Venezuela's Dancing Devils make UN World Heritage List

Venezuela's historic and very unique tradition of masked devil dancing, known as the Diablos Danzantes, which takes place in some 14 towns and villages each year to celebrate the Catholic Feast of Corpus Christi, has been chosen by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for inclusion in its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.

The other six traditions chosen included: a chanted form of oral poetry practiced by the Bedouin of Oman; the Fiesta de Patios in Cordova, Spain, which preserves traditional songs and dance; the Mesir Macunu festival in Turkey, which commemorates the recovery of the mother of Suleiman the magnificent from a disease; the elaborate process of creating Romanian Horezu ceramics; and the practise of falconry in Austria and Hungary.

The decision to include Venezuela's foremost folk tradition on its list came after a week-long meeting of the UNESCO Cultural Heritage Committee at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

The UN-body hopes that by highlighting disappearing traditions in this way it can help prevent them from fading into extinction and protect the world’s intangible cultural heritage for future generations.

The spectacular masked dancing festivals celebrated in Venezuela on the moveable feast of Corpus Christi (the 9th Thursday after Holy Thursday) continue a centuries-old tradition brought from Spain.

In the country's sugar and cacao plantations, where large numbers of slaves were brought from Africa to sweat for Spanish masters in the fields and forests, the masked dances took on a special significance.

They represented an inversion of the usual power relationship between master and slave, when men with masks to hide their faces took over the town and made mischief without fear of retribution. It was also the one day when a group usually barred from entering the church during Sunday mass could express its defiance and rejection of the status quo.

Nowadays, people dance as a way of requesting a favour from God, to help a sick family member or to resolve a difficult situation for the family. The men who have asked for this intervention are called "promeseros" ("pledgers") because they make a solemn pledge to dance in the festivities every year for a certain number of years or for life, known as "pagando promesa" ("paying the pledge").

The devil dancing begins the day before Corpus Christi with a meeting of the Devil Dancer's Confraternity, private dances and blessing ceremonies with holy water, scapulars, amulets and prayers to protect the men and boys who are about to dance from any spiritual harm.

From sunrise the devils parade through town, dancing around to the sound of cuatro (four-stringed guitar like a ukelele) and maracas, and causing mischief, mayhem and general devilment. About midday, the masked devils gather in front of the church, led by the chief devil and his whip-wielding capataz (overseer). In front of the gathered crowds, they make a mock attack on the church that is repelled by the priest holding aloft the consecrated hosts of the eucharist.

Three times the devils attack and three times they are repelled. Finally, with good having triumphed over evil the devils prostrate themselves before the host. With their masks now removed, the devils continue to dance through the streets and the party begins in earnest.

The most celebrated devil dancers are in San Francisco de Yare, which is close to Caracas in the Valles del Tuy. Dressing from head to foot in red, the Yare devils carry maracas and wear multicolored horned masks made from papier mache.

In the coastal cacao plantation of Chuao, famous for its high-quality cocoa beans, isolation has helped preserve many early elements of devil dancing, including costumes made of colored rags and black and white masks rooted in African traditions.

Further Information:
The Dancing Devils of Yare in Literature

How the Dancing Devils of Yare Got Their Distinctive Red Costumes

Short Documentary on the Dancing Devils of Chuao

Trip Tips: Venezuelan Festival Calendar 2010

If you want to plan a visit to venezuela, the first thing you need to know is when the public holidays fall.

There's no point visiting during the main holidays of Christmas, Easter or Carnival unless you specifically want to see one of the many local festivals that take place during these times or if you're one of those people who feels lonely without a horde of people to keep them company on the beach.

Venezuelans love their holidays and will do anything to extend them, so carnival celebrations won't start this year on Monday, 15 February, but on Friday, 12 February, or the Thursday before that and will most likely extend beyond that in most places to Ash Wednesday on the 17th.

This is something the Venezuelans call a "puente", literally a bridge, a neat way of stretching holidays out between weekends to maximize the party time available.

The same holds true for other moveable feast such as Easter (Semana Santa in Spanish), which officially starts on Good Friday on 2 April and runs through Easter Monday on 5 April. Expect the celebrations to start well before Friday and extend well beyond Monday.

1 January - New Year's Day
6 January -The Three Kings (Reyes Magos)
15-16 February - Carnival
19 March - San Jose
28 March -Palm Sunday - Los Palmeros descend from the Avila mountain with palm fronds for a mass in the local church in the plaza in Chacao, Caracas.
1-4 April - Easter (Semana Santa)
19 April - Declaration of Independence
1 May - International Workers Day
3 June - Corpus Christi - Devil Dancers start the celebrations early on Thursday in San Francisco de Yare, Chuao, Patanemo and 11 other towns.
23-24 June - Feast of Saint John the Baptist has a party atmosphere along the coast, where statues of the saint are taken out of the churches to dance to Afro-Venezuelan drumming.
24 June - Battle of Carabobo. The decisive battle in Venezuela's war of independence against Spanish control is celebrated with military parades.
29 June - San Pedro and San Pablo
5 July - Venezuelan Independence
24 July - Simon Bolivar's Birthday
12 October - Indigenous Resistance Day, a public holiday formerly known as Columbus Day. It is also the biggest day for the Cult of Maria Lionza, with thousands of her devotees travelling to the Mountain of Sorte in Yaracuy State to bathe in the river, take part in cleansing rituals and watch the mass fire walking ceremony that closes the day.
7 December - Immaculate Conception
25 December - Christmas Day

How the Yare Devils Got Their Red Threads

1948 – The Year of the Dancing Devil

In December 1947, in a landslide victory, novelist Romulo Gallegos became Venezuela’s first democratically-elected president. To celebrate his inauguration in February 1948, poet Juan Liscano came up with the idea of a mounting an ambitious spectacle in Caracas that would bring together the most important folk traditions in the country.

The two-hour show, held in the Nuevo Circo bullring in the centre of Caracas, was called "A Festival of Tradition: Songs and Dances of Venezuela."

More than 500 dancers, singers and musicians were brought to the capital by plane, bus, boat and mule.

For the first time, Guajiro Indians from the deserts of Zulia State were to perform their sacred dances alongside Afro-Venezuelan drummers from the Caribbean coast.

And there was more: foot-stomping Joropos from the Llanos, Chimbangueles in honour of the black saint San Benito, and the Dancing Devils of San Francisco de Yare.

The Red Devils

At first Liscano couldn’t get the Devils of Yare to attend: "I convinced them with the argument that we were doing this festival to show the foreigners that were coming that the Devils of San Francisco de Yare knew how to dance, something which they doubted."

More significantly, Education Minister Luis Beltran Pietro Figueroa, sent yards of red material so that the Devils could make new costumes for the event.

So this was the first time in their history that the Yare Devils were all dressed in red. Before that, the arreadores (in charge of keeping order) and the cajeros (drummers) would have worn white suits and the other devils would have made do with bright outfits made from colourful patches taken from old clothes.

But it wasn’t going to be easy for Liscano to get the Devils to perform.

Two days by mule

Nowadays it takes just over an hour to drive the 78 km from Caracas to Yare but for the 35 members of Yare's Devil Dancing Society who made the trip in 1948 it took two days by mule. This was the first time any of them had been away from home and when they arrived some of them had second thoughts.

The Devils had only ever danced on the Feast of Corpus Christi and were wary of performing without the usual preparations: attending mass and having their masks blessed by the local priest.

To convince them Liscano had to arrange for them to attend a morning mass every day they were expected to rehearse and performing. But he forgot to get permission from the mayor’s office.

The members of the cofradia went to their first mass in Caracas in a church in El Valle, and they came dressed for Corpus Christi in their full devil-dancing regalia. As the priest held aloft the Holy Sacrament they took their cue and began a frenetic dance in the entrance of the church.

The noise of the drums and maracas was so loud that it brought the local police, who promptly arrested the Devils for disturbing the peace and wearing masks outside of Carnival. Fortunately, they were soon released.

They do like to be beside the seaside

The Devils had another request for Liscano: "…one day they came to tell me of their greatest desire: to see the sea before returning to their home town."

It’s hard to understand the isolation of small towns like Yare back in 1948, but none of the Devils' had ever seen the sea before, and their bus trip to Macuto, on the central coast, was a revelation.

Liscano writes in his book Sacred Fires: "… when they discovered that great blue stain, under a wide, cloudless sky, they were seized with a kind of ecstasy, a profound feeling of respect for majestic Mother Nature who had made such beautiful things."

"… they entered the water in silence, in a state of reverie, and some of them plunged their hands into the water in a sort of ritual gesture."

The end of the festival, the start of their fame

The Festival of Tradition was a huge success. So many people turned up on the opening night that it had to be extended for four more nights. In total 25,000 people watched the show.

It was an event the like of which Venezuela had never seen and was never to see again.

The party was soon over for Romulo Gallegos too, on 24 November 1948 he was ousted in a military coup and forced into exile for the next ten years.

For the Dancing Devils of Yare, however, it was just the beginning. Soon, the annual Corpus Christi celebrations in Yare would become one more attraction for tourists to visit, like the mountains of Merida, the spectacular Angel Falls and the blue Caribbean waters that had so captivated the Devils.

By Russell Maddicks

Click here for an article on the Dancing Devils of Yare in literature

Click here for a video of the Dancing Devils in the cacao plantation of Chuao