Popular Tales from the Orinoco River Region

It is said to be the fright of a party man and womanizer who died alone and abandoned and seeks the company of someone who rides late at night along the trails of the savannah. Others say that he goes after pregnant women. He emits a long, high-pitched hiss that is creepy and makes you feel intensely cold, freezing.

He is a mocking spirit that haunts women, especially pretty girls. He only lets himself be seen by the women whom he pursues and he appears to them in the form of a child who makes all kinds of faces, throws small objects at them and proposes love to them. To those who agree, he brings fruits.
You have to tell the goblin all kinds of rude things and that way he will definitely retire. He also leaves if string music is played because it is said that this is how he remembers heavenly music.

The legend tells of a white man who fell in love and married two indigenous sisters who lived in a village. The girls had several brothers who lived with the rest of the family in a community located a day's walk away and every time they went to see their sisters, they were asked to visit their parents; but despite their and the white man's insistence, the two sisters never returned to their native village; not even when the father died. When they got the news of the death, they thought it was a lie to convince them to go to the other village.
After four years, the indigenous people, according to tradition, went to transfer the remains of the father, a ritual of this ethnic group that was carried out every time a group moved to another village.
Still, the sisters were determined not to return; but the family believed that the reason was the husband who did not leave them. However, the white man attended the ceremony and the brothers, drunk with yaraque and chicha, decided to cut off the white man's head. His soul immediately moved to the women's village, he told them what had just happened and turned his wives into a tonina (pink dolphin) and a manatee.

El Gringo (The foreigner) (Lucho Duarte)

El Hachador Perdido (The lost axer) (Hipólito Arrieta)

El Paisa (The countryman)

Enamorado y Cobarde (In love and coward) (Rafael Martínez)

Florentino y El Diablo (Florentine and the Devil) (De Alberto Arvelo Torrealba)

Mi Abuelo era Cazador (My grandfather was a hunter) (Rafael Martínez)

Mujer Llanera (Llanera Woman) (Manuel Orozco)

Plegaria humana (Human prayer)

María Dolores Laya Medina, known as "India Maria Laya", was born in Achaguas, Apure (Venezuela) in 1902 and died in Biruaca (Apure) in 1990.

The story of María Laya became immortal in the llanera musical composition of Mariano Hurtado Rondón, who, based on his own experiences, tells that at the age of 16, he fell in love with a beautiful 14-year-old Indian girl named María Laya, daughter of a servant woman at his home. Mariano's mother discovered them and fired the woman and her daughter. Mariano's family was wealthy, which is why he rejected his love affair with a girl without fortune and without ancestry.
Mariano searched for her tirelessly for years, and finally, he found her. Maria Laya was married to a good man named Juan Pérez Acosta, who was a harpist and they already had 7 children...

Later, Ignacio, El Indio, Figueredo made some musical arrangements to Mariano's composition, which caused great acceptance by the public, becoming a traditional theme of Venezuelan folklore and legend.

Maria Laya (2,32 min) Cover by Ana Veydo

Monument to "La India" Maria Laya in San Juan de Payara, Apure (Venezuela)

Considered one of the best-known legends of the Orinoco plains, it tells the life of the man who wanted to be the most powerful in the region. His name was Juan Francisco Ortiz, a landowner in the Macarena area. This farmer made a pact with the devil in which he gave him his wife and children in exchange for a lot of money, cattle and land.
he devil told Juan to grab a toad and a chicken to which he had to sew the eyes together and bury them alive on Good Friday, at twelve o'clock at night, in a secluded place; then he had to invoke the devil with his heart and soul. Juan complied with the mandated. Several days passed and his business was prospering.
One morning he got up early and when he was saddling his horse he saw an imposing black bull, with its four hooves and its two horns white. In the afternoon he returned from work and saw that the bull was still hanging around the house. He thought: "It must be from a neighbor".
The next day he was awakened by a disturbance caused by the animals and he imagined that the cause was the black bull. So he tried to get it out of his territory, but he couldn't. Tired and troubled by the strange incident, he went to bed, but at midnight he was awakened by a mighty roar.
Upon reaching the pasture, he realized that thousands of cattle were grazing from one side to the other and thus, his wealth increased more and more.
For many years he was the richest man in the region, until one day his cattle mysteriously began to disappear and his fortune diminished until he was left destitute. It is said that Juan Cutlass, after fulfilling his pact with the devil, repented, buried his money and disappeared into the jungle.
Legend has it that in the lands of the Macarena Mountains, a man wanders vomiting fire and preventing Juan Cutlass's money from being unearthed.

It is said that a woman died of malaria in a field and on the first day, she could not be buried because the river did not allow her companions to enter the cemetery due to an increase in its flow. The next day, when the river allowed them to proceed, they could not move the body as it was so heavy that they decided to bury it under a taguapire tree.
Hence, the soul is known as "Anima del Taguapire".
Legend has it that one day a ranger from the area sat down to rest under the tree and asked the soul to help him recover his cattle and in exchange he would make a palm fencing so no one would step on it; the miracle was fulfilled and the man did not pay his promise, so the soul manifested itself through an apparition, causing him great fear; To compensate for his lack, the llanero ordered a brick mound to be built for her on the site where she was buried, which served as the beginning of what is now the Chapel of the Soul of Taguapire.
Since then, every traveler and visitor to the region stops at this place to ask the miraculous soul to help them solve their problems...