Calidoscopios de género: cuerpo, masculinidad y supervivencia en el espiritualismo venezolano

Abstract

[EN] This text is based on a field research developed in a popular neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela where informal economy and spiritism converge. The subjects of this article, people who practice Maria Lionza’s spiritism, are a group that shares survival forms, solidarity and friendship; this group also shares a continuous process of gender production, therefore constituting a “masculinity unit”. In this kind of spiritism, possession is a necessary process in the steps of healing, an essential part of the lives of a sector of the Venezuelan society. For these groups, the bodily experience is essential to understand the forms that their masculinity acquires. This text proposes that this group’s masculinity is multiple and changing.