The Anaconda / El GÜIO: A Serpent of Origin, Memory, and Movement
By Loriana Espinel

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Chiribiquete, a national park in Colombia, was once a center of pre-Hispanic South American cosmogony. In this mythic geography, the jaguar is king, and the Boa-Anaconda is his sister. According to ancestral stories, the anaconda is not just a creature of the forest, but a celestial being: the Milky Way itself descending to the Earth in the form of a serpent, giving birth to the Amazon River and, with it, to all life.

The stories I grew up with spoke of her immense power. She does not kill with venom or teeth but with the weight of her body and the rhythm of her tail. Her victims are left marked, bruised, changed. You do not see her coming. She is beneath you, above you, beside you. I remember walking through the Amazon, cautious with every step, scanning the trees, swimming without letting my feet touch the riverbed—always aware of her possible presence.

In this sculpture, I have tried to make her presence real. The Anaconda / El GÜIO is not something to look at. It is something to enter. To feel. To remember.

She wraps around us and invites us inside. Her form, scaled and sinuous, becomes a temporary shelter—a place of myth, of memory, and of altered perception. She speaks to our fears, but also to our beginnings. Inside, one hears the echoes of the forest, sees the painted river-creatures of the Amazon, and senses the enveloping mystery of something older than history.

This work would not have been possible without the support of the Center for Mexican American and Latino/a Studies (CMALS) at the University of Houston. Their commitment to cultural scholarship and public engagement made the reconstruction of this sculpture possible, after its original version was lost to weather following its exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

I am also deeply grateful to artists Justine Earl Grant and Mariela Domínguez, whose collaboration and dedication during the sculptural process have been essential. This anaconda is not mine alone; it is the result of shared hands, shared stories, and shared belief in the power of art.

In her embrace, I hope you will find a trace of the stories I carry. A moment of stillness. A pulse of the river. A myth you can step into.

When: From Sept. 9 to 28 outside Playscape