Research: Meyby Ugueto-Ponce

Photos: Franklin Perozo

The Celebrations that arise around the Catholic image of San Juan Bautista, happen ​​in Venezuela during the month of June. In Curiepe, an Afro-Venezuelan community in the subregion of Barlovento Miranda state, located in the northern central coast of Venezuela. It is not only celebrated on June 24 as corresponds to the Catholic calendar, but other days of the month and even in other months of the year.

The curieperos celebrate the calling, Ringing of drums June 1, the eve of St. John june 23rd, the birth of San Juan Bautista on June 24, the closure on June 25; and the following Saturday June 24 a Wake to San Juan Congo is held, a willfully built image by the request of the curieperos himself generations ago. Finally, and after June has ended, young curieperos have resumed the commemoration of the “Martyrdom of St. John,” whose religious ceremony is held on August 29 according to the Bible, to remember the beheading of the prophet by order of Herod. Also, in the last 10 years they have held “wakes and vigils”, although very few, to the image of San Juan Bautista, in months other than those mentioned.

For many cultures around the world, the summer solstice is the reason for ritual ceremonies given to the fact that the sun is in its full splendor. June 21 creates the conditions that determine fertility and harvest times. This has given way to symbolic elaborations about this relationship, where several elements like fire, water, the structures rituals create for men where the reversal of the roll is predominant, divination, celebration, exchange, etc. Because of this, some researchers have suggested the start of this festival to have been before Christianity in Europe, and are geared to think that the Catholic Church coincides the birth of John the prophet with that period to control what they called “pagan rituals’ ‘ in Europe. This strategy of religious imposition was also carried to America during the process of conquest and colonization, where the cult of Catholic God was imposed on both Indigenous populations and on those forcibly brought to the continent from Africa. The same ordering principle was applied in the Americas and the Caribbean (in this case from Spanish) at the time of colonization: San Juan is erected as the recipient of all that “pagan” that could and should be channeled through Christianity. The various religious systems of the enslaved Africans were deemed uncivilized, pagan, evil, etc. by the Spanish and the figure who could channel these elements, concentrating them all in one period of the year, through John the Baptist. This is how the processes of cultural imposition and eventually cultural links between the two systems were produced: assimilation, transformation and cultural appropriation. We believe that African people and their descendants built a way to to make this imposed system their own and resignify the Catholic meaning of the festivals to a culture that was created in America, new, with new individuals and new geographical spaces, but with an African cultural horizon that still persists in our communities. That is to say, in the Venezuelan context this celebration has taken on a particular significance to the town that maintains it. From the period of colonization and the relationships established by cultural groups at that stage of history to the present, the festival has become a local expression of the states, with different modes of participation of each other.

In Venezuela, the celebration in honor of San Juan Bautista is one of the most popular, and takes place in the most central and northern coastal states of the country: Miranda, Capital District, Aragua, Carabobo, Yaracuy, Vargas.

Specifically in Curiepe, this tradition dates back to at least 1721, a date which is considered the founding of the town. The captain of the militia company Morenos Libres de Caracas, Juan del Rosario Blanco asked the King of Spain permission to found a town. This request is made ​​through a memorial that sends the monarch in the year of 1715. From that year until 1721 a long litigation that had a small break on June 10, 1721 with the arrival of a car where it allowed free Blacks to settle in the territory. The news arrives to town on June 24, just with the celebration of the feast of San Juan Bautista, symbolically sealing elements to this holy celebration with the birth of the town.

The current organization of the fiesta is in charge of “The Society San Juan Bautista “. The members: children, youth and adults, gather at a time of year to organize activities concerning the fiesta. There is a monthly contribution from members used to cover the costs of the celebration.