María Lionza is a large statue depicting the titular goddess, María Lionza, riding a tapir. The original is located on Sorte mountain in Yaracuy, said to be the goddess' home. A replica is located between lanes of the Francisco Fajardo freeway next to the University City campus of the Central University of Venezuela, in Caracas. The original was created by Alejandro Colina in 1951 to sit outside the university's Olympic Stadium for that year's Bolivarian Games; it was moved to the highway in 1953 and, after several years in storage with the replica on display in its place, was illicitly relocated to Sorte in 2022. The replica is a cast made by Silvestre Chacón in 2004; it has received generally negative reactions, and its construction damaged the original. It remains on the highway, while another replica is also at Sorte. Colina often depicted indigenous figures like María Lionza, and it is said to be his most famous sculpture. In the statue, the goddess is shown nude, which is unusual for representations of her. Nevertheless, the statue, and versions of it, are worshiped by her followers.
Background
The statue is of Venezuelan goddess María Lionza, a cult figure and nature goddess from Yaracuy; the artist, Alejandro Colina, made many sculptures based on indigenous folklore. In the 1920s he spent eight years living in some of western Venezuela's indigenous communities, and later chose to depict related iconography in his monumental sculptures. According to Venezuelan folklorist Gilberto Antolínez, in the 1940s Colina was also involved in a movement to mythologize María Lionza. Antolínez recalled: "In 1939 we created a social movement aimed at extolling the ancestral values of Venezuela. I myself, the sculptor Alejandro Colina, and the architect Hermes Romero joined together in a group [...] We organized a series of conferences and popularizing events and [...] used such occasions to 'mythologize' María Lionza, both in her legend and in the sculpture that nowadays stands on the main Caracas highway". Social anthropologist Roger Canals, who directed the 2016 film A goddess in motion: María Lionza in Barcelona, noted that in the religious cult of María Lionza, idols were not traditionally used, with most worship occurring in natural spots up to the early 20th century. María Lionza's followers grew in number the 1950s, and so depictions of her increased. Though the depictions of her in rituals and on altars vary, the most common are either that of her face, showing a fair-skinned mestizo queen, or an image based on Colina's statue, depicting an indigenous Venezuelan.
Construction and location
Olympic Stadium
The monumental statue was originally made to sit outside the Central University of Venezuela (UCV)'s Olympic Stadium for the 1951 Bolivarian Games; during the Bolivarian Games, the Olympic flame was held in the pelvis at the top of the statue. There is another monumental statue, Francisco Narváez' El Atleta, that is also located by the Olympic Stadium and was made in 1951. Unlike the other works of art at the university, which were part of the modernist Synthesis of the Arts movement under the design of architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva, the statue of María Lionza was commissioned by the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who wanted to make her a symbol of Venezuela. Villanueva had not wanted the statue in the campus, as it was not in line with his design principles.
Francisco Fajardo freeway
In the years after the Bolivarian Games, with the expansion of the city, the road system was made larger and the new Francisco Fajardo freeway passed closely around the campus near the stadium. In 1953 the statue was moved a short distance to its prominent location on the highway. The university had been asking for it to be removed, aware of the growing cult status of María Lionza and fearing that rituals would begin to be performed by her followers on campus grounds. Pérez Jiménez shared the concern: though he had elevated her to a national symbol, his dictatorship followed the Catholic Church and heavily persecuted other belief systems under a law enacted against paganism. As he did not want the symbol of María Lionza to become an icon of a religious cult, he ordered the statue to be moved to what was believed to be an inaccessible and dangerous location, between lanes in the center divide of the busy highway. The Guardian reported in 2019 that while the Catholic Church of Venezuela still disapproves of the indigenous religion, it "has long since abandoned its attempts to suppress it". Though located just outside of the university, the statue is generally seen as part of the campus environs. It is under the authority of the university, and is protected as part of the campus World Heritage Site.
Sorte mountain On 2 October 2022, the Institute of Cultural Heritage (IPC) removed the original statue from storage, apparently doing so without the knowledge or permission of the university; on 3 October, UCV and the Scientific, Criminal and Criminalistic Investigation Service Corps (CICPC) forensic police announced on social media that the statue had gone missing. The IPC, a government agency, quickly admitted to taking the statue, explaining they did so to "protect, preserve and relocate the statue... in accordance with its historical, [national cultural] and spiritual significance"; Ernesto Villegas, Minister of Culture, accused the university of having "virtually kidnapped" the sculpture years before. The Venezuelan Federation of Spiritualism said that the statue would be placed at the foot of Sorte mountain, a spiritual home of the religion, where another replica is already located; the IPC only wanted it to be on public display, though requested it be moved to the forest area where the María Lionza legend originated. Runrunes reported that the statue arrived in Yaracuy on 4 October, received with a celebration dedicated to the goddess, with El País saying that the statue had been moved to Quibayo, on Sorte mountain, in time for the 12 October worship day.
Appearance
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