Sorte — the mountain of María Lionza

OVERVIEW

The Cerro María Lionza Natural Monument — Sorte mountain — is a forested massif about 6 km from Chivacoa in Yaracuy state, renamed for the goddess at the centre of one of Venezuela's most widespread religious movements, a blend of indigenous, African and Catholic belief shaped by Kardecist spiritism.

HISTORY

In the main legend María Lionza, daughter of an indigenous chief of Yaracuy, was sent to live on the mountain and swallowed by an anaconda at the river; from inside it she begged the mountain for help, and she dissolved and merged with it. The anthropologist Angelina Pollak dates the rituals at Sorte to the early 1920s. In 2011 estimates put followers at 10–30% of Venezuelans, and the Tulane anthropologist Wade Glenn estimated that about 60% had taken part at some time; some 200,000 people joined the rites that year.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

People come to Sorte, in the record's own words, seeking strength, healing, and to contact the souls of the dead. Mediums channel spirits arranged in "courts" — indigenous, African, Viking, the Liberator's — under the Three Powers, María Lionza, Guaicaipuro and Negro Felipe; devotees cleanse in the rivers to receive them and enter trance, sometimes speaking in tongues; firewalking (the baile de las brasas) is part of the rite. The entry records a living practice of spirit contact as its practitioners and the anthropologists who studied them describe it.

VISITING

Reached from Chivacoa. This is an active religious site; the October pilgrimage centres on 12 October. Go as a guest, ask before photographing anyone, and do not treat the rites as a spectacle.