Saints of Venezuela: reclaiming the religious fiestas of slaves.

As a child growing up in the barrios of west Caracas, Venezuela, during the 1950s, Williams Ochoa heard the elders describe the religious fiestas that took place in the rural provinces. Their stories of worshipping saints with elegant costumes and rhythmic drumming intrigued Ochoa and made him want to learn more. Each fiesta, which generally lasted three or four days, publicly celebrated a patron saint with music and dancing.

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When he grew up, Ochoa founded Grupo Autoctono in 1974 to research and reproduce traditional dances, drumming, and music. It was only the beginning. Ochoa, now in his late 50s, has become one of the main organizers of the fiestas in the barrio of El Carmen in La Vega where he lives. And he has raised the profile of the fiestas by organizing a series of national celebrations of Black saints.

While many descendants of African slaves and mixed race Venezuelans have not historically considered themselves Black, the revival of popular Afro-Venezuelan fiestas have been promoting new forms of Black identity. And it helps that the fiestas for the Black saints are flourishing alongside the organizing work that brought President Hugo Chavez into office in 1998. Community leaders like Ochoa hope that Afro-Venezuelans--who make up 14 percent of the population--can find community and hope through these old-time celebrations. In the last five years alone, the religious fiestas have grown and are now celebrated in more than 40 barrios in the city of Caracas.

Yet even as the fiestas grow in number and size, the gang violence that permeates these neighborhoods continues. A few years ago, Ochoa's son was murdered during one of the celebrations as the young man confronted a gang that was disrupting the fiesta. Despite his great loss, Ochoa insists that the fiestas, rooted in the traditions of Venezuela's ex-slave communities, will give Black youth and elders hope for the future.

Reclaiming Popular Fiestas

Venezuela, like most places, remains mired in its racism. Three years ago, the Caracas daily paper El Universal published cartoons of President Chavez as a monkey, parodying his full lips and broad nose. When the Chavez government was briefly overthrown by a right-wing coup d'etat in 2002, opposition leaders joked that the Black Minister of Education, Aristobulo Isturiz, had taken refuge in the local zoo. These remarks were published, aired and accepted by large sections of the middle and upper classes, who have opposed the country's leftist (and mixed-race) president.

In spite of this, Afro-Venezuelans have struggled to maintain their culture. Slavery ended here much earlier than in Cuba and Brazil, where Blacks developed religions like Santeria and Candomble. Free Blacks in Venezuela's cities, however, absorbed European culture and habits, and during postcolonial times, Black identity was even further submerged with the myth of a mixed-race, or cafe con leche, society.

Afro-Venezuelan culture could be found in popular religious fiestas in rural provinces with large Black populations, such as Miranda and Aragua. The religious fiestas include the much-loved San Juan and Diablos Danzantes (Dancing Devils) and were historically intended for the worship of Catholic saints. On Catholic feast days, slaves were permitted to gather freely, and they pretended to worship white saints such as St. John, all the while incorporating their own African rituals.

As Blacks moved to the cities, their cultural practices stayed behind. But in the 1980s, community leaders such as Ochoa and Edgar "el Gordo" Perez of Caracas began to reclaim these cultural traditions in the cities as "Afro" culture and history. In a country where the word "Black" derogatorily refers to poor city folks, el Gordo says the fiestas give him a chance to assert his Black identity in a positive way. "I feel super-privileged to be Black," he says.

The re-emergence of the fiestas in the cities has been part of the mass politicization that began in Venezuela in the '90s. Following a debt crisis in the '80s, neoliberal policies that shifted resources away from social services, and growing class and racial inequalities, people in the barrios began organizing. And transnational influences also played a role in shaping Black identity. Outside of the headquarters of the Grupo Autoctono in barrio Carmen, the local hip-hop collective Familia Negra (Black Family) have spray painted a mural of Malcolm X and rapper Tupac Shakur.

Gangs and Urban Violence

Fiesta organizers hope to reclaim public spaces that in recent years have been occupied by violent gangs in the barrios. Crime and urban tensions have spiraled in Venezuela since the 1980s. In 1999, the homicide rate in Venezuela jumped 20 percent from the previous year. In Caracas, a city of 5 million people, the number of homicides sometimes reaches the hundred mark on weekends. In many barrios, gangs of mostly male youth dominate the streets. The gangs make it difficult for residents to gather in common areas and walk the streets at night.

Five years ago, Ochoa began to organize the fiesta of San Juan in barrio El Carmen. He saw the public celebration as a way of reclaiming public space for the residents of the community.

It was during a procession of the effigy of San Juan through barrio Carmen that Ochoa's 17-year-old-son Williams Alexander was killed while confronting gang members who were trying to disperse the procession. Alexander had reprimanded the gang members three times. They left, threatening to come back and shoot him. Nobody thought that they would actually do that, Ochoa said. Yet at the end of the procession they returned and shot him several times.

"It was very difficult and painful, everyone in the barrio went to find the guys, but they had escaped," said Ochoa.

Through the tragedy of his son's death, Ochoa has struggled to understand the meaning of violence among youth. For Ochoa, crime and violence are generated through poverty and a lack of employment.

"While there is no employment, education or constructive activities; while they keep pulling down basketball courts; while there are no spaces of recreation for the kids; what we have is a bubbling pot of delinquents," said Ochoa. "This is the only form of expression that these young people have in the face of so much rage and impotence at not having work, not having money to pay for education, not having food at home."

The youth gangs continue to disrupt the fiestas. In July, there was a shootout during the San Juan procession in barrio Carmen and one woman was injured. But Ochoa has faith that involving the youth of the barrio in organizing fiestas will help to deter them from gang life, as they choose instead to participate in the social justice struggles of the community.

"My son died, but come what may, we will never stop the fiesta of San Juan and we won't forget the kids of the barrio, because it is for them that we are rescuing these traditions."

Sujatha Fernandes is currently working on a book, In the Spirit of Negro Primero: Historical Memory and Culture in the Making of Urban Social Movements in Caracas.