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These men of the forest have the custom of decorating their bodies and faces before undertaking any action.
Above all, they use red, from the seed of the onoto, and black, which they obtain from burnt wood from the fire.
Each Sanema has a specific design which protects him.
They generally represent totemic animals seen under the effects of the sacona or yopo,
a powerful hallucinogenic substance they inhale through the nose.
The effects of the sacona are almost immediate.
Now, the symbiosis with the magical dimension of the jungle is almost absolute.
From their psychedelic vantage point they can see the spirits of the jungle with out being vulnerable to their influence
and been united with their moresbi, a part of the soul of the Sanema which lives in a particular animal of the forest,
making it his protector.
They frequently go on these journeys to the world of the spirits.
Almost every day, the Sanema feel the need to transform into their totemic animals and visualise, through its eyes,
the other reality of their existence.
Under the protection of their ritual paintings,
the hunting parties move deeper into the dense vegetation of the oldest primeval forest in the world.
Along with the Amazon, it forms part of the largest lungs of the planet,
a resource which belongs to all humanity, and which we all have the obligation of preserving.
The hunters remain immobile, on the lookout, waiting for some prey to move in order to launch into attack.
Quickly, the sounds return to the jungle.
The animals regain confidence, are unaware of the presence of a superior intelligence
which immediately interprets every noise they make.
Man is out hunting, and even the jaguar king seeks refuge in the shadows of the jungle,
unable to compete against the superiority of humans.
The Sanema move around an enormous area.
They can be found near any river in the southern part of the Guayana Massif.
Mainly in the Caura basin. This powerful river, a tributary of the Orinoco,
has many rapids and cataracts, which makes it difficult to navigate
and so for outsiders to penetrate into one of the least explored areas of Venezuela.
Its waters are dangerous.
The strong currents of the river form powerful whirlpools capable of swallowing a man.
The hunting parties also take advantage of the night.
This is when the jungle is at its most dangerous.
The majority of predators hunt in the dark, including the terrible mapanare,
one of the most poisonous snakes in the world, whose bite is always fatal.
But the Sanema know their way around this world they have dominated for over 3,000 years.
Dawn is rising in Canaracuni. The fog lifts and the SarisariƱama tepuy majestically appears.
The young Yecuana/Makiritare, the neighbours of the Sanema, are preparing their blowpipes.
They make sticks with the dried stalks of palm leaves, and plane them to form thin, pointed darts around 15 centimetres in length.
At the rear of the darts they roll fibres, similar to cotton in texture, of precisely the same thickness as the diameter of the blowpipe.
When they blow, the fibres receive the pressure of the air, and the dart is launched at great speed.
Here, everyone uses the resources provided by the forest vegetation.
Before setting out to hunt, they must make the small darts poisonous.
By themselves, they would be useless.
They make incisions in the bark of a tree called tunare
and wait until an extremely poisonous orange resin oozes out.
Then, they dip the sharp tips of their darts in the viscous poison,
turning them into the most efficient of weapons.
Just a slight wound from one of these lethal darts could end the life of a man.
They are expert mimics, capable of imitating the songs of almost all the birds they know.
They hunt all types of birds, for the Yecuana everything that flies is edible.
Their favourites are the toucans and the macaws, the tongues of which they assure us are a real delicacy.