographic work, staged, musical,
melodic, strictly technical, the most perfect possible . . . something to be
looked at. It may lack the community element, but that doesnt matter
as long as everyone sings well and theyre not out of tune.
32
The external circumstances of the performers lives, however, are not
the only thing sacriced in these presentations. The hidden, introspective
world that is so integral to the ritual experience is also elided in favor
of a relentlessly extroverted, up-beat staging. Such changes have de-
manded that the performers assume what are often dramatically new
roles. Nowhere is this more apparent than when dancers and musicians
return to their villages to participate in local celebrations. For it is the
same performers who are now asked to visit homes in order to pay
promesas. Many claim that there is no difculty in distinguishing be-
tween these contexts. As Lucrecia Lo pez, an experienced dancer from
Sanare, commented: Folklore is something completely different from
promesa. Promesa is one thing and folklore another. Yet mounting
complaints suggest that the two have become increasingly conated.
Along with Tamunangues commercialization has come the inevitable
belief that the dance could provide a means to both wealth and stardom.
It is little surprise, therefore, that newgroups have proliferated, and with
more than fty in Barquisimeto alone, there is even talk of a union of
Tamunangue workers. While this has not occurred, the discussion is
symptomatic of a professionalization that many people claim has un-
dermined the tradition. Its worst manifestation is that many Tamu-
nangue groups now charge for ritual performances. They also maintain
their special status and distance by wearing their stage costumes. Many
spectators, regardless of the setting, are intimidated by recorded artists
whom they perceive as famous. As a result, they refuse to participate
and complain about the communitys diminished involvement in what
has always been a religious event.
33
But the greatest number of com-
plaints by far are reserved for the women.
As Tamunangue has moved from the intimacy of a village ritual to
that of a proscenium stage and concert hall, the relationship between
men and women has been signicantly altered. Previously, the women
had served as objects to be surrounded and dominated by the men, their
movements a metaphor for the proper socialization that all members of
their sex must undergo (Berarducci Fernandez 1987; Gonzalez Viloria
1991). Forbidden to lift their feet more than an inch or two, they de-
murely stared at the oor, displaying almost no emotion whatsoever.
But the expectations of a folkloric performance demanded that they now
present themselves differently. Movements had to be broad and quick,
even exaggerated. The large, colorful skirts that now became part of the
womens folkloric attire were whirled just high enough so that a bit
of esh was constantly revealed. And all the time, they looked straight
at the camera and audience with constant smiles on their faces.
34
Mod-
esty and introversion were replaced with coquettishness and seduction
(Fig. 26). And where female sexuality was once a symbol of the wild
and savage that must be tamed, it now threatened to dominate.
At least this is the complaint of many of the male participants in this
dance. They state, and I have heard this often, that the greatest challenge
to the future of Tamunangue is the way in which the women are rein-
terpreting the tradition. The fact that they regularly ignore other ele-
ments that are transforming this practice, such as tourism, media, and
the state, is extremely revealing. For, like most discourses of tradition,
its real subject matter is power and the desire to naturalize relationships
of inequality. It is little surprise, therefore, that when threatened, as they
are by the newly emerging role of rural women in Venezuela, the men
will invoke tradition as an ally in their continued domination of them.
Criticisms of women have been lodged from the moment Tamu-
nangue was rst presented as a theatrical event. Silva Uzcategui, in par-
ticular, complained that the sensualism and joy expressed by female per-
formers was a sacrilege to the dances religious meaning. In several
articles, he insisted that the proper female dance style was one of com-
plete submissiveness, albeit in the guise of religious devotion. Anyone
who has seen a real Tamunangue knows that this is exactly the way it
should be done: the man dances as if he were trying to surround his
partner, while she, with arms lowered and eyes steadily xed on the
ground, dances slowly, with the attitude of someone who is praying
(1990 [1954]: 2).
35
But praying to whom? one may ask. For male dancers participating
in the same rite are not required to conduct themselves in such a
Figure 26. Mar a Magdalena Colmenarez Losada dancing with Los Negros de
San Antonio, 1978. (Courtesy Mar a Magdalena Colmenarez Losada)
subdued and docile manner. What Silva Uzcategui identies as religious
fervor, therefore, may be nothing other than acquiescence to the males
dominant role. This is certainly what Gonzalez Viloria believes, arguing
that Tamunangue sacralizes a set of social relations in which men con-
sistently dominate (1991: 140). In this sense, women are to be equated
with Moors, blacks, and Indians, another antagonist in a dance whose
object is to overcome all that is other, natural, and wild. It is but
one more twist in an allegory of conquest, now interpreted as a domestic
battle between men and women. As Gonzalez Viloria explains:
The lesson of learning Tamunangue prepares the man to exercise his
domination over his space, to develop the manly gifts that characterize
it. It also prepares the woman to cultivate and adapt to her subordinate
role in the male-female relation.
The voice of the man directs the action in it. It is his gesturesthe
open armsthat mark and delimit the womans dance space similar to
the females cultural space in real life. In Tamunangue it is the man
who possesses control over the cultural goods related to the playing of
the instruments, the song, and the play of La Batalla, and with his voice
he regulates and establishes the hierarchy of roles and duties: for the
woman cooking, ironing, spinning, sewing, etc. For the man it means
providing the material means for subsistence: hes the owner of the
means of productionthe agriculture. (1991: 128, 144)
36
This vision was certainly accurate until the 1940s, when Tamunangue
was rst brought to the stages of Barquisimeto and Caracas. And it is
also true that many of the changes that Tamunangue underwent were
the result of a new performative context. Theatrical interests now de-
manded that female dancers excite the audience with a more animated,
even lusty, performance. Skirts were raised, feet were lifted, and tempos
were increased. A new irtatiousness, designed to capture the interests
of a secular audience, was suddenly encouraged. Symbolizing this new
position of women dancers was the institution of an annual Tamunangue
Folklore Queen, initiated at the Lara State Folklore Festival of 1966. The
rst selected, appropriately enough, was Mar a Magdalena Colmenarez
Losada, from El Tocuyos renowned family of Tamunangue promoters.
37
As musicians and dancers began returning to their communities, as-
pects of staged performance invariably appeared in the local Tamu-
nangue tradition. Such braiding of forms, as Richard Schechner calls
the constant interplay of ritual and theater, is little surprise (1988: 120).
38
And yet, what has entered into the performance of female dancers is
much more than the innovative stage direction acquired from festivals
and television. For introduced into this new braid is the experience of
women no longer limited by the rural domestic roles that formerly de-
ned them. The women who now participate in Tamunangue are as
likely to work in the city during the week as they are to live on a farm
or in a village. They are also likely to be college graduates, schoolteach-
ers, nurses, accountants, or have any number of occupations. In short,
the set of social relations Tamunangue now reects is one that men less
easily dominate. And the innovations women have begun to introduce
have clearly announced it.
Even as men continue to protest the more exuberant and sensual man-
ner in which women currently perform, several other modications have
become still more controversial. One of these is the adoption of the vara,
formerly restricted to male dancers. Now, in nearly every community
except Sanare, women dance with the staff cradled in their arms as well
(Fig. 27). Speaking for many male participants who have questioned
this practice, one man said: San Antonio didnt give the Virgin the vara,
he kept it. So why do women have to take it? (Berarducci Fernandez
1987: 77). Spectators, however, have responded more favorably, as
witnessed by a performance I attended at the Teatro Juarez in Barqui-
simeto. There, during a Perrendenga, a woman trounced her partner so
soundly that he was forced to ee the stage. As the audience erupted in
wild applause, the master of ceremonies announced that it was a dem-
onstration of how women should treat their husbands should they
misbehave.
Another innovation which has been equally popular with audiences
yet controversial with many men is the manner in which the Caballito
is now commonly performed. In the past, women simply wrapped their
kerchiefs around their partners necks and made a quick, perfunctory
gesture, as if to mount them. Today, however, they not only sit securely
upon the men but also ride them offstage, waving as they do. This
change, whose symbolism is not difcult to interpret, has clearly chal-
lenged the machismo of many of the male participants. While the former
version may have played with taming the wild stallion, the new one
unmistakably succeeds. And if the conquest being acted out in this dance
is not reversed, the relationship between the adversaries has certainly
been altered.
Yet men still appeal to tradition in the hope of maintaining a status
quo in which they are the unchallenged rulers. As Orlando Colmenarez,
president of one of Sanares Tamunangue groups, nostalgically put it:
The women seem to be jumping and stomping about now. They dance
just like the men, not in that special way they once did. Complaints
such as these, however, will have little effect in derailing the enormous
changes now under way for women throughout Venezuela. It is little
surprise, then, that a dance based on the Moors and Christians is being
recongured once again. Further evidence of this is the increased par-
ticipation of women in the Batalla.
Figure 27. A mixed Batalla with men and women at the Talleres de Cultura
Popular, Caracas. (Photograph by David M. Guss)
Although less common in smaller communities, Tamunangue per-
formances in Barquisimeto and Caracas have now featured women not
only in the ritual sword ghting but in every other aspect of the dance
as well. A number of these performances have met with strong opposi-
tion. In 1990, when a group of women carried the statue of San Antonio
on their shoulders through the streets of Barquisimeto, an angry crowd
of male students attempted to block them. The procession was led by
Milagro de Blavia, director of the citys museum, and was claimed to
have been the rst time that women had publicly carried the saint (Bri-
cen o 1990b).
But this has been a time of many rsts for Venezuelan women, and it
is little surprise that the Tamunangue tradition should reect it. In fact,
the formation of the rst all-woman Tamunangue troupes would seem
to parallel the struggle of many marginalized radical groups wherein
initial separation is followed by eventual reintegration. At least this was
the case with Guamacire, the rst female Tamunangue group ever
organized. Its founder was Luisa Virginia Rivero, a former Folklore
Queen, who, like her predecessor, Mar a Magdalena Colmenarez Lo-
sada, also came from a well-known Tamunangue family. Encouraged by
her father, Benicio Rivero, she began the group in 1987, restricting mem-
bership to women. Once established, however, the group began to accept
men as well.
Guamacire has not been alone: Other Tamunangue groups continue
to break the gender barrier, giving women access to all parts of the tra-
dition. One of the most important of these has been Barquisimetos Alma
de Lara, a group which has incorporated itself as a foundation and now
uses Tamunangue as a means of community activism (Ortiz 1998: 28
29) (Fig. 28). Although criticized for being among the rst to include
women in the Batalla, Alma de Lara continues to encourage them to join
as singers and musicians. Domingo Perez, the groups director, has
steadfastly defended this policy, claiming that Folklore cant be static.
It has to change and adapt, and that means making space for women.
Transformations such as these have also taken place in a number of
other traditions where women were either excluded or participated in
ways that reafrmed their inferior status. Only recently, with the advent
of staged performances and government-sponsored workshops, have
women been permitted to dance as devils in Venezuelas Corpus Christi
celebrations. And in Cuba and Trinidad, the prominence of women in
carnival has escalated to the point of redening the way these dances
are performed (Bettelheim 1993: 151; Miller 1994: 113). Similar changes
have taken place in the Cuban rumba, which, prior to the Revolution,
highlighted the working-class males domination over a passive partner.
The elevation of this dance into a national form has redened this rela-
tionship, forcing it to conform to the ideals of a modern, egalitarian
society (Daniel 1995). The causes for such changes may vary. In Brazilian
capoeira, for example, it has only been through internationalization and
the entrance into American dance studios that this form has been opened
to women and female masters have been accepted (Almeida 1986: 3;
Browning 1995: 116).
Although numerous other examples could be cited, they all conrm
that festive traditions, despite claims to the contrary, are in a constant
Figure 28. Alma de Lara performing in Caracas. (Photograph by David M.
Guss)
state of ux. Such plasticity often reects the changing social order in
which these events are realized. But they are not simply mirrors, for if
they reect, they also create, and the festive state is one in which new
realities are also constituted. Whose reality, however, remains a ques-
tion, for the exibility of these forms is derived, in no small measure,
from their agonistic and contested nature.
Perhaps this is why the Moors and Christians dance was so readily
adopted throughout the New World. In a festival constructed around
conquest and subjugation, participants found it easy to articulate their
own embattled interests. This has certainly been the case in Tamu-
nangue, where the struggle between opposing groups has frequently
challenged the way the festival is interpreted. For colonialists and mis-
sionaries, it was an allegory justifying their own brutal conquest. For
those engaged in the national project of the 1940s and after, it was a
realization of the new racial ideal of mestizaje. For blacks, it has become
an important symbol of resistance and historical knowing. And for
women over the last decade, it has provided a space in which a new-
found liberation could be expressed. But this instability and conict is
not unique to Tamunangue. The Festival of San Juan and the Day of the
Monkey are also sites where competing groups continue to struggle over
issues of interpretation and performance. To those involved, the stakes
are high. For, as participants well know, festivals, for all their joy and
color, are also battlegrounds where identities are fought over and com-
munities made.
173
Notes
c h a p t e r 1
1. Festive forms can encompass a wide range of public events, including
parades, carnivals, concerts, fairs, funerals, patron saint and feast days, caroling,
sporting contests, civic commemorations, and even political demonstrations and
trials. Many have tried to make a distinction between rituals and festive forms,
claiming that the former are religious, obligatory, closed, and serious and that
the latter are secular, optional, open, and playful. A number of these scholars,
including Gluckman, who used the term ceremony for the latter, also tried to
contrast these forms by their association with either traditional communitarian
or modern industrial societies (Moore and Myerhoff 1977: 21; see also Duvi-
gnaud 1976; Turner 1982; and Manning 1983).
Public display is always a fundamental attribute to festive behavior, but many
of the other distinctions become extremely blurred when considering Latin
America. As the examples in this book demonstrate, not only are the meanings
174 n o t e s t o p a g e s 5 8
and functions of these events unstable but shifting audiences will experience
them in a wide range of ways. The focus here, therefore, is less on trying to
establish xed categories than on identifying the changing social conditions of
production in which these events are performed (Williams 1980: 46).
2. Among Garc a Canclinis explanations for this phenomenon are the need
to generate additional income for increasingly marginalizedgroups; the markets
appetite for new and more exotic products; the increase in tourism; and the
states search for a national identity along with the establishment of ideological
homogeneity (1993: 43).
For an interesting parallel to Garc a Canclinis argument, see Boissevains
discussion concerning the recent growth of public celebrations throughout Eu-
rope since the 1970s. Boissevain argues that the weakening of church and state,
ethnic resurgence, reverse migration, tourism, democratization, and even the
broadcast of public events have all attributed to this continuing growth (1992:
119). And nally, Appadurai and Breckenridge also claim that Such festivals
are on the increase throughout the world and everywhere represent ongoing
debates concerning emergent group identities and group artifacts (1992: 40).
3. Mart n-Barbero has made similar observations concerning the way in
which festivals have adapted to the changing socioeconomic reality of Latin
America: The festival is a space for an especially important production of sym-
bols in which the rituals are the way of appropriating an economy which is
injurious to the community but which the community has not been able to either
suppress or replace with some other possibility (1993a: 192). This is also the
essence of Bakhtins argument concerning the special role of popular culture and
festive forms in particular (1984).
4. Although the Notting Hill Carnival originated in 1965, Cohen didnot begin
his investigation until 1976. As he stated in his rst published work on the sub-
ject, Most of these studies [of ritual and ceremonials], including my own, suffer
from insufcient longitudinal data to permit validation of the analysis in terms
of interrelated historical movements. It is principally to overcome this method-
ological difculty that I have concentrated on the study of a current London
annual carnival, which has developed, both culturally and politically, in full light
of recorded publicity (1980: 66). In his book-length study, Masquerade Politics,
he divides the carnival into ve phases: a diverse, polyethnic phase (19661970);
a Trinidad-style steel band and calypso phase (19711975); a British-born West
Indian phase introducing reggae, Rastafarianism, and other Jamaican inuences
(19761979); a period of increased government co-optation and institutionaliza-
tion (19791986); and a diffuse intrusion from a number of sources attempting
to regiment and institutionalize the carnival even further (19871991). He hy-
pothesizes that the next phase may be increased tourism and commodication
(1993: 153).
n o t e s t o p a g e s 8 1 6 175
5. While Goffman provides some of the best insights into how cultural per-
formances are set apart from other forms of behavior, he also suggests that they
may include almost any human interaction. Or as he claims, it is all the activity
of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous pres-
ence before a particular set of observers and which has some effect on others
(1959: 22).
See Abrahams (1982, 1987) for a discussion of the specic way in which fes-
tivals are initiated and framed as opposed to rituals, which respond to transi-
tional breaks that already exist: Festivals must initiate their own energies while
they organize the celebrants for mutual fun and prot. Thus, festivals begin with
a bang, literally, with loud noises produced by drums, guns, recrackers, and
other attention-grabbers. The vocabulary of festivals is the language of extreme
experiences through contrastscontrasts between everyday life and these high
times, and within the events themselves, between the different parts of the oc-
casion (1982: 167). As discussed elsewhere in this chapter, the distinction be-
tween festival and ritual that many have tried to make is much more blurred in
Latin America, where the multiple uses of festive forms preclude identifying
them as stable members of any xed category.
6. For analyses of Perus Corpus Christi and Qoyllur Riti celebrations and
their complicated relations to one another, see Allen (1988), Cahill (1996), Dean
(1993, 1999), Poole (1990), Randall (1982), Sallnow (1987), and Huayhuaca Vi-
llasante (1988). For a good comparison of the way Corpus Christi was used in
the proselytization of Mexico, see Curcio-Nagy (1994).
7. Hobsbawm also recognized the important relation between festivals and
new secular states, claiming that public celebrations were one of the three
invented traditions necessary for their consolidation (1983: 271). The other two
elements that Hobsbawm considered essential in this process were public edu-
cation and public monuments. One should also see the work of Mosse (1971),
who discusses the critical role of festivals and monuments in what he identies
as a new politics of the masses rather than one mediated through parliamentary
institutions.
8. For excellent discussions of the political appropriation of festive forms and
their subsequent reduction of meanings, see Cohen on the irreducible in cul-
ture (1980: 8184) and DaMatta on the contamination of codes (1991: 5253).
Both argue that a festival, or in this case carnival, is by its very denition a
polysemous event subject to multiple interpretations and can therefore never be
reduced to a single political sign.
9. Parkin makes a similar observation, that while anthropologists have
wished to remove the essentialism and exaggerated mutual boundedness im-
plied by such terms as tribe and culture, the members and bearers of these same
groups and concepts have themselves emphasized such qualities as being at the
176 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 7 2 0
basis of their own beliefs and practices (1996: xxviii). For two examples of this
somewhat inverted but clearly postmodern debate, see the Maori response to
Hansons claims that their mythic origins were inspired by anthropology (Wil-
ford 1990) and Kaspins experiences in Kenya deconstructing the primitive
(1995). See also Desais discussion of the internationalist dangers of calling
other peoples traditions invented, or what he claims is a new form of denial
(1993: 136), Brettells collection, When They Read What We Write: The Politics of
Ethnography (1993), and Briggss thought-provoking article, The Politics of Dis-
cursive Authority in Research on the Invention of Tradition. (1996). In each
case, it is clear that the champions of hybridity are from the newest cultures
exporting it.
10. Translations of all quotations and interviews are by the author unless oth-
erwise noted.
11. In Venezuela the debate over this terminology has been particularly ran-
corous. Much of it has focused on the government-supportedinstitutes that work
in the area of popular culture and folklore. Until 1986 this included the National
Institute of Folklore, the National Museum of Folklore, and the Inter-American
Institute for Ethnomusicology and Folklore (INIDEF). After much discussion,
the three institutes were consolidated in that year into the Center for the Study
of Traditional and Popular Cultures (CCPYT), eliminating the use of the word
folklore. With Carlos Andres Perezs reelection in 1989, Isabel Aretz, the for-
mer head of INIDEF, was renamed director, and the umbrella institutes title was
changed to the Foundation for Ethnomusicology and Folklore (FUNDEF). See
Castillo (1987) for a history of this process, along with its ideological signicance.
12. The festivals ofcial slogan, which appeared on the program and all ac-
companying literature was:
there is no nationality without tradition
folklore is popular tradition
13. Liscano also noted the powerful effect that seeing Caracas had upon these
performers, who until then had rarely left their communities: Besides its cul-
tural function, the festival fullled another, unexpected, human purpose in giv-
ing most of the people who took part in itdrawn from all parts of the country
their rst opportunity to see the capital. Their reactions were noteworthy. A sort
of daze constantly hung over the campesinos. Old dreams were at last coming
true (1949: 35). In October 1998, a fty-year anniversary of the Festival of Tra-
dition was held in Caracas. In addition to an academic conference, two concerts
were presented, the second of which was entitled Celebrating Juan Liscano.
Among the various tributes to him was Alfredo Chaco ns statement that he was
The father and son of the mother of all festivals (Liscano 1998: 67). FUNDEF
republished the materials devoted to the festival that originally appeared in Lis-
n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 0 2 7 177
canos 1950 Folklore y cultura, along with a selection of articles revisiting the event
(Liscano 1998).
14. Organized as part of Student Week by what became known as the Gen-
eration of 28, these events were scheduled to coincide with Caracass Carnival
preparation. This scheduling, along with the carnivalesque quality of the events,
permitted the students to both gather and march through the streets, something
rarely done during Juan Vicente Go mezs long dictatorship (19081935). A num-
ber of the participants were jailed and later forced into exile. Several of these,
including Ro mulo Betancourt, had been high school students of Gallegos and
were to eventually form the core of the Accio n Democratica Party. See Skurski
(1993) for a detailed description of these events. For earlier examples of the way
the Caracas Carnival responded to dramatic political and economic changes in
the nal quarter of the nineteenth century, see Lavenda (1980).
15. In his detailed study of Venezuelas struggle to identify as a modern state,
Coronil focuses less on popular movements and more on the government or-
chestration of massive public works. Rather than discuss the Festival of Tradition
and the inauguration of Ro mulo Gallegos, he concentrates on the dictatorships
of Juan Vicente Go mez and Marcos Perez Jimenez. He argues that their govern-
ments (19081935 and 19501958, respectively), as well as those of Carlos Andres
Perez (19741979 and 19891993), used the enormous expenditures on public
projects as a form of spectacle, a modern bread and circus so effective that it
transformed the state into a magical power capable of the superhuman act of
modernization. Here is a different type of performance, with invisible actors
behind a massive curtain of material objects. Or, as Coronil writes,
In their [political actors] public battles as much as in their private fantasies, the state
became a powerful site for the performance of illusions and the illusion of perfor-
mance, a magical theater where the symbols of civilized lifemetropolitan history,
commodities, institutions, steel mills, freeways, constitutionswere transformed into
potent tokens that could be purchased or copied. As a magical theater, the state be-
came a place possessed with the alchemic power to transmute liquid wealth [oil] into
civilized life. (1997: 229230)
c h a p t e r 2
1. For more on the growing body of literature regarding the manner in which
competing social interests help to generate new and varying versions of the past,
see Boyarin (1994), Brow (1990), Crain (1990), Gillis (1994), Hall (1981), Handler
(1988), Handler and Gable (1997), Handler and Linnekin (1984), Hobsbawm and
Ranger (1983), Lincoln (1989), Watson (1994), and Williams (1977).
2. As Sir James Frazer noted in The Golden Bough, Afaint tinge of Christianity
has been given by naming Midsummer Day after St. John the Baptist, but we
178 n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 8 3 0
cannot doubt that the celebration dates from a time long before the beginning of
our era (1953 [1922]: 720). Tracing its spread throughout Europe and even Mus-
lim North Africa, Frazer cited three elements he believed to be common to all:
bonres, the procession with torches round the elds, and the custom of rolling
a wheel (1953 [1922]: 720721). These dominant features led him to classify San
Juan as a re festival.
3. Crespi makes the interesting observation that as distinctions between In-
dian and non-Indian groups have diminished, so has the signicance of this
festival in the Cayambe-Imbabura area (1981: 497). For a view somewhat differ-
ent from Crespis, see Crain (1989), who believes the festival has actually in-
creased in importance with both the elimination of other celebrations and the
new inequities of a more market-oriented economy.
4. The 1985 census listed the population of Barloventos four districts as
133,000, or 58.5 percent of the state of Miranda (Monasterio Vasquez 1989: 89).
For more on the geopolitical formation of this area, see Acosta Saignes (1959),
Castillo Lara (1981a, 1981b, 1983), Estado Miranda (1981), and Ponce (1987).
5. All direct quotations for which no source is given are oral statements made
directly to the author.
6. Malembe is a special song played on the nal afternoon of the festival. The
sadness commonly associated with it is claimed to derive from its role as a fare-
well song to the saint. Garc a has even suggested that this nal stage of the
festival, known as the encierro, is analogous to a wake: This is a drumbeat
performed with round drums known as culo e puya. The bearers would make
the saint dance very gently, as is suggested by the word malembe, which, in
Bantu-Lingala, means less fast or slowly, and so they would proceed all the
way to the small chapel where the wake was to be held (1985: 5).
Sojo also attaches special importance to the word malembe, claiming that it is
derived from the name for an African deity and actually means All Powerful.
In discussing its role in the San Juan celebration, he explains that it represented
a cult of liberation through death. Death by ones own hand before the slave-
owners henchmen could lay on their fatal lashes once again (1986: 172).
7. Bastide points out that, in Brazil and Trinidad, Shango, the God of Thun-
der, is explicitly identied with San Juan and that the connection of each to re
may well explain their union. He also suggests that the common belief that San
Juan must sleep through his own holiday, rather than come down to earth and
destroy it, is derived from stories about Shango (Bastide 1972: 156159; 1978:
274). This tradition is also to be found in Venezuela, where Sanjuaneros sing:
Si San Juan supiera
cuando es su d a
del cielo bajara, caramba,
con gran alegr a.
n o t e s t o p a g e s 3 3 4 3 179
If San Juan knew
it was his day, oh boy,
hed come down from heaven
with such great joy.
(Adam 1981: 28)
8. It is difcult to ascertain the origin of the term culo e puya. However, it
may derive from the drums hourglass-shaped interiors. For detailed descrip-
tions of these drum traditions, see Brandt (1978), Garc a (1990), Liscano (1970),
and Ramo n y Rivera (1971).
9. The special velorio for dead children not yet baptized is the mampulorio.
As the Lipners claim, this velorio is considered a happy occasion, for people
strongly believe that the child has gone to heaven to pray for its parents, and no
sorrow should be shown (Lipner and Lipner 1958: 4).
10. Bastide refers to this phenomenon as Catholic-fetishist syncretism
(1978: 142).
11. The poet Andres Eloy Blanco, writing about the Festival of Tradition,
quipped, Columbus may have discovered America, but Liscano just discovered
Venezuela (cited in Machado 1987: 49). For a detailed account of the prepara-
tion, execution, and response to this festival, held on February 1721, 1948, see
Liscano (1950).
12. In discussing the political dimensions of Trinidads Carnival and the var-
ious interests it arbitrates, John Stewart makes a useful distinction between vis-
itors who are returnees and those who are tourists. He also claims that
because they are detached from any community encumbrances, it is the visi-
tors in both categories who actually enjoy the event most (1986: 314). For more
on the concept of the heritage spectacle, see Acciaioli (1985), Crain (1992), Karp
and Lavine (1991), and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1991, 1998).
13. Ru z subsequently retired from the air force and served as a district
councilman for the opposition COPEI party. COPEI, which was founded in
January 1946, stands for Comite de Organizacio n Pol tica Electoral Indepen-
diente.
14. The issue of patronage or, as Benito Yrady describes it, negative inter-
ventions (personal communication 1990), in local festivals was not limited to
Curiepe. Begun by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura y Bellas Artes (INCIBA)
and continued by its successor, CONAC, these small stipends tie performers to
whatever political party is in power. Hence, when parties lose elections, musi-
cians sometimes refuse to play at festivals because their payments are discontin-
ued by those now in ofce.
15. A song popular in Barlovento at the time, credited to a farmer named
Aureliano Huice, effectively captured this feeling of being overrun by tourists.
In its principal refrain one sh sings to another:
180 n o t e s t o p a g e s 4 4 4 7
Lebranche le dijo a Guabina,
Vamonos para pozo hondo.
Alla vienen los turistas
Con su destruccio n en el hombro.
Lebranche said to Guabina,
Lets get deep down in the water.
Here come the tourists
With destruction on their shoulders.
16. In addition to working for the Ministry of Justice, Blanco was a professional
drummer with Yolanda Morenos Danzas Venezuela, a group that has been
adapting traditional dance forms for stage and television since the early 1950s.
It was through this dance troupe that Blanco became familiar with Curiepes
unique drum tradition and thus interested in returning to the village in 1975
with the ministrys new program.
17. The publication of Alfredo Chaco ns Curiepe: Ensayo sobre la realizacion del
sentido en la actividad magicoreligiosa de un pueblo venezolano (1979) was celebrated
in Curiepe during the Culture Week of 1979.
18. Azpu ruas lm was part of a national campaign seeking both to redene
government policy toward indigenous peoples and to evict the North American
backed New Tribes Missions (Guss 1989: 1920; Luzardo 1988; Mosonyi 1981).
19. For an indication of how radical this shift in self-perception was, consider
the ndings of Max Brandt, who, while doing research in this area only several
years before, noted that most Curieperos dened themselves as well as their
drum traditions as Indian rather than African (1978: 5).
20. Historical instances of the repression of drums are to be found throughout
the Americas, from the response to the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739
(Wood 1974) to Rafael Trujillos more recent attempt to prohibit their inclusion
in Dominican merengue bands. And even though drums were not outlawed in
the United States during the 1950s, congas and bongos served as the symbol of
resistance for an entire generation of beats. As Dick Hebdige observed in writing
about reggae and Rastafarianism:
The voice of Africa in the West Indies has traditionally been identied with insur-
rection and silenced wherever possible. In particular, the preservation of African
traditions, like drumming, has in the past been construed by the authorities (the
Church, the colonial and even some post-colonial governments) as being intrinsi-
cally subversive, posing a symbolic threat to law and order. These outlawed tra-
ditions were not only considered anti-social and unchristian, they were positively,
triumphantly pagan. They suggested unspeakable alien rites, they made possible
illicit and rancorous allegiances which smacked of future discord. They hinted at
that darkest of rebellions: a celebration of Negritude. They restored deported
Africa, that drifting continent to a privileged place within the black mythology.
And the very existence of that mythology was enough to inspire an immense dread
in the hearts of some white slave owners. (1979: 3132)
n o t e s t o p a g e s 4 9 5 5 181
21. Cumbe, quilombo, and palenque were the terms used for cimarron commu-
nities in Venezuela, Brazil, and Colombia, respectively. The term cimarron (from
cima, or mountaintop) was originally used for domesticated cattle that had
returned to the wild. As Richard Price observed, by the early 1500s, it had come
to be used in plantation colonies throughout the Americas to designate slaves
who successfully escaped from captivity (1983: 1).
22. Elsewhere I discuss a recent open-air performance about the life of one of
Barloventos greatest cimarro n heroes, Guillermo Rivas (Guss 1996b).
23. A similar process to the way in which San Juan has been absorbed into the
cimarro n experience is to be found in Brazil, where black practitioners of Um-
banda have placed the leaders of former quilombos at the head of a hierarchy
of spirits. As John Burdick writes:
The most well-known version of Umbanda situates the slave at the bottom, beneath
the Indian and white in the hierarchy of spirits. But this version is adhered to mainly
by whites and mulattos. Blacks in Umbanda worship a spirit unrecognized by either
whites or mulattos: Zumbi, one of the chiefs of Palmares, the great maroon society
that survived for almost a century in the backlands of Alagoas, until nally de-
stroyed by the Portuguese in 1697. (1992a: 27)
24. Saints may be owned by individuals, the church, or collective societies.
The possibility that a saint will be manipulated for particular political ends al-
ways exists, but ownership by a society or cofrad a reduces the likelihood of such
behavior.
25. Although the events of 1979 and earlier reect a great deal of dissatisfaction
with the tourists, actual sentiment was quite ambivalent. People enjoyed the
attention and national celebrity, as well as the increase in movement andactivity.
The reinstitution of the San Juan Congo velorio permitted Curieperos to expe-
rience the best of both worldsa public, tourist celebration and a private, village
one. For some interesting comparisons with tourisms effects on other local fes-
tivals, see Stanley Brandess Power and Persuasion: Fiestas and Social Control in
Rural Mexico (1988), in which he traces the transformation of the Night of the
Dead celebration on the 1st and 2nd of November froma small family celebration
to a large tourist one. Despite busloads of tourists and a series of pageants, plays,
and fairs, all orchestrated by the government, Brandes claims, the Tzintzuntzan
remain delighted: For the most part, villagers appreciate the changes that have
come to the Night of the Dead. They like the liveliness, the outside attention, the
inux of money, the government support and exposure. Not once, and despite
some discreet probes on my part, did I ever encounter a complaint about noise,
impoliteness, or sacrilege as a result of tourism. . . . Most discussions about the
esta concern changes needed to accommodate even more tourists (1988: 108).
26. The extraordinary price of this image is underscored by the fact that the
182 n o t e s t o p a g e s 5 5 5 8
most expensive slave at the time was estimated to cost 400 pesos (Sojo 1986: 171).
It should also be remembered that much of the power attributed to the new saint
derived from its phallus, thus connecting it not only to the Bantu Nkisi tradition
but also to one of San Juans most essential functions, that of fertility.
27. The details of Curiepes founding came to light only in the early 1980s,
when the historian Guillermo Castillo Lara gained access to a collection of un-
archived colonial documents in the Casa Simo n Bol var in Caracas. They proved
that a mixed company of free black soldiers and luangos, or escaped slaves from
the Antilles, led by Captain Juan del Rosario Blanco, founded Curiepe on what
Castillo Lara claims was the day of San Juan, 1721 (1981b: 57; also see Monasterio
Vasquez 1989: 17).
28. Walker describes how, in a fascinating Brazilian parallel to the celebration
of San Juan, religious societies in the Bahian community of Cachoeira were or-
ganized with the express purpose of providing funds for the purchase of free
papers. Although her example explains how the groups that were organized
to celebrate the Festa da Boa Morte, or Feast of Good Death, secretly conspired
to liberate those still enslaved, she emphasizes that this was by no means unique:
The Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods were organizational structures withinwhich
Africans and later Afro-Brazilians could organize under the aegis of the Catholic
church to oppose the system of slavery, and in which free Blacks could collab-
orate with their still enslaved brothers and sisters to increase the ranks of the
free (1986: 30).
29. The myth of mestizaje, or the myth of racial democracy, is not unique
to Venezuela but is found throughout the Caribbean and South America. As
Whitten and Torres emphasize, Mestizaje, the ideology of racial intermingling,
is an explicit master symbol of the nation in all Latin American countries (1992:
18). It is also, they point out, a powerful force of exclusion of both black and
indigenous communities in the Americas today. As a consequence, black and
indigenous awareness of exclusion and continuous struggle for ethnic power
will remain constant (1992: 21). For further discussions of what Arthur Corwin
refers to as the great national illusion (1974: 389) and its effects on all of Latin
America, see Toplin (1974) and Burdick (1992b). Like Whitten and Torres, Bur-
dick makes the point that whitening, as opposedto negritude, or the celebration
of blackness, meant eliminating the racial heritage of Africa by overwhelming
it with miscegenation, the importation of Europeans, and restrictions on the im-
migration of blacks. He goes on to say that if racial democracy has any mean-
ing at all, it refers to the fact that Latin American societies make some provision
for better treatment of people of visibly mixed ancestry (1992b: 41).
30. Perhaps no institution demonstrates the way in which this purportedly
color-blind ideology confounded the issues of race and class as did the gracias
al sacar. Translatable as thanks for the exclusion, these papers permittedmes-
n o t e s t o p a g e 5 8 183
tizos and blacks who could afford them the right to be classied as white (Wright
1990: 24). While Wright notes that the ruling class in colonial Venezuela ex-
pressed opposition to this institution, certicates of whiteness were neverthe-
less common in many parts of the Americas (Burdick 1992b: 42).
31. Numerous other examples support this position that race is simply not an
issue in Venezuelan society. For many people, such as Guillermo Moro n, pres-
ident of the prestigious Academia Nacional de la Historia, the transcendence of
race is a symbol of pride, attesting to Venezuelas enlightened, if not superior,
state:
It is true that there exists no negro problem in any Spanish-speaking country today,
because the negro has been assimilated into society without any trouble. In Vene-
zuela this phenomenon of complete assimilation, social, political, and economic, is of
the greatest importance. Venezuela has a tradition of liberty and equality for all
which in some other nations has still to be evolved. The negro of colonial days, a
slave, and therefore inferior, has given way to the educated man, the creole negro,
who is one of the unifying links of the Venezuelan people. (1964: 54)
And many others, such as the celebrated author and philosopher Arturo Uslar
Pietri, believe that to speak of race is to be un-Venezuelan: Whoever speaks
of blacks or whites, whoever invokes racial hatred or privileges, is denying Ven-
ezuela. In Venezuela, in political and social matters, there are neither whites nor
blacks, neither mestizos nor Indians. There are only Venezuelans (cited in
Wright 1990: 122).
Until recently, among the few who had tried to expose the inconsistencies
within these racial views were Juan Pablo Sojo and Miguel Acosta Saignes. While
Sojos inuence as a folklorist and writer was felt primarily in the communities
of Barlovento, where he lived, Acosta Saignes is often credited with being the
founder of Venezuelan anthropology. In work after work (1961, 1962, 1967), he
documented the history and legacy of Venezuelas African-descended peoples,
inspiring a whole new generation of what Gramsci might have called organic
intellectuals (1971). Like the Sanjuaneros of Curiepe, these young Afro-
Venezuelan scholars and activists are also challenging the ideology of invisibility
that has dominated all discussions of race up to the present. As Jesu s Garc a,
one of the most prominent gures among them, recently wrote:
The study of the African presence in Venezuela has hardly existed up till now for
investigators. In fact, one sometimes has the impression that they would like to erase
the past and opt for the cliche that we are all mestizos, without recognizing, in a pro-
found way, that to arrive at this mestizaje, or rather what could be called our
Venezuelan-ness, we had to pass through a long struggle between dominant and
dominated groups, between Europeans, Amerindians, and Africans, a process within
which the African presence was a catalyzing factor in these conicts waged for ve
centuries. (1990: 72)
184 n o t e s t o p a g e s 6 1 6 2
c h a p t e r 3
1. Several other authors have also addressed the way in which the ideology
of mestizaje in Ecuador has functioned as a mechanism of exclusion, both dom-
inating and eradicating indigenous culture and history (Muratorio 1993; Stutz-
man 1981; Weiss 1991). Muratorio summarizes this well when she writes:
As part of an ideology of domination, mestizaje hides dialogue by turning it into a
monologuethe monologue of the Self who has incorporated the Other or is in the
process of doing so. It creates the illusion that the Other, as forged by the dominator,
can be brought into the imagined communitythe useful term by which Benedict
Anderson (1983) refers to national social identitiesthrough the doorway of natu-
ral ties . . .
Like other master ctions, mestizaje was invented by the dominant turn-of-the-
century elites for the subordinate peoples in order to hide and maintain the asym-
metrical relations of power between whites and Indians that they had inherited from
the colonial administration. (1993: 2324)
2. Soon after this event, Kayapo leaders reciprocated the insult by refusing
to allow a group of government ofcials into their village unless they donned
proper Kayapo attire.
3. Such campaigns as that of the Kayapo are not unique. Today in the Bra-
zilian Amazon alone there are more than fty indigenous federations. InEcuador
the Federacio n de Centros Shuar, organized in 1964, has not only gained title to
its lands but also runs a successful radio station, publishing house, and bilingual
education and health programs. Similar developments have also occurred
among the Arahuaco of Colombia and the Mapuche of Chile. And among the
Amuesha of Peru, the Yanesha cooperative has been developing alternative strat-
egies for harvesting wood products. Although these are only a few of the many
projects that indigenous communities have launched over the last three decades,
they signal what must be seen as the vanguard of a true cultural diversity move-
ment throughout the continent, a movement that is not simply asking for greater
representation but also presents an economic and cultural alternative to the Eu-
rocentric paradigm of development that has dominated the Americas since the
arrival of Columbus 500 years ago.
4. The staging of the Altamira meeting was comprehensively planned with
a view to its appearance on lm and video. The daily sessions were in effect
choreographed, with gorgeous mass ritual performances that framed their be-
ginnings, ends, and major high points. The encampment of the Kayapo parti-
cipants was created as a model Kayapo village, complete with families, tradi-
tional shelters, and artifact production, all on display for the edication of the
hundreds of photojournalists, television and lm camera crews, and video cam-
eras. The Kayapo leaders saw Altamira as a major opportunity to represent them-
n o t e s t o p a g e s 6 3 6 4 185
selves, their society, and their cause to the world, and they believed that the
impact it would have on Brazilian and world public opinion, via the media,
would be more important than the actual dialogue with Brazilianrepresentatives
that transpired at the meeting itself (Turner 1991: 307308).
5. Stutzman also witnessed this shift from ethnic victim to ethnic resister
among indigenous peoples of Ecuador, claiming: Ethnicity as a cultural system
stands in implicit judgement of the expansionist state. . . . Ethnicity protests
against the larger national situation, not by struggling to take over or overthrow
the state apparatus, but by refusing to be deceived by the denitions of contem-
porary realities that the controllers of the state are promoting in the name of
national development (1981: 47, 73). Urban and Sherzer (1991) also present
various examples of this rapidly changing national-indigenous discourse from
throughout Latin America. And nally, it is important to note Cohens obser-
vations that it is a shift in political theory itself that has transformed our notions
of ethnicity:
Democratic theory and ideology has shifted to include both individual and group
rights. In this sense, ethnicity has been legitimized in political theory, making it a
means not only of anti-alienative, diffuse identity but also a means of asserting ones
rights in a political community in which ethnicity is a recognized element. This being
so, ethnicity is not just a conceptual tool. It also reects an ideological position claim-
ing recognition for ethnicity as a major sector of complex societies and points the
way to a more just and equitable society. (1978: 402)
6. Caicaren os are equally divided over the origin of the name Caicara. Some
claim that it derives from an Indian chief named Caicuara, while others say it
comes from an indigenous, yuca-like plant called caracara. The Britishbotanist
Robert Schomburgk wrote that Kaikara was a native term for the three stars
in Orions belt (cited in Ram rez 1972: 11). The most thorough study of the term
was conducted by Juan Jose Ram rez, who concluded that, although it is impos-
sible to ever be certain, Caicara is probably a Carib-derived word meaning
Ceiba creek, from cai, or ceiba (Bombax sp.), and cuara, creek or brook
(1972: 911).
7. Most Caicaren os seem capable of recounting at least some version of this
story. For the most fanciful written account, see Ram rez (1972: 7173), in which
he not only identies the Indians as Pariagotos but names various chiefs. The
following version was told to me by Mar a Maita de Guevara in 1990:
That was when Caicara was founded, after all of that. There was a church put up by
the Spaniards and the bells were in front in a huge tree. One day they said the Indi-
ans were about to attack the village. And then the people were frightened and went
into the church. And the people all gathered together praying to God and in the
night on the 3rd of August when Santo Domingo appeared, there in the gully they
call Santo Domingo. And when the warriors came in the night they saw a man
mounted on a horse and a dog at the feet of the horse and a huge army and they saw
186 n o t e s t o p a g e 6 5
how the gold and silver from his buckles and buttons glowed. And when the Indians
saw that they became frightened and ran away. And they told the other chiefs:
There was an enormous army there at the edge of the village guarding it and we
couldnt get by. Then the other Indians crept up very slowly. But they didnt nd
anything. They were frightened by what the others had told them. They didnt go
any further but stayed where they were till dawn. And you know the Indians are
very brave so a group of the brave Indians dared to enter the village to see what
exactly had happened. They came in little by little, and among them were some of
the ones who had seen Santo Domingo when he was riding his horse. They saw the
people who were in the plaza and the bells were ringing and so they went into the
church and what was their surprise, their terror when they went in and saw the man
who had danced upon his horse on a pedestal in the center of the altar. And they all
ran out terried. And it was from that moment on, from the apparition of Santo Do-
mingo, that the Indians became more religious. Ever since then, every August 4th,
the Indians come with their parrandas and things, dancing, to make offerings and
pay homage to the church.
It should be noted that while Caicaren os claim that August 4 was the date of
Santo Domingos miracle and thus the reason for their holiday, it is also the
Catholic Churchs ofcial day for this saint. Known in English as Saint Dominic,
Santo Domingo de Guzman was a twelfth-century monk who founded the Do-
minicans, or Order of Friars Preachers. Born in Calaruega, Spain, he rose to
prominence for his success in combating the Albergensians in southern France.
The events described in Caicara resemble not so much Santo Domingo, however,
as Santiago. Patron saint of both the Reconquest of the Moors and the Conquest
of the Indians, Santiago frequently appeared in battle to rally Spanish troops
from imminent defeat. The description by Garcilaso de la Vega of Santiagos
appearance in Peruseated on top of a white horse grasping his leather shield
in one hand and his sword in the other and many Indians, wounded and dead,
thrown down head long at his feetis remarkably similar to the accounts of
Santo Domingo in Caicara (Silverblatt 1988: 176).
8. The shift in crops can be attributed to a number of causes, including access
to markets and changing settlement patterns. Nevertheless, one important factor
has been the agrarian reform movement begun in 1959, which sought the redis-
tribution of arable land into smaller holdings. The most detailed analysis of this
areas economic and agricultural history is in Arzolay and others (1984).
9. Caicara and the surrounding communities form an administrative entity
called the Municipio of Caicara, which joins two other municipios to create the
Distrito Ceden o. Although the population for the Municipio of Caicara did not
increase substantially between 1961 and 1971 (from 9,384 to 10,804), the propor-
tion living within the village of Caicara itself nearly doubled, to between 7,000
and 8,000. Unfortunately, it becomes more difcult after this date to obtain spe-
cic data for the village of Caicara, as subsequent censuses report only the pop-
ulations for the municipio and the distrito. This may be an indication of how
n o t e s t o p a g e s 6 6 7 0 187
much the municipio is now identied as the town. In any case, the 1981 popu-
lation for the Municipio of Caicara was 13,638 and for the Distrito Ceden o, 21,909
(Arzolay and others 1984: 313; Ram rez 1972: 7). A reasonable estimate is that
the present population of Caicara is between 9,000 and 10,000. No statistics exist
for the indigenous population of either Caicara or the municipio. However, in
1981 the indigenous population in the state of Monagas was 2,142, up from 515
in 1950 but less than half that rst reported in 1783, when it was 5,451. The 1981
population for all of Monagas was 390,071 (Arzolay and others 1984: 104, 313).
10. The liquiliqui is a white linen or cotton suit with a high, upturned collar.
Although various theories exist as to its origins, it is generally assumed to have
come from the southern llanos, or plains, and is considered by many to be the
traje t pico, or typical dress, of Venezuela. Another important aspect of the
Mayordomas costume is a large straw hat decorated with owers and fruit.
11. Although improvisation is most often based on both the people and the
locale immediately surrounding the singer, some popular verses are commonly
repeated each year. The one presented here is among the most famous.
12. Gavilan is the area in Caicara fromwhich the Rojas group comes. However,
they are also known as the Negros de Chilo Rojas because the group marches
with their entire bodies and faces blackened. It is Rojass contention that the use
of blue indigo is a recent innovation and that formerly all celebrants were cov-
ered in black.
13. For the last several years, festival organizers have held a large dance on
the evening of December 28th in order to raise funds for the celebration. These
dances, with salsa or merengue bands brought in from either the capital or
Puerto Ordaz, are held in a large hall where an admission fee is charged. Because
of this event, the Monkey Dance usually winds to a close between six and seven
oclock.
14. For more on this slow, liturgical music sung in quatrains and most com-
monly identied with the Karin a or Carib Indians of Venezuelas eastern plains,
see Acosta Saignes (1952), Carren o and Vallmitjana (1967), Corradini (1976), and
Dom nguez and Salazar Quijada (1969).
15. The narrator is speaking metaphorically, or at least referring to ctive his-
torical texts, either indigenous or colonial, when she claims that this is what we
know from what weve been able to read. Nevertheless, since the publication
of Ram rezs Remembranzas caicaren as in 1972, many authors (including Abreu
1984; Guevara Febres 1974; Mendez 1978; Perez and Bermu dez 1978; Salazar
n.d.; and Zuloaga 1990) have subscribed to the view that the Day of the Monkey
has to do with ancient rites staged to increase the growth of corn, cotton, and
other garden harvests. For this reason we can detect a magical base, which is
even more undeniable when we remember that these dances were also charac-
teristic of the Cumanagoto who lived from gathering fruit and shing (Ram rez
188 n o t e s t o p a g e s 7 2 7 4
1972: 59). At the same time, it should be noted that Hernandez and Fuentes
(1992), Ontiveros (1960), and Pollak-Eltz and Fitl (1985), all of whom are from
Caracas, have written that the festival is not of indigenous but European origin.
16. A simple chordophone played with sticks and an inated pig bladder lled
with seeds, the ciriaco is found in various parts of Venezuela and is also known
as a marimba, tarimba, guarumba, guasdua, and carangano. While Ram rez
claims that carangano is a Mandingo word (1986: 60), Aretz cautions against rul-
ing out an indigenous origin for this instrument as well (1967: 117).
17. As described by Bakhtin:
Such were the feasts of fools (festa stultorum, fatuorum, follorum) which were cele-
brated by schoolmen and lower clerics on the feast of St. Stephen, on New Years
Day, on the feast of the Holy Innocents, of the Epiphany, and of St. John. These cele-
brations were originally held in the churches and bore a fully legitimate character.
Later they became only semilegal, and at the end of the Middle Ages were com-
pletely banned from the churches but continued to exist in the streets and taverns,
where they were absorbed into carnival merriment and amusements. The feast of
fools showed a particular obstinacy and force of survival in France. This feast was
actually a parody and travesty of the ofcial cult, with masquerades and improper
dances. (1984: 74)
18. For more on the Day of the Holy Innocents tradition in Venezuela, often
referred to by its Andean variation of Locos or Locainas, see the sources from
which the examples included here are derived: Gonzalez (1991), Hernandez
and Fuentes (1992), Pollak-Eltz and Fitl (1985), Salas de Lecuna (1985), and
Salazar (n.d.).
19. Rojas was born in 1920 and so must have been a good deal younger if this
was the late 1920s.
20. In another statement concerning the recent invention of the Monkey Dance,
Rojas was even more candid in his disdain. This statement also explains Rojass
belief that formerly all participants painted themselves black, hence the alter-
native name for both his group (the Negros de Chilo Rojas) and the festival (D a
de los Negros, or Day of the Blacks):
The 28th of December? The Day of the Holy Innocents, and thats that! Day of the
Blacks. It was later that . . . my thing is black. Simple. That, thats not indigo. They
never used that here. Here they used kettles from the store or grills. . . . Here it is [re-
ferring to the soot].
D a de los Negros, D a de los Santos Inocentes. They didnt talk about monkeys.
That stuff about monkeys they invented. Like now, if I grab that drum and we say,
Shit, lets invent the dance of the rooster, the dance of such and such. And we go
out dancing some thing, hopping around.
Because of Rojass belief that the current Day of the Monkey celebration is a
corruption of the earlier holiday, he has refused to take his turn performing
onstage, as all other groups do when they enter the plaza.
n o t e s t o p a g e s 7 7 8 0 189
21. In 1981 Monagas was responsible for 7.8 percent of the total oil produced
in Venezuela, a tremendous amount for a nation in which 80 percent of foreign
exports are oil dependent. Almost all of the remaining oil comes from the Lake
Maracaibo area of Zulia (Arzolay and others 1984: 249277).
22. The main part of this irresistibility was the fact that in the 1920s, when
Standard Oil rst arrived, farmworkers could increase their salaries from30 cents
a day to $2.50 or more (Guevara Febres 1974: 5). See Arzolay and others for a
well-documented analysis of the shift in Monagass population from rural to
urban. In 1950, the population was 42.5 percent urban and 57.5 rural. By 1981
this ratio had shifted to 66.4 percent urban and 33.6 rural. Their estimate is that
by 2001 the ratio will be 85.1 to 14.9 (1984: 73).
23. A more probable explanation for why Caicara is referred to as Caicara de
Matur n is to distinguish it from Venezuelas other Caicara, located in the state
of Bol var and known as Caicara del Orinoco. Matur n is currently the site of
almost all manufacturing in Monagas and, in 1981, was the home of 58 percent
of the states 390,000 inhabitants (Arzolay and others 1984: 313).
24. It is worth noting Bentleys (1987) discussion on the difculties of catego-
rizing ethnicity as either instrumental or primordial, and particularly his warn-
ing against interpreting the motives of individuals actions based on their results:
In ethnicity studies this meant that if ethnic groups act in ways that appear
strategically advantageous, then strategic advantage must be the raison detre of
those groups; if ethnicity increases in visibility during times of disorienting
change, then it must be because people seek in ethnicity an emotional refuge
from change. The theory of practice avoids this fallacious reasoning because it
does not identify the systemic consequences of collective action withindividuals
intentions (1987: 48). In a similar fashion, it should be noted that there are other
interests, political and economic, which are also achieving strategic advantage
through the promotion of the purportedly unique indigenous status of the Day
of the Monkey. As the event gains more national attention, tourism increases, as
do government grants and stipends for those promoting the festival. Along with
such nancial support can come an important power base. And indeed, both
major political parties, COPEI and Accio n Democratica, have their own culture
centers with their own parrandas.
25. In this sense ethnicity may be seen as a modern response to the loss of
distinction formerly provided by regional identities as dened by local or ver-
nacular economies. With the absorption of these communities into national and
even transnational realities, a host of creative cultural responses have arisen, of
which ethnicity is one of the primary examples. Sollors articulates this idea well
when he writes: Ethnicity is not so much an ancient and deep-seated force
surviving from the historical past, but rather the modern and modernizing fea-
ture of a contrasting strategy that may be shared far beyond the boundaries
within which it is claimed (1989: xiv).
190 n o t e s t o p a g e s 8 0 8 1
26. The representation of Indians by non-Indians is to be found in numerous
other celebrations, not only in Venezuela but throughout the Americas. Innearby
Ipure, for example, mestizos regularly perform a dance known as the Culebra
(Serpent), which is said to derive directly from Chaima mythology. And in Tos-
tos, in the Andean state of Trujillo, the appearance of the Virgin of Coromoto is
celebrated by a pageant in which local residents dress up as natives and parade
through the streets playing utes and other indigenous instruments. Mestizos
are not the only people to take on this Indian identity, however. In the D a de
los Inocentes celebrations of Barlovento, an Indian gure known as the mes-
senger or runner acts as the mediator between opposing groups of black
women and men. Blacks also take on the identity of Indians during the Corpus
Christi celebrations in Barbacoas, Colombia, where, as Friedmann explains:
Since the group has been pushed back to the headwaters of the rivers, the Indians no
longer come to Barbacoas. However, in recent years the blacks in the river port have
been symbolically representing the Indians who formerly participated in this celebra-
tion. (1976: 293)
An even more elaborate example of blacks assuming Indian identities is in New
Orleans, where, during Mardi Gras and Saint Josephs Day, tribes of local
African-Americans parade through the streets in sequined and feathered cos-
tumes that have taken all year to prepare (Lipsitz 1990).
Such ethnic cross-dressing may also go the other way, as Bricker demon-
strated among various Mayan groups in Chiapas, Mexico. Here, during carnival
and Holy Week, dancers regularly impersonate blacks, Jews, whites, and even
monkeys (1981). Indians also dress as whites in various Ecuadorian San Juan
celebrations; and in Peru, during Qoyllur Riti, highland groups take on the
identity of Amazonian tribes who are called chunchos, or savages (Sallnow
1987). What is clear from this small sampling of examples is that in the festive
language of inversion and conict, ethnicity is as important an expression as any
other.
27. See Abreu (1984) for a discussion of what he claims divides the parrandas
into two types, the country and the town parrandas. While stating that each
has its own sense of the monkey (sentimiento monero), he still insists that the
purest expression of this ritual dance is to be found in the country parrandas
(1984: 132133).
28. The earliest written record I discovered of the celebration of the Day of the
Monkey in Caicara was the 1960 article by Benigno Ontiveros. In Ontiveross
description of the event, which he witnessed in 1953, he makes no mention what-
soever of any indigenous connection, stating simply that it is of genuine Spanish
origin (1960: 302). Only with the publication of Ram rezs Remembranzas caica-
ren as in 1972 did a written tradition linking the Day of the Monkey to an indig-
enous past begin. However, Ontiveros, like Zuloaga (1990), does mention an
n o t e s t o p a g e s 8 3 9 3 191
undated colonial document in which Bishop D az Madron ero condemns such
dances. It is not clear, though, whether the monkey dances to which the bishop
refers are those associated with Caicara, for he simply denounces Diabolical
dances commonly referred to as fandangos, sarambeques, monkey dances and
other such things in whose execution groups or teams of men and women con-
tinually offend most gravely Our Lord God (Ontiveros 1960: 301).
29. Certain slogans often contain more explicit political messages referring to
current issues of national concern. In the late 1980s, for example, when messages
like The hour has come to end the centralization of power began to appear,
the Monkey Dance was being used to comment on the national debate over
whether to popularly elect governors and municipal ofcials.
30. Hobsbawm claims that, in addition to monuments, public education and
public ceremonies are also critical to the invented traditions of the new nation
state (1983: 271). It should also be noted that Caicaras Monument to the Dance
of the Monkey is not the only one dedicated to a folkloric celebration in Vene-
zuela. In 1993 the town of San Francisco de Yare erected a statue to the Diablos
of Yare, famous for the special Devil Dance performed during Corpus Christi.
And in 1997 Curiepe constructed its own Monument to the Drum on a small hill
overlooking the entrance to the town. Designed by the Cubansculptor Dagoberto
Ramos, it consists of enormous concrete reproductions of the mina and curbata
drums, with the three culo e puya in the background. The plaque announces
that the monument is In homage to Curiepe, founded in June, 1721 by Captain
Juan del Rosario Blanco and the Company of Free Blacks of Caracas.
31. For a discussion of the role of the monkey as a Carib symbol of anticulture
par excellence, see Guss (1989), and for an interesting comparative view of the
monkeys symbolism in another cultural context, see Ohnuki-Tierney (1987).
Consult Abreu (1984: 124) and Guevara Febres (1974: 10) for further evidence of
the strong anticlerical sentiments to be found in the Day of the Monkey celebra-
tion. Finally, an interesting study of the manner in which inversions are deter-
mined by social structure is to be found in DaMattas comparison of Carnival in
Rio de Janeiro and Mardi Gras in New Orleans (1991).
c h a p t e r 4
1. The Buy American campaign conceals the fact that so many of the goods
meant to benet from it are actually the products of multinational interests from
many nations. An example of this is the current resurgence in American-made
automobiles, in which imported parts and joint ventures with European and
Japanese automakers can often be found. (Note, for instance, the interchangea-
bility of Geo Prisms and Toyota Corollas, both manufactured in the same
192 n o t e s t o p a g e s 9 5 9 7
factory.) On the other hand, foreign automakers are also attempting to assure
American consumers that their products are American made. Hence Toyotas
advertising campaign featuring wooden cutouts of various states surrounding
the statement: Once we started building the Camry in the U.S., all the pieces
fell into place (New York Times Magazine, July 31, 1994: 48). And in an analysis
of Hondas efforts to associate its cars with such popular American symbols as
hamburgers, cowboy boots, jazz, and baseball, Levin writes:
For years, the Big Three auto companies and the United Automobile Workers have
tried to make patriotism part of the car-buying mentality of Americans. As a market-
ing pitch, the effect of showroom jingoism has always been debatableso has its eco-
nomic logic.
Still, the idea that driving a Chevy or a Chrysler is a patriotic act, while owning a
Honda or a Toyota is not, clearly appealed to some. And in their lobbying efforts and
their advertising, Detroit has long argued that buying American-made cars is good
for the American economy and that buying imported cars is bad. (1994: 7)
Another common example of production fetishism is the manner in which
designers appropriate regional or traditional costumes and then attempt to au-
thenticate them by photographing the creations interspersed with the peoples
who inspired them. One of the most dramatic uses of this technique was Peter
Beards article, Way Out of Africa (1993), in which models and natives (in this
case Turkana from Kenya) interchanged clothing and body paint with the work
of such designers as Armani, Joseph Abboud, and Norma Kamali. The effect was
to so confound the viewer that it was impossible to distinguish between what
was and was not Turkana. For an interesting comparative analysis of how some
of these issues relate to fashion, see Fox-Genovese (1978).
2. Until 1949 when the revolution forced it to leave, British AmericanTobacco
controlled more than 50 percent of the Chinese marketa full quarter of the
companys sales. Today the company is reentering China, which, because of its
state monopoly, was in 1993 the only producer of cigarettes greater than BAT.
At that time BAT was the worlds largest private sector manufacturer of ciga-
rettes. Although the company further increased its market share two years later
with the purchase of its old adversary, American Tobacco, in September 1998 it
demerged, making it difcult to identify its total assets. Not only did it spin off
its nancial services from its tobacco interests, but it also changed its name to
British American Tobacco P.L.C.
3. The United States Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969 banning
all advertising of cigarettes in any broadcast media went into effect on January
1, 1971. Pressure to pass such legislation had been building in the United States
since 1953, when the Sloan-Kettering Institute released the rst study linking
smoking to cancer.
4. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the relationship between
advertising and tobacco and hence the threat that the advertising industry also
n o t e s t o p a g e s 9 7 1 0 1 193
feels when smoking issues are debated. Prior to the 1971 ban on broadcast ad-
vertising in the United States, tobacco companies were the largest advertisers on
both television and radio. In 1969 a full 80 percent of the advertising budgets of
the six major tobacco corporations was spent on television promotion (Miles
1982: 81). In the rst three years following the ban the amount spent in adver-
tising declined, but by 1975 these companies had once again reached an all-time
high of $350 million, mainly for printed, outdoor, and point-of-purchase
advertising (Miles 1982: 83). By 1992, Philip Morriss advertising budget alone
was $2 billion, the largest of any corporation in the world with the possible
exception of Proctor and Gamble (Rosenblatt 1994: 36). Such statistics reveal not
only the symbiotic relation of advertising and tobacco but also the undeniable
roles of these corporations in cultural apparatuses worldwide.
5. In Venezuela, the proportion of the population living in cities is much
higher than the gure of 6070 percent reported by Garc a Canclini for all of
Latin America. Izcaray and McNelly placed it at 83.3 percent in 1980, predicting
that it would rise to 90 percent by the year 2000 (1987: 3536). In 1950, when
these massive demographic shifts began throughout Latin America, the rural
population in Venezuela was still over 52 percent (Vilda 1984: 7). For more on
the important impact of urbanization on traditional forms of expression in Latin
America, see Franco (1982: 89), Rowe and Schelling (1991: 97106), and Yu dice
(1992).
6. Journalist, poet, playwright, and political activist, Aquiles Nazoa (1920
1976) personied for an entire generation the ideal of the working-class artist
and intellectual. It is little surprise, therefore, that a movement uniting popular
culture with social justice should bear his name. The prose poem from which
the line I believe in the creative powers of the people is taken is called The
Creed of Aquiles Nazoa (1979: 199).
7. For more elaborate discussions of this Nueva Cancion (New Song) move-
ment, see Carrasco Pirard (1982) and Reyes Matta (1988).
8. The most notable of these workshops were those of the Plan Sebucan and
the Instituto Nacional de Folklore (INAF). The rst, sponsored by the Ministry
of Culture, was designed to have actual practitioners teaching their art forms in
community centers throughout the country. Those organized by INAF were part
of a program called the Centro de Formacio n Tecnica (Center for Technical For-
mation). Dedicated mainly to dance, they took place in the INAF headquarters
in Caracas and served a much more restricted audience. A third center of work-
shop activity was the Centro Vargas organized by the Confederacio n de Traba-
jadores de Venezuela (Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, or CTV) for work-
ers and their families. These nal workshops are still in operation today.
In commenting on the critical importance of the 1975 Ley de Cultura and the
establishment of CONAC, Jesu s Garc a, a community activist from Barlovento,
stated: The institutionalization of popular culture really begins with this,
194 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 2 1 0 6
because for example before, the Instituto Nacional de Folklore and INCIBA [In-
stituto Nacional de Cultura y Bellas Artes] were extremely small organizations,
and very elitist. But with the passage of the law [Ley de Cultura], people begin
to become aware and for the rst time start to speak about projection groups.
For more on INCIBA and the history of state support for the arts prior to the
establishment of CONAC, see Murzi (1972).
9. The calendar series was inaugurated in 1983 with the bicentennial celebra-
tion of Simo n Bol vars birth. Subsequent editions have focused on such themes
as festivals, masks, instruments, textiles, folk artists, and traditional games. The
annual books, which began appearing in 1987, covered similar subjects, yet in
much greater depth. Agust n Coll described how he initiated the series, along
with his motivations for doing so:
Well, the annual books were an idea which I introduced. I worked for a long time at
the Mendoza Foundation, where for many years the company had published a book
at the end of the year to be used as a gift for clients and associates, etc. Then when I
arrived at Bigott I found that they gave out things youd buy in the store, so I pro-
posed that in place of them . . . we would give a book, that that would give the com-
pany more prestige. So the idea was accepted and the rst book was made, which
was Los fabricantes del sonido (The Makers of Sound).
10. By comparison, during the same period the John Simon Guggenheim
Foundation, one of the United States most competitive and prestigious, received
3,162 applications, of which 248, or 4.6 percent, were funded.
11. Bigotts total budget in 1992 was 103,823,305 bolivares, or just over $2
million. Of this, 50 percent was for television and radio, 20 percent for
publications, 16 percent for workshops, 6 percent for grants, 4 percent for agri-
cultural assistance, and 4 percent for foundation administration. A major deter-
mination of the budget is Venezuelas tax law, which permits corporations to
reduce their total tax base by up to 3 percent, depending on the amount of money
used for cultural and social projects.
12. The cuatro is a small, four-stringed instrument sometimes referred to as
the little guitar (Aretz 1967: 122). Though common to a number of Latin Amer-
ican and Caribbean countries, it is perhaps the most widely diffused instrument
in Venezuela.
13. The three founding members of the Clavija, which was ofcially incorpo-
rated as the Instituto Musical La Clavija, were Enio Escauriza, Cristo bal Soto,
and Roberto Antivero. While at the workshops they were fondly known as the
troika.
14. Personal communication, Enio Escauriza, June 28, 1990.
15. Soto is also related to an important artist, his father being the internation-
ally acclaimed sculptor Jesu s Soto. Raised almost entirely in Paris, Cristo bal re-
turned to Venezuela for only the second time in the mid-1970s. Even in Europe,
n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 8 1 1 5 195
however, he was surrounded by Venezuelan music. Although Cristo bal claims
that it was the sculptor Cruz Diez who taught him how to play cuatro, his father,
in addition to being a renowned artist, is a concert musician. Teresa Zapata also
spent a number of years in Paris, where she was an executive secretary for Viasa,
the Venezuelan national airline.
16. At a 1989 conference in Cumana, Escauriza summarized the teaching phi-
losophy of the Clavija as the following: The greatest emphasis should be on
informal education supporting whats learned through everyday life and then
in the process developing from it. . . . Its a methodology in which the work con-
tinually goes from individual to collective to individual (1989: 8).
17. The idea of a new synthesis, combining traditional Venezuelan styles
with urban and imported forms as well as different types of instrumentation, is
not the Clavijas alone but is shared by a number of musicians and groups. In
many ways it reects the maturation of the projection movement of the 1970s
and the realization that to continue to grow and compete with other forms, tra-
ditional music must be allowed the same level of dynamism.
18. For more on the interesting similarities between these two communities
of the arts, see Judith Adlers excellent study of Cal Arts, tracing it from its
earliest days as an institute consisting solely of colleagues to one of unam-
biguously stated professional goals (1979: 103, 145). Like the Bigott Talleres de
Cultura Popular, Cal Arts survived its period of turmoil and, after moving to
Valencia, California, became one of the nations most prestigious art schools.
19. Hernandez addresses this difculty in his second report, recommending
the establishment of a Temporary Academic Assistance Service, which would
aid any teachers who are not academically trainedin preparing writtenprograms
(1989: 12).
20. The de-folklorization called for by Bigott is the opposite of that referred
to by Jesu s Garc a and other Venezuelan activists. In fact, it is this same decon-
textualized standardization of festive forms that various scholars have identied
as folklorization. As Israel and Guerre commented:
When items produced for personal use become art, a process which might be con-
sidered the folklorization of culture has begun. Folklorization of culture refers to a
two-sided phenomenon. First, aspects of traditional culture are stereotyped for ex-
port. Second, these stereotyped features are internalized by members of the culture in
question as markers of their own identity. When indigenous peoples depend entirely
upon the commodication of their own culture for export, the process is intensied.
(1982: 17)
It is important to note that the new director of the workshops, Mar a Teresa
Lo pez Arocha, was not a practicing musician like the members of the Clavija
but a former museum curator and folk art dealer. While her ideas certainly reect
the viewpoint of someone who has devoted her life to the study, sale, anddisplay
196 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 1 5 1 1 9
of art objects, they also reveal a long and committed struggle for the recognition
of folk art as a legitimate aesthetic form, equal in sophistication and beauty to
any other. Much of her work was accomplished as the owner of the Callapa
Gallery and the founding director of the Petare Museum of Popular Art.
21. There is an interesting parallel between Ramoss views and the ideas of
Adorno and Horkheimer (1977), who also believed that the commodication of
a technological culture industry would lead to an apathetic public incapable
of either authentic experience or critical thought. Yet Ramoss vision is ultimately
optimistic, for she believes that popular culture can both liberate and energize
the masses once again.
22. Antonio Lo pez Ortega, the present director of the Bigott Foundation,
claimed in 1993 that more than 10,000 students had already studied at the work-
shops. It was also estimated that between 30 and 40 percent of all musicians
performing in groups throughout Caracas were trained at Bigott (personal com-
munication). And indeed, while at a San Juan celebration in June 1994 in Cara-
cass Parroquia San Juan (Plaza Capuchinos), I was surprised to see many of the
culo e puya drummers dressed in Fundacio n Bigott T-shirts. While I wondered
if this attire had become associated with authentic folkloric expression, the mu-
sicians conrmed that they had all been trained at the Bigott workshops. None
was from an Afro-Venezuelan background, and none had learned how to drum
outside a classroom situation.
23. Bigott had begun broadcasting over radio the previous year. The program,
called Encuentro con . . . Las Expresiones Musicales de Venezuela (An Encounter with
Venezuelas Musical Expressions), is still played once a week on Caracass cul-
tural station, though to a somewhat limited audience.
24. The 1987 programs were dedicated primarily to musical groups such as
Madera, Malembe, Vera, Gente Nueva, Playa Grande, Odilia, Cabure, the Gol-
peros del Tocuyo, and the Tambores de San Milan. In 1988 the emphasis was on
specic genres of both dance and music and included specials on Tamunangue,
San Juan, joropo, gaitas, decimas, velorios, and work songs. In addition to these
half-hour programs, Bigott also produced several longer specials, entitled Lo
Mejor de Encuentro con . . . Nuestras Expresiones Musicales (The Best of Encounters
with . . . Our Musical Expressions).
25. For many of course, the pairing of Bigott with popular culture remained
both strange and contradictory. Yet even Enio Escauriza, echoing Garc a Can-
clinis notion of double enrollment (1993: 45), conceded that there might also
be some benet:
The fact that popular culture, which is a somewhat irreverent term for a private cor-
poration, and here were speaking of an economically important corporation like Bi-
gott, the fact that popular culture is being associated with Bigott just sounds a little
odd. But we cant tell how much Bigott in adding to its own image through this
n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 2 0 1 2 3 197
work has also contributed to the image of popular culture. In the sense that other
private corporations might say, Hey, look, Bigott did something with popular cul-
ture and it worked. Maybe its not as subversive as we thought. And if the States
not going to take on this work and private industry is, then well work with private
industry. And maybe if this keeps on growing, the State will nally do something
too.
26. Tulio Hernandez described the rationale behind this decision to change
formats as the following:
They decided not to make any more half-hour videos because no one was watching
them and instead make two-minute micros and put them on Sunday nights. It was
Corpa who recommended it. They told them, If you want to be heard in this coun-
try and get your stuff out, its better to put the popular music into micros and put
them on Sunday evenings at eight. Spend 2 million bolivares on that one night, be-
cause 16 million Venezuelans are going to see them and not a half-hour on Saturday
morning on Channel 8 or Channel 5.
27. The Popular Culture Workshops have always had their own site, while the
rest of the foundation was located in the same Caracas building in which Bigott
manufactures its cigarettes. In 1994 these ofces were moved to separate head-
quarters. As already noted, the relatively small agricultural program has its of-
ces in Valencia.
28. The Colombian scholar Jesu s Mart n-Barbero wrote at length about the
way in which new forms of mass communication serve as mediations. In place
of characterizing them as the expression of a single hegemonic view, he prefers
to see them as conuences of competing forces, both dominant and subaltern:
Because communication is the meeting point of so many new conicting and
integrating forces, the centre of the debate has shifted from media to mediations.
Here, mediations refer especially to the articulations between communication
practices and social movements and the articulation of different tempos of de-
velopment with the plurality of cultural matrices (1993a: 187).
29. The earlier half-hour series was never taken off the air entirely but went
into permanent reruns, showing as early as 7:00 every morning in various parts
of the country. The subjects of the ten micros, all of whom obviously participated
in the workshops as well, were Mar a Rodr guez and the Joropo Estribillao, Juan
Esteban Garc a and the Bandola Guariquen a, Anselmo Lo pez and the Bandola
Llanera, Epifanio Rodr guez and the Bandola Oriental, Asuncio n Figueroa and
the Cuatro, Pedro Castro and the Arpa Llanera, Cleotilde Billings and the Ca-
lypso of El Callao, Juan Gregorio Malave and the Panutes of Guaribe, Maximo
Teppa and the Venezuelan Maracas, and Fulgencio Aquino and the Arpa Tuyera.
30. When asked about Bigotts original decision to work in the area of popular
culture, Lo pez Ortega responded in a manner nearly identical to that of Agust n
Coll, with one important addition. He claimed that a new constituency was now
the government and that the foundations work would also have to become a
198 n o t e s t o p a g e 1 2 6
strategic weapon in discouraging legislation harmful to the tobacco industry.
In interviews with the corporate heads of Philip Morris, Roger Rosenblatt elicited
very similar responses. As an executive vice president of its international divi-
sion stated:
We have the best partners in the world: the governments. In a lot of countries, its
incredibly important to the whole welfare state that we sell our products to collect
taxes. When you sit with a nance minister or deputy of any government to discuss
taxation, hes much cruder about the nancial analysis of that taxing than we are. He
asks, How much can I put up the tax, to make sure that the demand is not going to
go down so much that my net intake goes down? Amazing. So no matter how you
look at the cigarette business, its incredibly predictable, its extremely secure as an
investment vehicle and, therefore, its a great business to be inif you can deal with
the fact that some people are not going to like you. (1994: 41)
Bigotts current position with the government is stronger than ever, and Presi-
dent Chavez has increased Bigotts role in ofcial cultural policies. However, the
recent appointment of foundation head Lo pez Ortega to a position in the Min-
istry of Culture has aroused complaints of conict of interest, hence the title of
a recent newspaper article, I Want an Identity Without Tobacco and Without
Cigarettes (Yolanda Salas, pers. com., 5/15/00).
31. Although Bigott uses the land as a key symbol to unite a range of different
signicata (for example, nation and property, agricultural product and tobacco,
countryside and folkloric production, nature and the cyclical passage of time),
advertisements for Belmont, its principal brand, use water. Unlike the folkloric-
related themes of the foundation, these advertisements are both Eurocentric and
upper middle class. They focus on three well-bronzed, scantily clad couples ca-
vorting in the Caribbean surf. The fact that these carefree, sexy, and very Cau-
casian youths are also smoking cigarettes is meant to encourage the consumer
to associate tobacco with the same qualities of health, attractiveness, andpleasure
(all condensed in the symbol of the ocean). These nearly ubiquitous adver-
tisements, which have been in existence for years, appear on such things as
billboards, bus stops, menus, movie houses, kiosks, napkin dispensers, and
clocks. The strategy of using nature, particularly water, to promote a healthy
and vibrant image for an otherwise toxic and addictive product is not uncom-
mon. In the United States such displacement has been particularly common with
mentholated brands like Newport and Salem, which wish to promote their
freshness.
In order to test the effectiveness of its campaign, the Bigott Foundation con-
ducts public opinion polls every several months. Of primary importance is the
foundations level of recognition, along with perceptions of what it does. In
the March 1993 poll, the level of recognition was 69.4 percent, second only to
the Polar Foundation of the countrys largest brewery (73.4 percent). Just as
n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 3 0 1 3 3 199
signicant was the response to the question of what the foundation produces:
38.5 percent claimed that the Bigott Foundation promotes culture; 31.5 percent
claimed that it produces cigarettes (Servicio Omnibus 1993). This nearly even
breakdown is the type of confusion Bigott wishes to cultivate, ensuring that the
social responsibility it produces in its cultural product will be consumed in its
commercial one. Or, as Lopez Ortega stated, People are associating the Bigott
Corporation with the Bigott Foundation, which is exactly what we want, because
we dont want the foundations work to be seen as something isolated.
c h a p t e r 5
1. For a discussion of this view, wherein any media use of popular culture is
seen as a homogenizing and exploitative commodication of subaltern values,
see Mattelart (1979), who argues that The media attempts to deprive the people
of its memory. While giving the illusion of relying upon and assuming a patri-
mony of myths, this culture actually standardizes, serializes and appropriates
history, which it mutilates and reduces to a series of miscellaneous news items.
. . . [It is] the bourgeoisies daily appropriation of the life experiences of other
classes in information-merchandise, out of context and out of history (1979: 45).
Also, see Tatum (1994) for a survey of the development of popular culture theory
in relation to Latin America. Tatum refers to Mattelarts position, in particular,
as the thesis of cultural imperialism, a corollary of the dependency theory of
economic development in vogue among social scientists and economists fteen
to twenty years ago (1994: 200). Hannerz refers to this model elsewhere as
radical diffusionism, a process in which all cultural difference is subsumed by
a technologically dominant center (1989a: 206).
2. Handler makes clear that one of the three principal elements in what he
refers to as cultural objectication is the selection process, the decision about
what is to be consecrated as part of an ofcial body of national tradition (1984:
62). The other two elements in this objectifying process are the formation of new
contexts and the new signications or meanings through which audiences will
appreciate these recongured forms.
3. For a good discussion of the implications of the move toward a multilo-
cale ethnography and its relation to issues of political economy, see Marcus
and Fischer (1986: 9395). One should also consider the implications of deter-
ritorialization, as discussed by such authors as Appadurai (1990, 1996), Gupta
and Ferguson (1997), and MacCannell (1989), as well as Hannerzs argument
concerning the relation between center and periphery (1989a, 1989b, 1991).
4. Cohen refers to this same process as the ideology of the aesthetic (1993:
133), and Bauman and Sawin call it the politics of representation (1991: 312).
200 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 3 3 1 4 4
5. The English name for this saint, who was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and
lived from 1195 to 1231, is Saint Anthony of Padua.
6. A promesa may be inherited, as when a father promises that his children
and grandchildren will continue to honor it. Promises may also vary, including
anything from a single son or dance to multiple Tamunangues and all-night
velorios. What all Tamunangueros agree on is that San Antonio is a real col-
lector. He charges a lot. It is believed that a person who fails to pay a promesa
will start to hear drums, causing such headaches that the debtor is eventually
forced to relent. A promesa may be deemed too great, however, and the terms
of the annual commitment renegotiated.
7. As already noted, the way in which Tamunangues are performed varies
somewhat from one community to the next. An important part of this variation
is the order of the sections, particularly that of the Salve andthe rst three dances.
For example, in Curarigua the Salve is performed at the beginning, in El Tocuyo,
at the end, and in Sanare, at both start and nish. The order and terms used in
this chapter follow those of the community of Sanare. For a comparison of the
dance orders found in other communities, see Aretz (1970 [1956]: 52). A number
of sources also note the many variations in the denomination of each of the
dances parts.
8. For the most complete transcriptions of versions of the Batalla and other
Tamunangue songs, see Aretz (1970 [1956]) and Gonzalez Viloria (1991).
9. The Ayiyivamos has been recorded in a variety of ways, including Chi-
chivamos, Yeyevamos, Yiyevamos, and Ayiyevamos.
10. For more on the various forms of the Galero n and their relation to the
joropo, which is often referred to as Venezuelas national dance, see Aretz (1970
[1956]: 140) and Ramo n y Rivera (1953: 24).
11. This son is known by a variety of names, including Seis Corr o, Seis Figuriao,
Seis por Ocho, Seis Florido, and even just Figuriao. The six found in almost every
title no doubt refers to the number of dancers, while other aspects of the names
are probably related to the number of gures the performers execute. There
is little agreement as to how many gures actually exist, although Gonzalez
Viloria (1991: 122) claims to have seen thirty of the thirty-six that performers in
Sanare report knowing. In Bigotts Encuentro con . . . documentary on Tamu-
nangue, a dancer states that there were originally forty-eight gures but that
many have been forgotten, and today it is rare that more than thirty-two are
performed (Fundacio n Bigott 1988). The gure of thirty-two is also reported by
Soto (1987: 16).
12. The rst known recordings of Tamunangue were made in 1940 by Juan
Liscano on visits to Curarigua, El Tocuyo, and an agricultural fair in Barquisi-
meto. He returned soon afterward to make a lm in El Tocuyo. These Tamu-
nangue recordings are the rst archived materials at the Instituto Nacional de
Folklore.
n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 4 4 1 5 0 201
13. In a more recent collection of essays, Liscano referred to a choreographic
mestizoness (mestizajes coreogracos) (1990: 163), from which I also take the title
of this section.
14. Yaracuy, which borders Lara to the east, is one of Venezuelas smallest
states. It is also home to some of Venezuelas oldest black communities.
15. Kurath (1949: 95) and Poole (1990: 110) both note that the Seises performed
in Seville incorporated elements of stick ghting. The literature on sword or stick
dancing is quite extensive, especially in relation to its migration across the At-
lantic to the New World. For more on this subject, consult Caro Baroja (1984),
Champe (1983), Kurath (1949), Poole (1990), and Rodr guez (1996). Gonzalez
Viloria also suggests that the Batalla may derive from a similar form found
among the Guanches in the Canary Islands (1991: 38). The relation of this tra-
dition and Tamunangue to that of Moors and Christians dances is discussed at
length below.
16. In discussing Tamunangues mestizo character, Aretz downplays any in-
digenous contribution. In fact, she states rather pointedly that Today the dances
of blacks and whites are mixed in the Tamunangue just as the people are mixed,
acquiring the same hue and cast the performers have (Aretz 1970 [1956]: 156).
17. Although born and trained in Argentina, Aretz is one of the most impor-
tant gures in the history of Venezuelan folklore. She arrived in the country in
1947 at the invitation of Juan Liscano to direct the music section of his newly
created National Folklore Investigations Service. An ethnomusicologist andfolk-
lorist, as well as a composer trained in Brazil by Hector Villa-Lobos, Aretz went
on to found the Inter-American Institute of Ethnomusicology and Folklore (IN-
IDEF). This institute, which has trained numerous students from throughout
Latin America, was eventually merged with the National Folklore Institute
(INAF) and the National Folklore Museum to form the Ethnomusicology and
Folklore Foundation (FUNDEF). She directed FUNDEF from 1990 until her re-
tirement in 1995. Working in close collaboration with her husband, Luis Felipe
Ramo n y Rivera, Aretz published a monumental number of articles and books.
Ironically, El Tamunangue, her rst major Venezuelan study, was originally pub-
lished in Peru, due to what she claims was a lack of national interest in such
works at the time. A Venezuelan edition only appeared in 1970 as part of the
425-year celebration of the founding of Barquisimeto, Laras capital.
18. The original Spanish of this popularly quoted statement is Mezcla de
nuestra raza, hecha a grito y tambor. Linarez refers to its author, Jose Rafael
Colmenarez Peraza, as the rst impresario of Tamunangue (1987: 7). And
indeed, it was Colmenarez Peraza who was one of the leaders of the Tamu-
nangue group that performed at the 1948 Festival of Tradition (see Liscano 1950:
212). Such statements underline how quickly local performers adopted the of-
cial interpretation of Tamunangue as a dance celebrating Venezuelas racial
democracy.
202 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 5 1 1 5 6
19. Linarez also claims there are lyrics suggesting that the African participants
were aware of the dangers in performing such a thinly veiled pagan rite. As one
quatrain states:
Anyone who dances the Galero n
will never see the face of God.
An old lady danced it
and the devil took her away.
(Linarez 1990: 11)
20. Though mainly Berbers, the invaders were referred to as Moors, a var-
iation on Maurus, the Roman term for the inhabitants of the African outpost
of Mauritania. The Reconquest celebrated in this dance is also known as the War
of Granada. For more on the Moors and Christians tradition, which is still per-
formed throughout the Americas, the Philippines, Spain, and Portugal, see Car-
rasco (1976), Driessen (1985), Harris (1994), Kurath (1949), and Warman Gryj
(1972).
21. Rodr guez focuses primarily on the Matachines dance found in the Amer-
ican Southwest. However, numerous other variants of the Moors and Christians
dance exist, some of which are more easily related to their European ancestor
than others. Among them are Moriscas, Morismas, Seises, Santiaguitos, Tasto-
anes, Rayados, Concheros, Negritos, Paloteos, Sword Dances, Montezuma
Dances, Morris Dancing, and Dances of the Conquest.
22. Although Rodr guez refers to the Matachines as the beautiful dance of
subjugation, she, like Bricker, concludes that today the dance is not merely an
archaic survival but an ongoing way of coping with and commenting on the
historical structures of ethnic domination as they continue to unfold for Pueblo
and Mexicano communities in the upper R o Grande valley (1996: 157).
23. San Antonios ability to control the rain is clearly related to his association
with agriculture and harvests. In Venezuela he is called the patron saint of co-
nuqueros (small farmers). In other places he is the patron saint of miners and
masons, and he is commonly called on to nd lost objects and heal the sick. He
is also important to women, who often call upon him to nd husbands and
lovers. But it is for his oratorical skills that he remains best known, as the fol-
lowing story in The Catholic Encyclopedia attests:
The inhabitants of [Padua] erected to his memory a magnicent temple, whither his
precious relics were transferred in 1263, in the presence of St. Bonaventure, Minister
General at the time. When the vault in which for 30 years his sacred body had re-
posed was opened, the esh was found reduced to dust, but the tongue uninjured,
fresh, and of a lively red colour. St. Bonaventure, beholding this wonder, took the
tongue affectionately in his hands and kissed it, exclaiming: Oh Blessed Tongue that
always praised the Lord, and made others bless Him, now it is evident what great
merit thou hast before God. The fame of St. Anthonys miracles has never dimin-
ished, and even at the present day, he is acknowledged as the greatest thaumaturgist
of the times. (Herbermann and others, 1913: 558)
n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 5 9 1 6 0 203
24. The tale of how San Antonio brought Tamunangue into the world is also
frequently recounted as a decima, a fragment of which is reproduced at the be-
ginning of this chapter. A popular oral poetry formfoundthroughout Venezuela,
decimas are organized into units of ten octosyllabic lines with varying rhyme
schemes. The verses on page 129 were sung to Isabel Aretz by Fidel Flores in
1947 (1970 [1956]: 1819) and are almost identical to a version recordedby Norma
Gonzalez Viloria in Sanare thirty-ve years later (1983: 43). In the Sanaren o ver-
sion, however, the singer identies San Antonios reply to the question of what
he was singing as Pangu e, rather than Estangu e. It is possible that Es-
tangu e is a contraction of esta and Tamunangue, or its Tamunangue.
25. The Batalla also indicates a direct relation to the Moors and Christians
tradition and the sword ghting it often includes.
26. The indistinguishability of these two groups is revealed in the following
description by an older performer in the village of Sanare: These are Indians,
we should say, from the Indians from Africa, when they had problems and stuff.
Thats when they began that Tamunangue. Manuel Guedez made the same
point to Aretz, stating that the San Antonio festival comes from the time of the
Conquest. San Antonio called the Indians and the conquistadores with his drum.
Some of them were already tame, and they brought the others, and San Antonio
baptized them. That was around this area (1970 [1956]: 17).
27. Gonzalez Viloria, who is arguably the nest scholar of this dance, notes
that San Antonio is above all a mediator between worldsold and new, Chris-
tian and pagan, white and black, heaven and earthand as such becomes the
mestizo par excellence. She also makes the observation that, From a theater of
conquest and evangelization, Tamunangue is transformed into a theater of trans-
culturation (1991: 134135). Another example of such mestizaje standing for the
nation is the cult of Mar a Lionza. Followers and sites abound throughout Vene-
zuela, but the most important center is in the mountain of Sorte in the state of
Yaracuy. Despite numerous myths about Mar a Lionzas indigenous origins,
Taussig reports several claims that she is actually a mestiza and that this identity
is essential to understanding her power:
That the spirit queen was not an Indian but a mestiza, hybrid child of an Indian
woman and a conquistador (sixteenth century) and that she had had to seek refuge in
the mountain until saved by the Liberator (born late eighteenth century) who sent el
Negro Felipe to care for her.
But to the lanky dark-skinned man who walked all day back and forth along the
sand by the far-off ocean selling oysters beyond the capital city, the spirit queen had
no particular racial identity. No! She was not Black, not White, nor any mixture
thereof. Instead, he paused, she was the nation. It was that simple. (1997: 3132)
But Mar a Lionzas mestizaje may be found less in her own body than in the
company she keeps. For in most iconography she is anked by an indigenous
rebel, Guaicaipuro, and a black revolutionary, Negro Felipe. Together they form
204 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 6 2 1 6 4
an outlaw trinity known as the Tres Potencias, a different image of mestizaje, in
which the European is replaced by an ambiguous, green-eyed queen. It is this
combination, like that attributed to Tamunangue, which has rendered the cult
so powerful in the popular imagination. For more on this important Venezuelan
movement, see Barreto (1987), Pollak-Eltz (1985), and Taussig (1997).
28. For good examples of how this transformation has occurred in different
places, see Acciaioli (1985), Flores (1995), Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998), Mendoza
(1998), Ness (1992), Schechner (1985, 1988), and Wilcken (1992).
29. For more on this costume, see Aretz (1977, esp. pp. 194200) and her dis-
cussion of the womans long dress known as a fustan.
30. The shortest Tamunangue on record may be that performed at the Teresa
Carren o Opera House in Caracas to celebrate the 1990 Southern Hemisphere
Economic Summit. Several of the twenty-eight countries participating also
brought groups, including the National Dance Troupe of Nigeria andSonal Man-
singh of India. Venezuela had two representatives: Soledad Bravo, an interna-
tionally known folksinger, and a dance troupe from Bigotts Talleres de Cultura
Popular. The latter gave a ten-minute Tamunangue performance that had been
completely rechoreographed by the events organizers. Instead of a single couple
dancing alone, as is normal, the entire group performed simultaneously. The
organizer insisted that this was necessary in order to ll the entire space and
make it more lively and colorful.
Tamunangue has been adapted to numerous other contexts as well, including
television, art museums, and various international festivals, among them the
Festival of Youth in the former Soviet Union, the World Festival of Traditional
Arts in France, the Festival of Fruits and Flowers in Ecuador, and the Sugar
Festival in Colombia.
31. The demands of the proscenium arch have been critical in the transfor-
mation of a number of modern forms. An interesting example of this is the way
in which contemporary ballets most important movements were determined by
the introduction of staged dance in late-seventeenth-century France. Kraus and
Chapman document this process in what they call the professionalization of
ballet:
Since the dancer had only to be concerned with how he would look from one direc-
tion, it became necessary to think of the audience, in front, as a focus. When moving
from side to side across the stage, the best way to do this while facing the audience
was to turn the hip and knee out, so the feet pointed to the side instead of straight
forward. Gradually, the turnout became more and more pronounced, and became
the basis of the ve positions of the foot in classic ballet which Beauchamps recorded
about 1700 and which are essential to all ballet technique even today. (1981: 72)
32. Stewart makes the interesting observation that in Trinidad, it is the visitors
who enjoy carnival most, as they are unaware of the various backstage conicts
and struggles underlying the events realization: Those who most enjoy Car-
n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 6 4 1 6 5 205
nival in Trinidad these days are the visitors (returnees and tourists), who by
their very journeying have already assumed a status of license and who have no
knowledge of the burdening encumbrances carried by local traditionalists and
innovators. Their approach to the festival is singularly individual. . . . They are
not affronted by anything in the Carnival, where they have no interest in the
politics of the event (1986: 314).
33. Local residents have also been overwhelmed by the tremendous inux of
culture tourists wishing to see Tamunangue in situ. Although many in Lara are
apt to criticize the negative effects of such tourism, they also encourage it and
ultimately judge the success of the annual festival by the number of outsiders
who attend. For Sanare, this has meant up to 10,000 visitors, or nearly half the
number of permanent residents. In Curarigua, on the other hand, observance of
the festival has been moved to the Saturday closest to June 13, when the cele-
bration traditionally took place. In each instance, tourists are now encouraged
to come to the event rather than simply have the event come to them.
34. As traditional forms are converted into staged events and the visual be-
comes privileged over all other elements, the womens role often becomes more
prominent. This is usually combined with a more seductive and sensual self-
presentation, as symbolized by the relentless, even painful smile that most fe-
male participants are forced to maintain. It was this feature that critics imme-
diately attacked as soon as Tamunangue was adapted to the stage. Silva
Uzcategui, in particular, complained that women not only smiled incessantly
but spun around, laughing happily, jumping about, leaning their bodies from
side to side just like the joropo (1990 [1954]: 2).
The importance of the smile is also found in descriptions of a number of other
public celebrations, particularly carnival. In her detailed instructions on the
proper way to perform samba, for example, Guillermoprieto reserves a special
place for the smile and how to effect it:
Smile: the key rule is, dont make it sexy. You will look arch, coy, or, if you are work-
ing really hard, terribly American. Your smile should be the full-tilt cheer of someone
watching her favorite team hit a home run. Or it should imitate the serene curve of a
Hindu deitys. The other key rule: There is no point to samba if it doesnt make you
smile. (1990: 38)
Abner Cohen makes a similar observation about Londons Carnival, where
thousands of costumed members . . . are instructed by the rules of samba to
smile throughout (1993: 137).
The hegemony of the smile in staged folkloric events throughout the world
has an interesting parallel to Schneiders observations about the smiles relation-
ship to globalization and capitalism:
One of the great unsolved mysteries of American culture is the devotion Americans
have for their teeth. . . . They dont see anything strange about an old mans smile
being as polished and glamorous as the grille of a new Cadillac. Some people even
206 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 6 5 1 6 7
invest the value of a Cadillac in their teeth, if only to show that they are biters. Hav-
ing perfect teeth proves that we are afuent and inuential, the ttest. We see a glob-
alization of the American smile, that bright consumerist smile. (1997: 45)
35. In his Enciclopedia Larense, Silva Uzcategui elaborates further on the dis-
tortions being perpetrated by female dancers:
Whoever has seen Tamunangue performed in a village by dancers who really know
how to perform it well has noted the seriousness and circumspection with which
they do it, the serenity with which they carry out each movement, because they give
the act the solemnity of a religious ritual. And thats where the aristocratic elegance that
characterizes this dance comes from, as well as the total absence of any sensuality. . . .
In Caracas a group of musicians and dancers recently presented Tamunangue as a
theatrical spectacle, but they only danced a few parts and not even in the traditional
order. Besides that, they willfully exaggerated various movements and against all
custom, the women smiled incessantly, and according to them, they did it because
theyd been told to do it that way. (1981 [1941]: 167)
36. Berarducci Fernandez (1987) proposes a similar argument, wherein Ta-
munangue provides a metanarrative of the history of male-female relations. In
her analysis the Batalla is a male mating ritual; La Bella, the rst shy overture;
the Ayiyivamos, the eruption of full irting and suggestiveness; the Juruminga,
the establishment of the relationship and the acting out of domestic roles; the
Poco a Poco, the developing relationship in crisis; the Perrendenga and Galero n,
when the couple is mature and each has a turn to dominate; and, nally, the Seis
Corrido, in which the full community celebrates and various partners share in
a festive reunion (1987: 116).
37. The Festival Folklo rico del Estado Lara was held annually in Barquisimeto
from 1966 to 1977 and then, after a ten-year lapse, was reinstituted in 1987.
38. Schechner equates the terms ritual and theater with efcacy and
entertainment, claiming that no performance is pure efcacy or pure enter-
tainment:
Efcacy and entertainment are not so much opposed to each other; rather they form
the poles of a continuum. The basic polarity is between efcacy and entertainment,
not between ritual and theater. Whether one calls a specic performance ritual or
theater depends mostly on context and function. A performance is called ritual or
theater because of where it is performed, by whom, and under what circumstances.
(1988: 120)
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231
Index
Abrahams, Roger D., 175n5
Acosta Saignes, Miguel, 153, 183n31
Adler, Judith, 195n18
advertising: ban on tobacco, 96, 192n3; of Bi-
gott Foundation, 119 (g. 18), 198n31; rela-
tionship between tobacco and, 192n4
Africa: as Dance of Monkey origin, 7072,
188n16; as Fiesta de San Juan inuence,
30, 32 (g. 3), 33, 178nn67, 179n8; saints
as disguised gods of, 151; as Tamunangue
inuence/origin, 145, 147, 14853
Afro-Venezuelans: Fiesta de San Juan associ-
ated with, 2833, 36, 4651, 51 (g. 6),
180n19; race vs. class as issue for, 58,
183n31; on Tamunangue origin, 147, 150,
15253. See also Barlovento
Alma de Lara, 170, 171 (g. 28)
American Tobacco, 94, 192n2
Anderson, Benedict, 184n1
Anglero , Roberto, 24
Anthony of Padua, Saint, 200n5. See also An-
tonio de Padua, San
Antigua, state-linked festival in, 13, 49
Antivero, Roberto, 194n13
Antonio de Padua, San, 133, 200n5; image
of, and Tamunangue, 135, 142, 162; life of,
156, 202n23; Moors and, 15455, 156; New
World visit by, 160, 203n26; origin of Ta-
munangue and, 15660, 157 (g. 25),
203n24, 203n26; as patron saint of blacks
in El Tocuyo, 151; race of, 152, 160
Appadurai, Arjun, 25, 9293, 174n2
Aquino, Fulgencio, 121, 197n29
Aretz, Isabel, 148, 150; career of, 176n11,
201n17; on ciriaco origin, 188n16; on inu-
ences in Tamunangue, 153, 156, 201n16;
study of Tamunangue by, 148, 150; term
Tamunangue introduced by, 147, 148, 153
Argentina, Fiesta de San Juan in, 27
Augustine, Saint, 27, 30
authenticity, broadened denition of, 4
Ayiyivamos dance, in Tamunangue, 13536,
152, 200n9, 206n36
Azpu rua, Carlos, 46, 180n18
232 i n d e x
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 12, 174n3, 188n17
ballet, professionalization of, 204n31
Baquero, Edgar, 60
Barlovento, 178n4; Culture Week in, 4651,
48 (g. 5), 180n19; D a de los Inocentes
celebration in, 190n26; Fiesta de San Juan
in, 2834; folklorization of culture of,
1718
Bastide, Roger, 178n7, 179n10
Batalla (Battle), 135, 137 (g. 21), 151; origin
of, 145, 159, 203n25; womens participa-
tion in, 16869, 169 (g. 27), 206n36
BAT Industries. See British American To-
bacco (BAT)
Bauman, Richard, 9, 199n4
Beard, Peter, 192n1
La Bella (Beauty), in Tamunangue, 13637,
145, 159, 206n36
Benito de Palermo, San, 56
Bentley, G. Carter, 189n24
Berarducci Fernandez, Anna Griselda,
206n36
Betancourt, Ro mulo, 177n14
Biblioteca Ayacucho, 44
Bigott, Luis, 95
Bigott Foundation, 22; advertising of, 119
(g. 18), 198n31; agricultural program of,
102; budget of, 194n11; conict between
Clavija and, 11015, 11819; consequences
of cultural sponsorship program of, 129
31; cultural production by, 90, 122, 12527,
198n31; grant program of, 103; ofces of,
197n27; origin of, 95; popular culture
paired with, 10316, 116, 11819, 120, 124
28, 196n25; publications program of, 102,
194n9; shift in focus of, 9697, 1012; tele-
vision programming of, 11628; train im-
age of, 12526, 126 (g. 19), 127; working
with governments, 123, 197n30; work-
shops program of, 10316, 196n22. See also
British American Tobacco (BAT); Cigar-
rera Bigott
Billings, Cleotilde, 197n29
Blanco, Andres Eloy, 179n11
Blanco, Balbino, 80
Blanco, Jesu s, 44, 45, 180n16
Blanco, Juan del Rosario, 55, 182n27, 191n30
Blanco Gil, Nicomedes, 52
Blanco Villegas, Alejandro, 55
blanqueamiento, 61
Boissevain, Jeremy, 10, 174n2
Bol var, Simo n, 38
Bolivia, Fiesta de San Juan in, 27
Boston, Saint Patricks Day Parade, 1011
Brandes, Stanley, Power and Persuasion,
181n25
Brandt, Max, 44, 180n19
Bravo, Soledad, 204n30
Brazil: capoeira in, 170; cimarro n experience
in, 181n23; groups funding free papers
purchase in, 55, 182n28; Kayapo political
activism in, 6263, 184nn24; samba of,
146, 205n34; Shango identied with San
Juan in, 178n7
Breckenridge, Carol A., 174n2
Bricker, Victoria Reier, 155, 160, 190n26,
202n22
British American Tobacco (BAT), history of,
9495, 192n2. See also Bigott Foundation;
Cigarrera Bigott
Browning, Barbara, 146
Burdick, John, 181n23, 182n29
business. See multinational corporations
Buy American campaign, 9293, 191n1
Caballito (Pony), in Tamunangue, 140, 141
(g. 23), 168
Cabimas popular culture strategy, 98
Cafe con leche: Race, Class, and National Image
in Venezuela (Wright), 58
Cahill, David, 910
Caicara: as Caicara de Matur n, 79, 189n23;
festivals of, 65; history of, 6365, 79,
185n7, 186nn89; origin of name of, 185n6.
See also Day of the Monkey
Caillois, Roger, 49
California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts),
110, 195n18
Calvarito. See Larito, Jose
Campos Guzman, Domitila, 75
Caracas Carnival, 20, 177n14
Cardiel, Argelia, 60
carnivals: Antigua Carnival, 13, 49; Brazilian
Carnival, 132, 133; Caracas Carnival, 20,
177n14; converted into celebrations of po-
litical independence, 13, 47, 49; Cuban
Carnival, 13, 47, 49, 170; Mexican Carni-
val, 155, 202n22; Notting Hill Carnival, 8,
47, 174n4, 205n34; Soho (Greece) Carnival,
15; Trinidad Carnival, 70, 170, 179n12,
204n32
Casa de Folklore (Curiepe), Fiesta de San
Juan at, 37, 51 (g. 6)
Castillo, Anselmo, 162
Castillo, Jose Humberto, 15659, 160
Castillo Escalona, Jose Anselmo, 145
Castillo Lara, Lucas Guillermo, 55, 182n27
Castro, Pedro, 197n29
i n d e x 233
Catholic Church: Day of the Monkey as
challenge to, 8889, 191n28, 191n31; Fiesta
de San Juan disapproved by, 3334. See
also saints
Catuaro, 12
Center for the Study of Traditional and Pop-
ular Cultures (CCPYT), 176n11
Centro Cultural y Deportivo de Curiepe
(Curiepe Culture and Sport Center),
4445
Centro de Formacio n Tecnica, 193n8
Centro Prodesarrollo de Curiepe (Curiepe
Prodevelopment Center), 39
Centro Vargas, 193n8
Chaco n, Alfredo, 110, 176n13, 180n17
Chile, Mapuche of, 184n3
Christians, Moors and, dance of, 15455,
202nn2022
Cigarrera Bigott: cultural production by, 93
94, 101; history of, 9597. See also Bigott
Foundation; British American Tobacco
(BAT)
cimarron/cimarronaje, 4950, 181n21; in Brazil,
181n23; Fiesta de San Juan and, 5051, 51
(g. 6); San Juan as expression of, 5456
ciriaco, 68, 69 (g. 9), 72, 188n16
class, race vs., as issue in Venezuela, 58,
182n30
Clavija (La Clavija), 1059; conict be-
tween Bigott Foundation and, 11015, 118
19; founding members of, 194n13, 194n15;
at Talleres de Cultura Popular, 10610,
111, 11213, 114, 115; teaching style of, 105
6, 1089, 195n16
Clifford, James, 4
Cobos, Isabel, 30
Cohen, Abner, 8, 47, 174n4, 175n8, 205n34
Cohen, Ronald, 62, 185n5, 199n4
Coll, Agust n, 96, 11213, 194n9
Colmenarez, Orlando, 168
Colmenarez Guedez, Rau l, 145, 147
Colmenarez Losada, Mar a Magdalena, 151,
166 (g. 26), 167, 170
Colmenarez Peraza, Jose Rafael, 150, 201n18
Colombia: African-descended groups in, 34;
Arahuaco of, 184n3; Corpus Christi cele-
bration in, 190n26
CONAC (National Council of Culture, Con-
sejo Nacional de la Cultura), 44, 100,
179n14, 193n8
Conjunto Folklo rico San Juan de Curiepe, 37
Los Conuqueros (Ramos), 148
Convenezuela, 100
Coronil, Fernando, 177n15
Corpa (Corporacio n Publicitaria Nacional,
C.A.), 97, 1023; television production by,
117, 197n26; workshop administration by,
104, 105, 106, 10910
corporations. See multinational corporations
Corpus Christi celebration: in Colombia,
190n26; in Peru, 910, 175n6; in Vene-
zuela, 170
Corradini, Henry, 70
Corwin, Arthur, 182n29
Cowan, Jane, 15
creolization, 4
Crespi, Muriel, 28, 178n3
Cruz de Mayo, 28
cuatro, 104, 194n12
Cuba: rumba in, 170; state-linked festival in,
13, 47, 49; women in carnival of, 170
culo e puya drums, 33, 37, 39, 41 (g. 4),
178n6, 179n8
Cultural Congress against Dependency and
Neo-Colonialism, 98
Cultural Division of Crime Prevention, of
Ministry of Justice, 44
cultural objectication, 14, 199n2
cultural performance: characteristic elements
of, 89, 10, 175n5; festive forms as, 712;
ideologies presented in, 13233, 199n4;
mestizaje and, 132; multilocality of, 13132,
199n3
cultural production: by Bigott Foundation,
90, 122, 12527, 198n31; by Cigarrera Bi-
gott, 9394, 101; in festive forms, 1112, 91
culture, folklorization of, 11415, 195n20
Culture Week (Curiepe), 40, 4547, 48 (g.
5), 49, 50, 180n17
cumbe, 49, 50, 181n21
cun as, 12428
curbata, 30, 33, 37
Curiepe: Casa de Folklore in, 37, 51 (g. 6);
Culture and Sport Center established in,
4445; Culture Week in, 40, 4547, 48 (g.
5), 49, 50, 180n17; Fiesta de San Juan in, 28
34; founding of, 55, 182n27; government
patronage in, 42; Liscanos visits to, 3437,
42; location of, 25, 26 (map); Monument to
the Drum in, 191n30; named as National
Folklore Village, 42; tourists visiting, 37
38, 39, 4243, 179n15. See also Fiesta de
San Juan
Curiepe (Chaco n), 180n17
DaMatta, Roberto, 175n8
Day of the Holy Innocents, 7273, 75, 88,
188n18, 190n26
234 i n d e x
Day of the Monkey, 22, 6089; African origin
of, 7072, 188n16; anticlerical nature of, 88
89, 191n28, 191n31; as celebration of indig-
enous ethnicity, 7789; dispute over ori-
gins of, 1516, 7376, 188n20; earliest writ-
ten record of, 190n28; European origin of,
72, 7375, 188n15, 190n28; folklorization
of, 8188, 82 (g. 13), 84 (g. 14), 85 (g.
15), 87 (g. 16), 191n29; indigenous origin
of, 6870, 69 (g. 9), 187nn1415, 190n28;
mayordoma of, 66, 187n10; Monkey Dance
performance of, 6572, 67 (g. 8), 69 (g.
9), 71 (g. 10), 187n13; parrandas and, 65
68, 67 (g. 8), 69 (g. 9), 70, 79, 80, 81 (g.
12), 187nn1112, 190n27
de Blavia, Milagro, 169
de Blesa, Father Antonio, 64
de Certeau, Michel, 90
decimas, 129, 203n24
de-folklorization, 1718, 11415, 195n20. See
also folklorization
de la Vega, Garcilaso, 186n7
El D a del Mono. See Day of the Monkey
D a de los Inocentes. See Day of the Holy In-
nocents
Diez, Cruz, 195n15
La Dolorosa, 12
Domingo, Santo: Festival of, 64, 65, 186n7; as
patron saint of Caicara, 64, 185n7
double enrollment, 5, 91, 174n2, 196n25
drums: Barlovento Culture Weeks emphasis
on, 47, 48 (g. 5), 180n19; culo e puya, 33,
37, 39, 41 (g. 4), 178n6, 179n8; curbata, 30,
33, 37; as expression of freedom, 47,
180n20; in Fiesta de San Juan, 30, 32 (g.
3), 33, 37, 178n6; mina, 30, 32 (g. 3), 33,
37, 48 (g. 5); monument to, 191n30; in
San Juan Monumental, 39, 40, 41 (g. 4);
in Tamunangue, 145
Duke, James, 94
Durkheim, Emile, 3
Duvignaud, Jean, 49
Easter Week processions, 28, 190n26
economy, festival as resource for participa-
tion in, 39, 41. See also oil
Ecuador: ethnic impersonation during cele-
brations in, 190n26; ethnicity-based politi-
cal activity in, 184n3, 185n5; Fiesta de San
Juan in, 2728, 178n3; mestizaje in, 61,
184n1
Eliade, Mircea, 49
El Tocuyo, 151
Encuentro con . . . Las Expresiones Musicales de
Venezuela, 11718, 196nn2324, 200n11
Escalona, Americo, 159
Escauriza, Enio, 111, 194n13, 195n16, 196n25
ethnicity: Day of the Monkey as celebration
of indigenous, 7789; mestizaje and, 6062,
63, 184n1; non-ethnic groups celebrating,
80, 190n26; political activity based on, 62
63, 184nn24, 185n5; reasons for increased
visibility of, 80, 189nn2425
Ethnomusicology and Folklore Foundation
(FUNDEF), 201n17
Europe: as Day of the Monkey origin, 72, 73
75, 188n15, 190n28; as Fiesta de San Juan
origin, 25, 27, 177n2; as Tamunangue in-
uence, 145, 14647, 201n15
Ewell, Judith, Venezuela: A Century of Change,
43
Feast of Fools, 73, 8889, 188n17
Federacio n Nacional de la Cultura Popular,
104
Festa da Boa Morte (Feast of Good Death),
182n28
Festival Folklo rico del Estado Lara, 167,
206n37
Festival of American Folklife, at Smithson-
ian, 16
Festival of Reason (France), 13
Festival of Santo Domingo, 64, 65, 186n7
Festival of the Federation (France), 13
Festival of the Supreme Being (France), 13
Festival of Tradition: origin of, 1820, 19 (g.
1), 36, 176nn1213, 179n11; Tamunangue
included in, 144, 16162
festivals: adapted to modern socioeconomic
climate, 67, 174n3; multilocality of, 131
32, 199n3; political appropriation of, 13
14, 175n8; recast as folklore, 1417, 175n9;
rituals vs., 175n5; selected as traditions, 15
16; as vehicle for national identity forma-
tion, 1213, 1820, 9192, 175n7. See also
festive forms; specic festivals
festive forms: in constant state of change,
17072; as cultural performance, 712; cul-
tural production in, 1112, 91; dening, 3,
173n1; double enrollment of, 5, 91,
174n2, 196n25; historical inuence on, 35;
representative Venezuelan, 2123; as so-
cial control instruments, 12. See also festi-
vals
Fiesta de San Juan, 21, 2459; African inu-
ence in, 30, 32 (g. 3), 33, 178nn67, 179n8;
Afro-Venezuelans associated with, 2833,
36, 4651, 51 (g. 6), 180n19; Catholic
Churchs disapproval of, 3334; cimarron-
izing of, 5051, 51 (g. 6); drums in, 30, 32
i n d e x 235
(g. 3), 33, 37, 178n6; European origin of,
25, 27, 177n2; Liscano and, 3436, 42; New
World variations of, 2728; San Juan Bau-
tista and, 2533, 31 (g. 2); San Juan
Congo and, 5259, 57 (g. 7); as San Juan
Monumental, 3941, 41 (g. 4); as San
Juan Sensacional, 42; tourism at, 3738, 39,
4243, 179n15, 181n25; transformed into
Culture Week, 40, 4547, 48 (g. 5), 49, 50,
180n17; transformed into national festival,
3637
La esta de San Juan el Bautista (Liscano), 36
Figueroa, Asuncio n, 197n29
folklore: Bigott vs. Clavija views of, 11415,
195n20; festivals recast as, 1417, 175n9;
Liscano as initiating scientic study of, 35;
use of term, 1718, 176n11. See also
traditions
Folklore del Estado Lara (Liscano), 129
folklorization: of culture, 11415, 195n20; of
Day of the Monkey, 8188, 82 (g. 13), 84
(g. 14), 85 (g. 15), 87 (g. 16), 191n29.
See also de-folklorization
Foundation for Ethnomusicology and Folk-
lore (FUNDEF), 176n11
France, postrevolutionary festivals in, 13
Frazer, James G., 177n2
freedom, drums as expression of, 47, 180n20
Friedmann, Nina S. de, 190n26
Fro meta, Billo, 86, 117
Fundacio n Bigott. See Bigott Foundation
FUNDEF (Ethnomusicology and Folklore
Foundation), 201n17
Galaskiewicz, Joseph, 198n30
Galeron, in Tamunangue, 140, 142, 145, 159,
202n19, 206n36
Gallegos, Ro mulo, 18, 20, 36, 144, 177n14
Garc a, Arturo, 109, 112, 11314
Garc a, Flor, 40
Garc a, Jesu s, 17, 153, 178n6, 183n31, 193n8
Garc a, Juan Esteban, 197n29
Garc a Canclini, Nestor, 1314, 97; double
enrollment concept of, 5, 91, 174n2,
196n25; on expansion of traditional ex-
pression under modernization, 56, 174n2;
on urbanization of Venezuela, 97, 193n5
Germany, Hitlers use of festivals in, 13
Gluckman, Max, 173n1
Goffman, Erving, 8, 41, 175n5
Go mez, Juan Vicente, 20, 177nn1415
Gonzalez, Enrique, 34
Gonzalez, Mar a, 148
Gonzalez Viloria, Norma, 156, 16667,
203n24, 203n27
Gorotire dam, 62, 184n4
government: festive forms used for national
identity formation by, 1213, 1820, 9192,
175n7; intervention by, and local percep-
tion of saints, 13; multinational corpora-
tions working with, 123, 197n30; patron-
age to local performers by, 42, 179n14;
programs of, funded by oil money, 4344;
public projects of, 177n15; role of, in den-
ing popular culture, 100101, 193n8
Greece, Soho Carnival in, 15
Grupo Zaranda, 127
Guamacire, 16970
Guedez, Manuel, 203n26
Guevara, Jacinto, 7374, 75, 80
Guevara Febres, Jesu s Alberto, 77, 78 (g.
11), 86
Guggenheim Foundation. See John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation
Hall, Stuart, 6, 16
Handler, Richard, 14, 199n2
Hannerz, Ulf, 92, 199n1
Hebdige, Dick, 180n20
heritage spectacle, 38, 179n12
Hernandez, Tulio, 102, 108, 195n19; on Bi-
gott Foundation television programming,
124, 197n26; study of Talleres de Cultura
Popular by, 110, 113, 11516, 119
Herrera Camp ns, Luis, 4344, 96
Hilario, Father Joseph. See Tinoco, Joseph
Hilario
Hilario, Jose. See Larito, Jose
history, continual new versions of, 2425,
177n1
Hitler, Adolph, 13
Hobsbawm, Eric, 8384, 175n7, 191n30
Huice, Aureliano, 179n15
hybridity, 4, 130
Ibarreto, Gualberto, 117
Imperial Tobacco of Great Britain, 94
Indians. See indigenous populations
indigenous populations: as Dance of Mon-
key origin, 6870, 69 (g. 9), 187nn1415,
190n28; Day of the Monkey as celebrating
values of, 7789; idealization of past life-
style of, 7780; mestizaje and, 6062, 63;
non-Indian identication with, 80, 190n26;
political activism by, 6263, 184nn24,
185n5; as Tamunangue inuence, 145, 147,
201n16
Instituto de Asesoramiento Educativa
(INDASE), 110, 11516
236 i n d e x
Instituto Nacional de Cultura y Bellas Artes
(INCIBA), 179n14, 194n8
Instituto Nacional de Folklore (INAF),
176n11, 193n8, 200n12, 201n17
Inter-American Institute for Ethnomusicol-
ogy and Folklore (INIDEF), 176n11,
201n17
Inti Raymi celebration (Peru), 9, 27
Iragorry, Bricen o, 99
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation,
194n10
John the Baptist, Saint, 25, 177n2. See also
Juan Bautista, San
Juan Bautista, San: Fiesta de San Juan and,
2533, 31 (g. 2); La Dolorosa transformed
into, 2; New World variations of, 2728;
Shango as, 30, 178n7. See also Fiesta de
San Juan
Juan Congo, San, 5259, 57 (g. 7); origin of,
5455, 181n26; skin color of, 5659, 57 (g.
7); velorio to, 5254, 181n25
La Juruminga, in Tamunangue, 138, 139 (g.
22), 145, 159, 206n36
Kayapo, political activism by, 6263,
184nn24
Kelly, John, 38
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 131, 161, 163
Lara. See Tamunangue
Larito, Jose, 5051, 55
Latin America: media as homogenizing, 92;
mestizaje throughout, 182n29; urbanization
of, 97, 193n5. See also specic countries
Ley de Cultura, 193n8
Ley Organica de Educacio n, 101
Linarez, Pedro, 15051, 153, 160, 201n18,
202n19
Lionza, Mar a, cult of, 203n27
liquiliqui, 66, 187n10
Lira Espejo, Eduardo, 14344, 148, 161
Liscano, Juan, 3437; Aretz and, 201n17; Fes-
tival of Tradition and, 1820, 19 (g. 1),
36, 176n13, 179n11; Fiesta de San Juan
and, 3436, 42; Folklore del Estado
Lara, 129; on racial differences in Vene-
zuela, 46, 48; on Tamunangue, 138, 142,
144, 145, 148, 150, 201n13; Tamunangue
recordings by, 144, 148, 200n12; term Ta-
munangue introduced by, 147
localization, by multinational corporations,
9293, 191n1
Lo pez, Anselmo, 12122, 124, 197n29
Lo pez, Lucrecia, 164
Lo pez Arocha, Mar a Teresa, 195n20
Lo pez Ortega, Antonio, 123, 126, 196n22,
197n30, 199n31
Luango, 100, 101
Lucci, Angel, 4243
MacAloon, John, 1112
Madera, 100, 108
Madron ero, Bishop D az, 191n28
Maita de Guevara, Mar a, 7576, 185n7
Malave, Juan Gregorio, 197n19
malembe, 30, 178n6
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 3
Manning, Frank, 49
Mardi Gras (New Orleans), 190n26
Mariategui, Jose Carlos, 1617
Mart , Bishop Mariano, 3334, 55
Mart n-Barbero, Jesu s, 13132, 174n3, 197n28
Mart n de Porres, San, 56
Masquerade Politics (Cohen), 174n4
Matachines dance, 202nn2122
Mattelart, Armand, 199n1
mayordoma, of monkey dance performance,
66, 187n10
media: ban on tobacco advertising in, 96,
192n3; as broadening participation in local
festivals, 1011, 37; as homogenizing Latin
America, 92; mediation by, 132, 197n28;
views of popular culture, use by, 130,
199n1. See also television
mestizaje/myth of racial democracy: cult of
Mar a Lionza and, 203n27; cultural perfor-
mance and, 132; in Ecuador, 61, 184n1;
ethnicity and, 6062, 63, 184n1; race vs.
class issue and, 58, 182n30; samba and,
146; Tamunangue as linked to, 14447, 149
50, 15960, 201n13, 201n16, 201n18,
203n27; throughout Latin America, 182n29;
in Venezuela, 56, 58, 61, 182n29, 183n31
mestizos: ethnic identication by, 80, 190n26;
as new ethnic blend, 56
Mexico: carnival in, 155, 202n22; ethnic im-
personation during festivals in, 190n26;
Moors and Christians dance in, 155;
Night of the Dead celebration in,
181n25; postrevolutionary festivals in, 13
micros, 12122, 124, 197n26, 197n29
Midsummer Eve, 25, 27, 177n2. See also Fi-
esta de San Juan
mina, 30, 32 (g. 3), 33, 37, 48 (g. 5)
Ministry of Justice, Cultural Division of
Crime Prevention, 44
modernization: expansion of traditional ex-
pression under, 56, 174n2; as reformula-
tion of social relations, 45
i n d e x 237
Monkey Dance. See Day of the Monkey
Monument to the Dance of the Monkey, 83,
85 (g. 15)
Monument to the Drum, 191n30
Moors: and Christians, dance of, 15455,
202nn2022; San Antonio and, 15455, 156;
Tamunangues relation to, 15559, 203n25
Moreno, Faustino, 161
Moreno, Yolanda, 37, 86, 180n16
Moscoso, Enrique, 52
Mosonyi, Esteban Emilio, 98, 106
Mosse, George L., 175n7
multilocality, of festive behaviors, 13132,
199n3
multinational corporations: change in public
opinion of, 12223; global corporations
vs., 92; production fetishism by, 9293,
191n1; relationship between tobacco and
advertising, 193n4; working with govern-
ments, 123, 197n30. See also British Ameri-
can Tobacco (BAT)
Muratorio, Blanca, 184n1
Natera, Freddy, 79
National Folklore Institute (INAF), 176n11,
193n8, 200n12, 201n17
National Folklore Investigations Service, 17,
201n17
National Folklore Museum, 176n11, 201n17
National Folklore Service: inaugural event
of, 1820, 19 (g. 1), 36, 176nn1213,
179n11; origin of, 18
Nazoa, Aquiles, 100, 193n6
New Orleans, 190n26
Night of the Dead celebration (Mexico),
181n25
Notting Hill Carnival, 8, 47, 174n4
El Nuevo Viraje (the New Direction), 98
oil: government programs funded by money
from, 4344; from Monagas area, 189n21;
rise in price of, 38; social impact of, 77, 78
(g. 11), 99, 189n22
Olivares Figueroa, R., 144, 148, 150
Ontiveros, Benigno, 190n28
palenque, 49, 181n21
Parkin, David, 16
Parranda de Gavilan, 67, 67 (g. 8), 91,
187n12, 188n20
parrandas, 6568, 67 (g. 8), 69 (g. 9), 187n11;
African inuence evident in, 7072,
187n12; indigenous identication in, 80, 81
(g. 12); urbanization and, 79, 190n27
Parrandas de Navidad, 28
Patron Saints Day (Caicara), 64, 65, 186n7
Pemon, Parishira ritual of, 89
Perez, Angel Mar a, 149
Perez, Carlos Andres, 43, 104, 176n11,
177n15
Perez, Domingo, 170
Perez, Jose, 14849, 162, 16364
Perez Jimenez, Marcos, 36, 177n15
performers, local, government patronage to,
42, 179n14
La Perrendenga, in Tamunangue, 138, 206n36
Peru: Corpus Christi celebration in, 910,
175n6; Fiesta de San Juan in, 27; Inti
Raymi celebration in, 9, 27; Qoyllur Riti
celebration in, 10, 175n6, 190n26
Peru, Amuesha of, 184n3
Plan Sebucan, 193n8
Poco a Poco (Little by Little), in Tamunangue,
138, 140, 141 (g. 23), 159, 168, 206n36
Pollak-Eltz, Angelina, 58
Poncho, Mar a, 52, 53
popular arts, as term replacing folklore, 17,
176n11
popular culture: Bigott Foundation paired
with, 10316, 117, 119, 120, 12428, 196n25;
congresses exploring, 98, 99100, 15253;
forces helping dene, 97102; government
role in dening, 100101, 193n8; as new
synthesis, 109, 195n17; oil booms inu-
ence on, 99; resistance ideas included in,
98; role of, in changing socioeconomic cli-
mate, 57, 174n3; as system of production,
56, 12; as term replacing folklore, 17,
176n11; urbanization as inuence on, 97,
193n5; views of media use of, 130, 199n1.
See also Talleres de Cultura Popular (Pop-
ular Culture Workshops)
Popular Culture Workshops. See Talleres de
Cultura Popular (Popular Culture Work-
shops)
Power and Persuasion (Brandes), 181n25
Price, Richard, 181n21
production fetishism, 9293, 191n1
promesas (promises): in Catuaro, 1; in Cu-
riepe, 37; Tamunangue and, 134, 200n6
public culture, 4, 140
Qoyllur Riti celebration (Peru), 10, 175n6,
190n26
Quebecois celebration, 14
Querales, Ivan, 162
quilombo, 49, 181n21
race: denied as issue in Venezuela, 5659,
61, 182nn2930, 183n31; of San Antonio,
238 i n d e x
race (continued)
152, 160; of San Juan Congo, 5659, 57
(g. 7). See also mestizaje/myth of racial
democracy
Radliffe-Brown, A. R., 3
Ram rez, Juan Jose, 75, 185nn67, 187n15,
188n16, 190n28
Ramo n y Rivera, Luis Felipe, 142, 201n17
Ramos, Dagoberto, 191n30
Ramos, Julio, 148
Ramos, Nelly, 115, 196n21
resistance: drums as symbol of, 47, 180n20;
included in popular culture, 98
rituals, festivals vs., 175n5
Rivas, Guillermo, 181n22
Rivera, Luis Mariano, 40
Rivero, Benicio, 170
Rivero, Luisa Virginia, 170
Rodr gues, Javier, mural by, 51 (g. 6)
Rodr guez, Epifanio, 197n29
Rodr guez, Mar a, 197n29
Rodr guez, Sylvia, 155, 160, 202nn2122
Rodr guez Cardenas, Manuel, 145
Rojas, Chilo, 66, 67 (g. 8), 79, 91, 188n19; on
African inuence in Day of the Monkey,
70, 72; on Monkey Dance origin, 74, 75,
188n20; Negros de (Parranda de Gavilan),
67, 67 (g. 8), 91, 187n12, 188n20
Rosenblatt, Roger, 198n30
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 13
Rowe, William, 4, 5, 92
Los Ruices, 97
Ru z, Pedro Roberto, 3839, 40, 179n13
Russia, postrevolutionary festivals in, 13
Saint Johns Day, 25, 27. See also Fiesta de
San Juan
Saint Josephs Day (New Orleans), 190n26
Saint Patricks Day Parade (Boston), 1011
saints: as African gods in disguise, 151; gov-
ernment intervention affecting local per-
ception of, 13; ownership of icons of, 52,
181n24; as substitutes for ancient deities,
34, 179n10. See also specic saints
Salazar, Rafael, 1045, 106
Salves, in Tamunangue, 135, 142, 200n7
samba, 146, 205n34
San Antonio festival, 203n26. See also Tamu-
nangue
San Francisco de Guarapiche, 2, 3
San Francisco de Yare, statue to Diablos of
Yare in, 191n30
Sangronis, Nerio, 162, 163
San Juan Festival. See Fiesta de San Juan
San Juan Monumental, 3941, 41 (g. 4)
San Juan Sensacional, 42
San Pedro Parranda, 79, 80, 81 (g. 12)
Santiago, 186n7
Sanz, Bernardo, 29, 50
Sawin, Patricia, 199n4
Schechner, Richard, 167, 206n38
Schelling, Vivian, 4, 5, 92
Schneider, Peter, 205n34
Schomburgk, Robert, 185n6
Seis Corrido, in Tamunangue, 142, 143 (g.
24), 145, 162, 200n11, 206n36
Shango, 30, 178n7
Sherzer, Joel, 185n5
Silva Uzcategui, Rafael Domingo, 14647,
148, 165, 166, 205n34, 206n35
Singer, Milton, 78
slavery: cimarronaje concept and, 4951,
181n21; mentioned in Tamunangue, 151,
152; purchasing free papers and, 55,
182n28; San Juan Congo and, 5455; in
Venezuela, and Fiesta de San Juan, 29, 30
smile, in public celebrations, 165, 166 (g.
26), 205n34
Smithsonian, Festival of American Folklife
at, 16
Sobre las huellas de El Mono (Guevara Febres),
77
Soho Carnival (Greece), 15
Sojo, Juan Pablo, 47, 55, 178n6, 183n31
Sollors, Werner, 63, 189n25
Son de Negros, Tamunangue as, 147, 14853
Soto, Cristo bal, 106, 194n13, 194n15
Soto, Jesu s, 194n15
Standard Oil of New Jersey, 76, 189n22
Steel, James, 97
Stewart, John, 179n12
Stutzman, Ronald, 185n5
Tabacalera Nacional, 96
Talleres de Cultura Popular (Popular Cul-
ture Workshops), 10316, 196n22; Clavija
at, 10610, 111, 11213, 114, 115; earliest
programs of, 1045; restructured adminis-
tration of, 10916; site of, 107 (g. 17),
197n27; television programming portray-
ing, 12122, 124, 127, 197n29
Tamayo, Francisco, 148
Tamunangue, 22, 13372; adaptability of,
134, 14243, 17172, 200n7, 204n30; aes-
thetic opinion of, 14344; African inu-
ence in/origin of, 145, 147, 14853, 202n19;
Ayiyivamos in, 13536, 152, 200n9, 206n36;
Batalla (Battle) in, 135, 137 (g. 21), 145,
i n d e x 239
151, 159, 16869, 169 (g. 27), 203n25,
206n36; La Bella (Beauty) in, 13637, 145,
159, 206n36; Caballito (Pony) in, 140, 141
(g. 23), 168; core elements of, 13435; ear-
liest records of, 144, 148, 200n12; Euro-
pean inuence in, 145, 14647, 201n15; in
Festival of Tradition, 144, 16162; Galeron
in, 140, 142, 145, 159, 202n19, 206n36; in-
digenous inuence in, 145, 147, 201n16; La
Juruminga in, 138, 139 (g. 22), 145, 159,
206n36; mestizaje and, 18, 14447, 14950,
15960, 201n13, 201n16, 201n18, 203n27;
Moors and Christians dance and, 15559,
203n25; musicians performing, 13435, 136
(g. 20); origin of, and San Antonio, 156
60, 157 (g. 25), 203n24, 203n26; origin of
term, 145, 14647, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153;
La Perrendenga in, 138, 206n36; Poco a Poco
(Little by Little) in, 138, 140, 141 (g. 23),
159, 168, 206n36; promesas and, 134,
200n6; Salves in, 135, 142, 200n7; Seis Cor-
rido in, 142, 143 (g. 24), 145, 162, 200n11,
206n36; as Son de Negros, 147, 14853;
theatrical performance of, 16164, 204n30,
205n33, 206n38; womens role in, 16470,
166 (g. 26), 169 (g. 27), 171 (g. 28),
205n34, 206nn3536
El Tamunangue (Aretz), 201n17
Tatum, Chuck, 199n1
Taussig, Michael, 34, 203n27
Taylor, Jorgito, 75
Taylor, Julie, 132, 133
television: ban on tobacco advertising on, 96,
192n3; Bigott Foundations programming
for, 11628; cun as on, 12428; Encuentro
con . . . on, 11718, 196nn2324; micro pro-
gramming on, 12022, 124, 197n26, 197n29;
parody of, and folklorization of Dance of
Monkey, 86, 87 (g. 16); Talleres de Cul-
tura Popular portrayed on, 12122, 124,
127, 197n29; Tamunangue on, 162, 200n11
Teppa, Maximo, 197n29
Tinoco, Joseph Hilario, 51, 55
tobacco: ban on advertising of, 96, 192n3; re-
lationship between advertising and,
192n4. See also British American Tobacco
(BAT)
Tobacco Institute, 96
Tobacco Research Council, 96
Todd, Cecilia, 117
Torres, Arlene, 182n29
tourists: at Mexican Night of the Dead cel-
ebration, 181n25; returnees vs., 38,
179n12; viewing Tamunangue, 205n33;
visiting Curiepe, 3738, 39, 4243, 179n15,
181n25
traditions: continual changing nature of, 16
17; festivals selected as, 1516. See also Fes-
tival of Tradition; folklore
Trinidad: carnival in, 70, 170, 179n12, 204n32;
Shango identied with San Juan in, 178n7
Trujillo, Rafael, 180n20
Turner, Terence, 62
Turner, Victor, 89, 114
Un Solo Pueblo, 100, 101, 1078
Urban, Greg, 185n5
urbanization: parrandas and, 79, 190n27; Ven-
ezuelan popular culture and, 97, 193n5
Uslar Pietri, Arturo, 183n31
U.S. Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act,
192n3
Van Young, Eric, 150
Vargas, Wilfrido, 86
velorios: in Fiesta de San Juan, 33, 37, 45,
179n9; to San Juan Congo, 5254, 181n25
Venezuela: A Century of Change (Ewell), 43
Venezuela: denial of race as issue in, 5659,
182nn2930, 183n31; growth of identity as
modern state, 177n15; map of, 26 (map);
representative festive forms of, 2123; ur-
banization of, 97, 193n5
Vera, 100
Vilda, Carmelo, 99
Villa-Lobos, Hector, 201n17
Viloria, Gonzalez, 200n11, 201n15
Walker, Sheila, 55, 182n28
Wasai yadi ademi hidi festival, 89
Watanabe, John, 55
Whitten, Norman E., Jr., 29, 61, 182n29
Williams, Raymond, 5, 15, 25
Wolff, Janet, 5
women: Batalla participation by, 16869,
169 (g. 27), 206n36; festive dance role of,
170; Tamunangue role of, 16470, 166 (g.
26), 169 (g. 27), 171 (g. 28), 205n34,
206nn3536
workshops. See Talleres de Cultura Popular
(Popular Culture Workshops)
Wright, Winthrop, 58, 6061, 183n30
Yekuana, Wasai yadi ademi hidi festival of, 89
Yo hablo a Caracas (lm), 46, 180n18
Yrady, Benito, 179n14
Zamora, Jose Roca, 83
Zapata, Teresa, 106, 110, 195n15
Designer: Ina Clausen
Compositor: Binghamton Valley Composition
Text: 10/14 Palatino
Display: Snell Roundhand Script, Bauer
Bodoni
Printer: Friesens
Binder: Friesens

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