Focus on María Lionza (statue) and analyze the Legacy.
The statue quickly became an icon of Caracas, impressing both the elite of the city and its artistic circles, as well as María Lionza's followers. The followers began leaving tributes at the statue in the 1960s, and many copies are made in miniature to be placed on altars. Even as a replica, it is still given many tributes: in 2012, Herrera-Sobek wrote that "no day passes without lit candles and flowers appearing at the bottom of the sculpture", though it is dangerous to place them there due to the busy highway.In discussion of the miniature replicas created by María Lionza's followers, Canals said that these idols are less detailed but also more erotic, which he explained is part of a process of goddess sexualization (done by exaggerating typically feminine features) seen in many religious cults. Clothes are also put on them in some instances out of respect for the divine, though Canals writes that this explicitly acknowledges the sexual nature by shrouding it.In popular culture, the statue has been the inspiration for works of literature. In the 1990s, the statue was used as the cover for a series of poetry collections called The Goddess, with each edition containing a dedication to María Lionza and "her metaphor – a queen, naked, exuberant, who roams the countryside mounted on a tapir". The statue also forms a major symbolic plot point in the 2009 Margaret Mascarenhas novel The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos. Panamanian musician Rubén Blades wrote a song about the goddess that mentions the statue.In 2001, it was the inspiration for distinguished poet Yolanda Pantin's poem "The pelvic bone"; in the poem, the narrator travels into Caracas for a protest and sees the statue. The image of the pelvis – its "most notable feature" – stays in the narrator's mind, and the poem goes on to address the statue directly. In their book, Venezuela experts David Smilde and Daniel Hellinger write that, in Pantin's poem, the statue is seen to represent María Lionza as the mother of the nation, and the pelvis represents its symbolic birth. They also note that the narrator is a non-believer in terms of María Lionza, but is still drawn in by the statue and refers to it with familiarity, as well as speaking collectively, suggesting that all Venezuelans see her as their goddess and a symbol of hope in a broken nation. This imagery is reiterated later in the poem with a ray of light shining through the pelvis onto the protesters.
Margaret Mascarenhas goddess sexualization Rubén Blades pelvis María Lionza Caracas idols Yolanda Pantin tapir