The expectation was too great. A current of warm air carried all those strange smells that evoked something in me between vertigo, disgust and longing. A mix of sensations too unlikely to be taken seriously.
Part of the excitement was due to what would happen that night: under the big tent all kinds of appurtenances were being prepared to generate altered states of consciousness in those people who would participate in the coven called for a few hours later.
The children, as it has always been logically, were evicted from the big tent while there was still sunlight, so that the adults could make the preparations. We started the walk in the middle of an esplanade of land artificially prepared for that occasion. We were in the middle of a dense and immense mountain, “Sorte”, which since time beyond memory, has been the living seat of esoteric syncretism in Venezuela, bequeathed by our ancestors. It arose as a result of their struggle with their conquerors to preserve their roots, hidden from the colonizing hands.
When, in the middle of the last millennium, the Spanish took the Africans from their worthy empires, which we commonly call “tribes”, they uprooted them from their families, destroyed their settlements, raped their women, mothers and daughters and made them undertake vast voyages to the recently “discovered” America, those who survived the inhumane conditions of travel in the galleys of the ships, arrived enslaved to those lands. Slavery was not only physical: the religious doctrine practiced by the colonizers had to be practiced equally by colonized and slaves. It was not optional.
The slaves, whose body was the domain of its owner, sought a way to remain owners of their souls. Thus, within the obligatory religious practices imposed by the settlers, elements of their beliefs and faith were very cunningly introduced. This is how, eclectic, the increasingly established, recognized and with a greater number of followers, “witchcraft” in Latin America was born.
That afternoon we walked a long way. Unruly children discovering things, colors, smells and practices completely alien to our daily lives. In the middle of the mountain, through the trails, we discovered very quickly that we were not the only ones. Many other groups had erected their huge tents on different esplanades of land and, just as in our case, had evicted their children in order to carry out all their preparations.
Suddenly we found dozens of children on the banks of the small river. Some of them, the older ones, shouted in surprise and excitement that the waters were running upwards. I only saw the river running through a flat portion of the land, guarded by trees, stones and the occasional pot over firewood preparing the unique Venezuelan “sancocho”. In no way could I identify the “miracle” of the creeping river.
Just before nightfall, we returned to our tent. The feeling of astonishment that I had when I entered and saw that caused me a great shock from which today, almost thirty years later, I still cannot recover. There were countless large and small candles of all colors arranged in an area of the circle of earth, flowers, drums, veneration images made of plaster, decorated with the most beautiful and colorful nuances, strange and unknown smells that made me evoke something already vivid.
I sat in a corner with the most reverent attitude a child can have. The people around me were talking about topics incomprehensible to me, some men intoned a monotonous drumbeat and some people, as I understood, the most advanced in the hierarchy, smoked cigars, with their eyes fixed on some point in space, diverted from time to time to read the language of fire and ash. As the hours passed (or the minutes, I can’t remember exactly) some people got up from the ground and, to the pulsing rhythm of the drums, dislocated their bodies until they became bundles of convulsed limbs caressing nothing or everything… What was happening inside of their minds was a complete mystery.
By that time a fiery yellow halo covered everything. The spiritual aura was dyed the color of the candles and ferocious songs invoking “strength” boosted the feverish movements of the dancers. Each dancer, immersed in his wild-eyed, ecstatic-breathing fervor, had been possessed, with his consent of course, by some powerful spirit sometimes summoned, sometimes not. The transformed faces, the sudden and impudent movements, the frenzy that increased with the hours, mixed with liquor, tobacco, candles and drums, had nothing in keeping with what had been up to that moment my existence as the youngest daughter in a cultured family of middle class.
On the improvised and dusty dance floor I saw indigenous chiefs martyred by the Spaniards four hundred years ago, emancipated slaves, leaders of the patriotic independence movement, personalities of various world historical events of the past, and even the Virgin Mary and a disciple of Jesus.
From time to time, the fury of energy would stop in the air and then we would realize that someone somewhere in the tent had something to say. Thus, I heard words, all incomprehensible to my childish mind, in which I sensed a profound esoteric value. I heard premonitory plans, even loving and kind advice for some of those present. I heard verbal manifestations in other languages, some identifiable and some not.
Over the course of the night, the aura of the place and the people changed from that intense flaming yellow tone, passing through different degrees of ocher, reddish ocher until, towards the end of the night, it had come to look completely brown. My eyes, which had been battling sleep so as not to miss any of that stupor, surrendered to the worn golden color. At that time, there was nothing else to do.