Angel Falls or Kerepakupai-Meru?

Since coming to power in Venezuela in 1999, President Hugo Chavez has renamed the country, the currency and the mountain that separates the capital city from the Caribbean sea. Now he's turned his attention to the country's most famous landmark Angel Falls, or Salto Angel in Spanish, which at 979 metres (3,212 feet) is the highest waterfall in the world, Venezuela's greatest natural treasure and a top tourism destination.

The falls are currently named after the US aviator and adventurer Jimmie Angel, who first saw the record-breaking natural wonder from the cockpit of his plane in 1933 while searching for a river of gold.

Speaking on his weekly radio and TV programme "Hello, President", Mr Chavez said: "How can we accept this idea that the falls were discovered by a guy who came from the United States in a plane?"

"If we do that, that would be like accepting that nobody was living here," he added, suggesting that from now on Angel Falls should be renamed to show respect to the Pemon Indians who inhabit the remote Gran Sabana region in the south of Venezuela, and who were there centuries before the US bush pilot saw the falls.

The waterfall gushes forth from an enormous heart-shaped mesa mountain, which already has an indigenous Pemon name: Auyan-tepui, or Aiyan-tepuy, which means "Devil Mountain", according to Father Cesareo Armellada's "Diccionario Pemon".

Following his first flypast of the falls in 1933, Jimmie Angel attempted a landing on Auyan-tepui in 1937 but his Flamingo monoplane "El Rio Caroni" sank into soft ground.

The crash left Jimmie, his wife Marie (shown left with Jimmie) and the Venezuelans Gustavo Heny and Miguel Delgado stranded atop the isolated mountain. They had limited supplies and had to trek to safety through unexplored terrain.

It took Angel and his party 11 exhausting days to make their way down to the Pemon village of Kamarata.

As news of their adventure spread across the globe, Jimmie Angel's name became inextricably linked with the waterfall, which was named Angel Falls in honour of his exploits.

The "Rio Caroni" was eventually taken down from the top of Auyan-tepui by the Venezuelan Air Force in the 1970s and now stands outside Ciudad Bolivar airport, where modern-day tourists start their trips to Canaima Camp, the starting point for river trips to Angel Falls and flyovers in small planes.

Angel died aged 57 of injuries sustained in a plane accident in Panama in 1956.

In July 1960, in line with his wishes, Jimmie Angel's ashes were scattered over the falls by his two sons.

President Chavez acknowledged that Angel "was the first one to see it from a plane", but insisted it should have an indigenous name.

"That is ours, and was a long time before Angel ever got there... how many millions of indigenous eyes saw it, and prayed to it?" he added.

Referring at first to Churun-Meru, the Pemon name for a smaller waterfall that cascades from the Auyan-tepui mountain, Mr Chavez was subsequently corrected by his daughter Maria, who passed him a note stating the correct Pemon name for the falls is Kerepakupai-Meru, meaning "waterfall of the deepest place".

"Nobody should speak of Angel Falls any more," said the president.

However, there could be a challenge to the new name. While some Pemon refer to the waterfall as Kerepakupai-Meru, it is referred to in older reports as Parekupa-Meru, from the Pemon words kupa meaning "deep water", pare meaning "more", and meru meaning "waterfall".

The Venezuelan president's call for a name change comes at a moment of increasing interest in the world's highest waterfall. It featured as "Paradise Falls" in the Pixar/Disney movie "Up" and has made it into the final 28 candidates of a global internet campaign to find the New Seven Wonders of Nature.

By Russell Maddicks

Report on Jimmie Angel and the "discovery" of Angel Falls

Auyan-tepui, Angel Falls and Pemon myths

Angel Falls competing to be one of the 7 Wonders of Nature

Video clip of Angel Falls from David Attenborough's BBC series "Planet Earth"

Pixar's movie "Up" explores Venezuela's Lost World of Roraima, Angel Falls

Spectacular video clip of oldest base Jumper to leap from the top of Angel Falls


View of the falls from a pool below the "Mirador", where in the dry season visitors can bathe in the waters of Salto Angel. (All photos are the property of Russell Maddicks)

Auyan-tepui gives birth to Angel Falls

Incredible footage of Angel Falls cascading from the top of Auyan-tepui from David Attenborough's BBC series "Planet Earth".

Video game of Pixar movie "Up" takes gamers on adventure trip to Angel Falls, Gran Sabana region

Spectacular video clip of oldest base Jumper to leap from the top of Angel Falls

The True Story of Jimmie Angel and the Discovery of Angel Falls

Auyan-tepui, Angel Falls and Pemon Myths

For the Pemon Indians of Venezuela's Gran Sabana region the imposing tepuis - the taple-top mountains which rise dramatically out of the jungle and the savannah - are believed to be the abodes of gods or spirits. The whole landscape, in fact, is represented in their myths and legends, with mountains, waterfalls, rivers and rocks all serving as reminders of the origins of their world and the culture heroes who brought it into being.

Tepui, the name the Pemon give to these mountains, literally means "house of the spirits" or "house of the gods".

Auyan-tepui, or Aiyan-tepuy, from which Angel Falls cascades 979m into the record books, means "Devil Mountain", according to Father Cesareo Armellada's "Diccionario Pemon".

Parekupa-meru, the Pemon name for Angel Falls, comes from the Pemon words kupa meaning "deep water", pare meaning "more", and meru meaning "waterfall". Together they could be translated as "waterfall of very deep water".

Kerepakupai meru is another Pemon name for the falls, recorded more recently, which translates from Pemon as "waterfall of the deepest place".

Roraima is the highest of the tepui's and the most easily climbed. Its name comes from two Pemon words: roroi meaning "blue-green" and ma meaning "great" or "powerful". The pemon also refer to Roraima as "The Mother of all Waters", because it feeds into three major river systems: The Orinoco in Venezuela, the Essequibo in Guyana and the Amazon River in Brazil.

Kukenan, the mountain next to Roraima, is better known to the Pemon as Matawi-tepui, meaning the "the house of the dead". The Pemon believe that the spirits of the dead reside there. The name Kukenan refers to the river which flows from the summit.

Wei-tepui comes from Wei, the Pemon sun god.

From the beach at Canaima camp the three tepuis you can see, from left to right are Nonoy-tepui, meaning "Buzzard Mountain", Kuravaina-tepui, meaning "Deer Mountain", and Topochi-tepui, meaning "Blowpipe Mountain".

One myth says that the deep holes in the top of the tepuis are the cooking pots of Mawarí, the god of rain and thunder.

For the Pemon, the world falls into two camps. The world of the Kamarakoto, the Arekuna and the Taurepan - as the different Pemon groups are known - and that of the Te-pon-kén, the foreigners, the outsiders, the Creoles and tourists who visit their land.
By Russell Maddicks

Pemon Myth 1: The Legend of Makunaima
Pemon Myth 2: The Tree of Life
Pemon Myth 3: The Great Flood and the Creation of Roraima
Canaima: Pemon Spirit of Death
Video of Angel Falls
Return to Venezuelan Indian main page

Canaima: Pemon Spirit of Death

For most people who visit Venezuela, the name Canaima conjures up images of jungle tours, boat trips in dugout canoes up the Rio Carrao and visits to the base camp below Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world.

But for the Pemon Indians of the Gran Sabana, Canaima is nothing less than the evil spirit which lurks in wait for them in the dense forest, the poisonous snake in the underbrush, the sharp branch that catches them in the eye.

According to Venezuelan writer Jose Berti, the Pemon, "like most pre-Colombian tribes don't believe in a natural death; and in order to explain their eternal disappearance from this world, they have created a symbolic character, Canaima, who pursues them without rest and who in the end defeats and kills them."

Canaima, the Indians say, can take the form of a jaguar in the forest, or a spirit who passes through their huts at night. Every mishap that ends in cuts and bruises is laid at his door.

"If an Indian suffers from pneumonia, they say that Canaima has blown on his chest, if he has a stomach ache, it is put down to the evil work of Canaima, so that Canaima, or Death, is his implacable and eternal enemy," he adds.

I experienced the Pemon fear of Canaima first hand a number of years ago when I was working in Canaima camp as a tour guide. I had started working there with the idea that I would spend all my time leading tour groups to Angel Falls and the tepuis but my first weeks were spent at the small airstrip fighting the other guides for the few tourists who arrived in air taxis from Ciudad Bolivar.

One morning, the drowsy stupor of the airstrip was broken by shouts that something was happening down at the lagoon.

It seems that an American tourist had gone for a swim in the cold, tea-red waters of the lagoon and had never come back. He was with a young Venezuelan woman and her child and when they lost sight of him they had called the National Guard and the staff at the beach bar to help them look, but nobody could find any trace of him.

She said he was a strong swimmer and had insisted on swimming beyond the area marked out near the beach with small bouys and out towards the Hacha Falls.

Later, somebody said a reward had been offered for anybody who found him. It was feared he had drowned but the National Guard needed proof.

Next day, the rumours of a reward had spread all over the camp. People came down from the base camps to help in the search. As the day wore on it seemed the reward changed with whoever you asked until it reached several thousand dollars, a small fortune for most people marooned out here in the middle of the jungle.

Soon, nearly all the Indians had launched their wooden curiaras (canoes) and fashioned long branches and poles so they could probe the bottom of the lagoon and find the unfortunate US tourist. Some even brought out old diving masks, useless in the dark waters, and dived in again and again to feel with their hands along the deep, murky bottom.

It seemed like everybody had come out to try their luck that day and the day after.

But it was only after they'd all given up, on the third day, that the body was found- just floating on the surface. Again I was at the small airstrip when the word came and we all rushed down to the small church in the camp to see what they'd found.

The Pemon Indians from the village next door had already arrived and were holding cloths or their T-shirts over their mouths and noses so as not to be infected by any vapours from the corpse.

The body had set rigid and the man, who was at least six foot, looked like a large action figure, his legs caught in the action of kicking out against the eddies and swirling currents that had dragged him down. He must have been head first down in the water because his shoulders were enormous and pink, puffed up like a superhero. His face was contorted with the effort of saving his skin. The fish had nibbled away at his ears.

But the strangest thing was his ankle. The Indians were all pointing to some marks on his ankle, like the puncture marks a snake might make, only it would have to be a mighty large snake to make those kind of marks.

"Anaconda bite", one young Indian said. I'd seen small anacondas in the lagoon and on the beach but never anything that could hold a grown man under the water like that.

Like, where's Jennifer Lopez when you need her?

But the older Pemon were shaking their heads: "Canaima", an old man said in a sort of whisper, as if it was a word you shouldn't say out loud. "It was the Canaima who took him down to its lair in the calm waters behind the falls."

And that was it. Case closed. All anybody could talk about was the Canaima. And nobody went swimming, at least for a week, until the tourists started to arrive en masse and we were all too busy to think about the strange case of the big, scary snake in the lagoon.

I guess I'll never know what caused those marks on the dead man's ankles, but for a moment, standing in that church with most of the Pemon village crowded in around me, the idea that he had been drowned by a malignant spirit taking the form of a giant anaconda seemed to make perfect sense.

Russell Maddicks

Pemon Myth 1: The Legend of Makunaima
Pemon Myth 2: The Tree of Life
Pemon Myth 3: The Great Flood and the Creation of Roraima
Auyan-tepui, Angel Falls and Pemon myths

Return to Venezuelan Indian main page