Venezuelan Embassy marks St John the Baptist Day in Lopinot

The Venezuelan embassy commemorated St John the Baptist Day, June 23, with a photographic exhibition at the Lopinot Community Centre.

In the June 24 exhibition, San Juan en Resistencia, Venezuelan photojournalist Felix Gerardi exhibited 22 of his best photos of the celebrations in honour of St John the Baptist in Venezuelan communities.

Lopinot councillor Dwight Mora said Venezuelan cultural roots are an essential part of the character of Lopinot and of TT in general.

Venezuelan ambassador Álvaro Sánchez Cordero highlighted the cultural link with Lopinot.

“We cannot ignore that the original farmers of St John the Baptist, a community in Venezuela, were enslaved people who worked on cocoa farms. Likewise, Lopinot was settled more than 200 years ago by Venezuelan cocoa farmers who came here bringing our culture with them,” he said.

For Sánchez Cordero: "Traditional Venezuelan festivities such as St John the Baptist and the May Cross, among others, contribute to strengthening those cultural and ancestral ties that unite us as a people."

He recalled the celebration of the 201st anniversary of the Battle of Carabobo, Venezuela, highlighting the spiritual connection between the festivities of St John the Baptist and the victory of Simón Bolívar on June 24, 1821, the largest and most important battle over the Spanish for Venezuelan independence.

Dona Mora, director of the Lopinot Tourism Association, and Natasha Craigwell-Boland, representative of the Ministry of Public Utilities, expressed gratitude to the embassy for sharing the cultural activity with the residents of Lopinot.

Video greetings from Gerardi were broadcast at the event.

Likewise, an explanatory video about the festivities in honour of St John the Baptist, produced by the Ministry of People's Power for Culture of Venezuela and UNESCO, which in December last year added the festivities of St John the Baptist to its List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

The Venezuelan Drumming Jam group made the audience dance with traditional tunes performed at St John the Baptist festivities.