Beyond the Altar: Gender, Resistance, and Ritual Cross-Dressing in the Cult of María Lionza

“There is a lot of discrimination against the LGBTIQ+ community, both inside and outside the Sorte mountain (Yaracuy, Venezuela), but Queen María Lionza is love and affection, and as many spiritual beings have said, we are deeply cherished by her. “We are here fulfilling a mandate first and foremost from God and our Majesty María Lionza. Nothing else matters,” says Wander Rodríguez, a practitioner and medium of this Venezuelan cult.

In Venezuela, Spiritism as a religion is part of our identity; popular ritual practices that hark back to our ancestors, to colonial times, and which over the years have evolved into a vibrant and contemporary national cult, that centers on the figure of María Lionza as the principal protector of waters and the charms of nature, a figure who challenges the notions of the patriarchal state and opposes monotheistic religions.

I had read about and witnessed rituals of this religious system, but now I was seeing them for the first time in their most important sites, such as Quibayo and Sorte, in Yaracuy State, Venezuela. These sites are part of the Cerro María Lionza Natural Monument -popularly known as the Montaña de Sorte- and are visited year-round by practitioners or caravans (as these groups are commonly called), but on October 11 and 12, thousands flock there. This allows us to speak of Indigenous Resistance and how we reclaim our oral histories and ethnic origins.

María Lionza is regarded as a Queen, Goddess, Mother, and Guardian. However, based on readings, observations, and field interviews, it is clear that Venezuelan Spiritism must be approached through the lens of gender and sexual diversity, perspectives that are essential to the discussion of the cult, its entities, and its various courts, such as the Black Court, the Viking Court, the Malandra Court, the Chamarrera Court, and the Medical Court, among others. Well, the Montaña de Sorte is a setting where gender stereotypes are called into question.

In his ethnographies and writings, Martín Ferrándiz offers interesting reflections on the body and masculinity within this religion, and how male mediums -operating from a position of stigmatized masculinity- resisted possession by female spirits, a phenomenon that did not occur as frequently among female Spiritists. This is why my encounter in Sorte with the María Dolores Rodríguez Caravan and its powers -led by Osmer Padrón and his godchildren- allowed me to explore these aspects as well.

Osmer Padrón, Wander Rodríguez, and Jhonaiker Díaz are male mediums in this caravan who work with female entities from the Black Court, such as María Dolores Rodríguez, Francisca Martínez, Rita Encarnación, and La Negra Tomasa; but in Osmer’s case, he also channels Mister Piter, a male entity from the Viking Court, a warrior and healer.

All of them belong to the LGBTIQ+ community, and Wander Rodríguez told me, “Within the religion, I am one more servant of María Lionza. We’ve made the decision to unite as religious brothers and sisters; for example, there are many processions here today helping and supporting our brother Osmer Padrón, who is leading this year’s “Baile en Vidrio” (Glass Dance Ritual), so here there are several processions fulfilling a mandate from Queen María Lionza namely, unity.”

Regarding the practice of embodying female entities from the Black Court, Rodríguez tells me: “Most of us spiritualists in the LGBTIQ+ community find ourselves dressed in dresses it’s not because we want to… Right now, there’s a lot of talk from people saying that men who want to be women join the Black Court just to wear dresses, but that’s not the case. When a spiritual entity is a woman or was a woman, she always seeks to be fully covered, to cover her breasts, and why? Because they feel exposed; they feel alive. There are many spiritual entities, such as the Negra I work with -who is Rita Encarnación Martínez Chávez- as well as María Dolores Rodríguez Rodríguez, Francisca Martínez Martínez, and Negra Tomasa, who have their dresses made for them. It’s not because we want to wear dresses; if these were our own bodies, we’d walk around shirtless, but no, they always… Spirituality always seeks to feel alive; that’s why they put on their dress, their turban, and some even seek out a flower.”

There are curious details regarding what the entities ask of their “banks” -people who also take care of the mediums’ bodies- such as tobaccos and aguardiente, but in the case of the black women, just as they ask for their dresses, they also ask for makeup and make gestures as if looking at themselves in a mirror.

Wander tells me that, in the case of Rita Encarnación, “her favorite flower is the cayena, since it was the flower with which she learned to perform her magic,” while she labels “other flowers as hypocrites, since those other flowers remain alive for many days after being plucked from nature, whereas the cayena once plucked from nature wilt immediately.”

All of this demonstrates that Venezuelan spiritism must be examined through a gender lens, from a feminist perspective, reflecting on the power dynamics established between men and women, the presence of ritual cross-dressing during trance and possession rituals, and other aspects that enrich our understanding of this important Venezuelan religion.