Siparia and La Div­ina Pas­to­ra are syn­ony­mous, and the very iden­ti­ty of the lit­tle town is as­so­ci­at­ed with the pres­ence of its pa­tron saint. There are many myths and leg­ends sur­round­ing the ori­gins of the stat­ue, which has deep spir­i­tu­al and tem­po­ral sig­nif­i­cance for many.

Since time im­memo­r­i­al, the plateau of Siparia had been home to a large com­mu­ni­ty of Warao na­tives from the Orinoco Delta re­gion of Venezuela. Their pri­ma­ry land­ing place was Quinam beach, from whence a nar­row foot­path led to the set­tle­ment and oth­er parts of the is­land.

In 1758, a par­ty of Ca­puchin monks from Spain, found­ed a mis­sion here, com­plete with a small ajoupa to serve as a chapel. One of the ma­jor mon­u­men­tal events of this pe­ri­od is that in 1795, Pope Pius VI de­creed La Div­ina Pas­to­ra (The Di­vine Shep­herdess) the pa­tron saint of all Ca­puchin mis­sions.

There is no men­tion of the stat­ue of La Div­ina Pas­to­ra from this pe­ri­od of the mis­sion. One un­sup­port­ed claim is that it was brought to the chapel cir­ca 1800 by a dy­ing priest from the Cumana Mis­sion in Venezuela, who claimed it saved his life. A pop­u­lar sto­ry con­cern­ing the stat­ue was re­count­ed in 1887 as fol­lows: "Tra­di­tion says that this stat­ue was picked up by Spaniards in the depths of the for­est; it re­mained here for some time, and was then re­moved to Oropouche Church.

It made no stay there, how­ev­er, for on the morn­ing af­ter its ar­rival it was found to have mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared dur­ing the night, and, on search be­ing in­sti­tut­ed, it was dis­cov­ered in the pre­cise spot of the for­est where it had first ap­peared."

Fr Poiri­er, the padre in the 1840s, does not write of the stat­ue's ex­is­tence, but by 1878, the feast of La Div­ina Pas­to­ra was al­ready be­ing cel­e­brat­ed two Sun­days af­ter East­er. The im­age of the Di­vine Shep­herdess resided in the lit­tle tapia church, rest­ing on a mound of earth where homage was paid.

Waraos from the Orinoco, lo­cal Catholics and a new el­e­ment, Hin­dus, made the feast day bois­ter­ous and live­ly. Pil­grims would en­camp and stream in­to the chapel to make of­fer­ings to La Div­ina In 1878, Fr Ar­mand Masse, a French priest, wrote this ob­ser­va­tion:

"Some Waraoons dressed in noth­ing are at the door of the church. A band of coolies ar­rives. They sing all night long. At dawn they go to bathe and then come to the chapel. They have brought two cocks which they will of­fer to the vir­gin (they call her Si­pa­ree Mai). To make this of­fer­ing they go to the foot of the al­tar with the cock and say­ing their prayers in a loud voice with arms ex­tend­ed, they go to the back of the church, un­tie the cock and set it free in the church."

Next week we will ex­am­ine more of the ori­gins of Si­pa­ree Mai and the cel­e­bra­tions.