JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Rediscovering the almost forgotten Warao heritage

by

20120813

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored