Zahra Gor­don

For sis­ters Casil­lan Caber­rea and Es­ther Cu­pid, art has been key to their re­dis­cov­ery of an al­most for­got­ten Warao her­itage. Both Caber­rea and Cu­pid spoke of their "full-blood­ed Warao" moth­er at their one-day ex­hib­it, The In­au­gur­al Na­tive Warao In­di­an Art Ex­hi­bi­tion, at the San Fer­nan­do Hill on Fri­day. The pieces-four paint­ings and more than 50 pieces of pot­tery-were sim­ple, us­ing most­ly earth tones and pri­ma­ry colours. Repet­i­tive de­signs, dots, sym­bols rep­re­sent­ing the sun, the moon, the stars and the seas were ev­i­dent in near­ly every piece. The sim­plic­i­ty may be rem­i­nis­cent of the Warao-in­flu­enced up­bring­ing in Pa­lo Seco that Caber­rea and Cu­pid de­scribed. "We grew up on a farm, hunt­ing and fish­ing, and we were al­ways told sto­ries about our grand­par­ents com­ing from Venezuela," said Caber­rea.

Caber­rea said her grand­par­ents came to Trinidad in the ear­ly 1920s to work in the co­coa fields. Her fam­i­ly was just one of many Amerindi­an fam­i­lies who con­tin­ued to move be­tween the is­lands as Nicholas J Saun­ders points out in The Peo­ples of the Caribbean: "In some parts of Trinidad there is al­most cer­tain­ly some blood of the Venezue­lan Warao Amerindi­an who up un­til 1930 would jour­ney to Trinidad as their an­ces­tors had done for mil­len­nia in or­der to trade par­rots, hunt­ing dogs and ham­mocks." Cu­pid said she and her sib­lings on­ly re­cent­ly grasped the full mean­ing of their an­ces­try. "We al­ways knew our moth­er was full-blood­ed Warao In­di­an, but it wasn't rel­e­vant to us at that point in time. Af­ter we joined the com­mu­ni­ty and start­ed learn­ing about the his­to­ry, we re­alised how im­por­tant it is and as that hap­pened our work start­ed to de­vel­op more," re­lat­ed Cu­pid, who added that she and Caber­rea learned to draw and paint from their fa­ther.

Caber­rea al­so de­signs cos­tumes for chil­dren's mas bands. The com­mu­ni­ty Cu­pid spoke of is the Warao Com­mu­ni­ty of the south­west­ern penin­su­la. Last year, the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­gan ag­i­tat­ing for con­sti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion as the first peo­ple of T&T-they came be­fore Christo­pher Colum­bus and, they say, be­fore oth­er Amerindi­an tribes. Ear­li­er this year the group worked with the UWI De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts on Na­tion Dance, at even in which Caber­rea per­formed in a play, al­so on the San Fer­nan­do Hill. Most pieces were un­ti­tled but Cu­pid-who signs art­work "Jan"-wrote a po­em to frame the col­lec­tion:

Earth Song

Jour­ney Through Earth Songs

With beau­ty be­fore us, now we walk

With beau­ty be­hind us, now we walk...

With beau­ty flow­ing through us, now we walk

On a path of peace with all the cre­ations of the Great Spir­it

Even the space for the ex­hi­bi­tion was cho­sen be­cause the San Fer­nan­do Hill is an earth god of the Warao peo­ple, said Caber­rea. The ex­hi­bi­tion was gen­er­al­ly the­mat­i­cal­ly co­he­sive, but the pieces which were rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al rather than ab­stract seemed to be un­re­lat­ed. How­ev­er, Cu­pid said al­though the pieces ar­tic­u­late some part of Warao his­to­ry, her piece Deep Di­vine de­pict­ed a clear blue sky ,which she said rep­re­sent­ed "the cross­ing of the wa­ter, the jour­ney be­tween Venezuela, the Orinoco Delta and Trinidad, a re­flec­tion of the wa­ter and its spir­i­tu­al­i­ty."

To see more of their work con­tact Casil­lan Caber­rea at 352-8460 or Es­ther Cu­pid at 307-4726.