Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Resumen
En este artı́culo proponemos entender la religiosidad afrocubana de una manera que
no la ve como si fuese un epifenómeno de los regı́menes polı́ticos o como uno de
resistencia en términos de sus dimensiones simbólicas. Argumentamos que la religión
afrocubana produce personas como hiper-individualizadas, a través de cosmologias
que, en gran medida, “abarcan” la vida cotidiana, incluyendo la polı́tica. La Revolución
Socialista, por lo contrario, ha intentado “abarcar” el individuo atribuyendole un
destino universalmente ético e ideológico. Tales direcciones opuestas de “abarcamiento”
no crean un esquema jerárquico rı́gido, sino, en gran medida, dejan las tensiones sin
resolución. Ambos tipos de ideales de personas en última instancia no llegan a realizarse
en su totalidad. Precisamente porque uno florece donde el otro falla, la relación entre
las religiones afrocubanas y la polı́tica socialista obtiene caracterı́sticas de contrapunteo,
un término designado por Fernando Ortiz, lo cual deja un espacio vital para conflicto,
resitencia y ruptura. [adivinación, Afro-latinoamericanos, brujerı́a, Cuba, politica,
religion revolución socialista]
Abstract
This article explores Afro-Cuban religiosity in ways that see it neither as an epiphe-
nomenon of political regimes nor as a dimension of symbolic resistance. We argue
that people are produced in Afro-Cuban religion in hyperindividualized ways through
cosmologies that largely “encompass” everyday life, including politics. In contrast,
the socialist revolution has sought to “encompass” individuals by ascribing to them a
universally ethical and ideological destiny. These antithetical directions of “encompass-
ment” do not create a rigid hierarchical schema but generally leave tensions unresolved:
both ideals are ultimately unrealized. Precisely because one flourishes where the other
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 0, No. 0, pp. 1–19. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN
1935-4940. ⃝
C 2019 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/jlca.12388
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 1
fails, the relationship between Afro-Cuban religions and socialist politics acquires
characteristics of what Fernando Ortiz terms a counterpoint that leaves vital room
for conflict, resistance, and rupture. [Afro LatinAmericans,Cuba, divination, politics,
religion, socialist revolution, witchcraft]
Ana, an Afro-Cuban woman in her sixties, was born on July 26—the politically
significant date of the Moncada Barracks attack in 1953, the first failed attempt at
revolution—to avidly revolutionary parents. Her father had helped to construct
Soviet bloc-type buildings in Havana, as part of the microbrigades, and her mother
had once sewn the communist insignia onto Fidel Castro’s jacket. As a child and
adolescent, Ana said she was not just atheist but anti-religious: like her father,
she aspired to participate in the construction of a new and promising regime.
The revolution mobilized young people in its political project and Ana was con-
vinced by this, laboring to learn the precepts of the revolution in her countryside
boarding school, becoming motivated by the comradeship among her classmates
and the responsibilities her teachers placed upon them. “We became men and
women, away from our families,” she says. “The poorest kids were interned there,
as well as us from the city. The food was good, we were taken care of.” Among other
things, she played basketball for her country and was part of the Communist Youth
group. “Things worked back then,” she says; “there was discipline, respect, not like
now with this social degradation.” For Ana, the revolution’s errors—principally
from the 1990s—brought about the corrosion of core values and behaviors that
are now evident in today’s young people with their capitalist yearnings. How-
ever, the revolution committed other errors too, she says: When the revolution
triumphed, they effected a kind of divorce from everything that was religious. It
wasn’t like it was banned, more that it was understood that you couldn’t be mate-
rialist and spiritual at the same time. They took it back, but a lot of damage had
been done.
Indeed, this initial active involvement in revolutionary ideals and mobiliza-
tion took a back seat when Ana began to experience her first episodes of spirit
possession while at boarding school. Fearing she was ill, she went to the school
nurse who sent her home. She tried to ignore her symptoms, but they increased.
She began to predict events and to give people messages from the spirits. She
decided to develop her faculties after an event when, at age seventeen, she broke
her foot and attributed it to the witchcraft of an envious member of her basketball
team. She knew this because when she suspected foul play, she had secretly con-
sulted a woman who threw cards in her neighborhood, a commonly found home-
based divinatory practice. With this development underway, Ana retired from the
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 3
footing. Therefore, it is not only apt for diachronic/historical dimensions but for
synchronic/anthropological ones.
With its most intense manifestations in its first three decades (1960s–1980s),
the encompassing tendencies of the revolutionary state were directed toward a
citizen who was “mobilized” in order to “participate in” and “labor for” the “con-
struction” of the revolution. In this process, individual identities were subsumed
under a common cause. Ideally, this was communism; pragmatically, it was social-
ism. In terms of lived experience, this translated into the presence of a state that
now permeated the Cuban citizenry. More than obliterating individuality (an ar-
guably impossible task, unless through an extraordinary and violent effort), it was
encompassed by collectivist ethos and praxis (Kapcia 2000). A hierarchy was con-
structed in which the “individual,” in a secondary position, was contrasted with,
and thus sustained, the “collective.” The individual was not simply a body/mind
unit, but anything that tended to individuate behavior—even a collectivity. Some of
these individuating assemblages became state institutions and, in the process, were
highly deindividuated (Lewis et al. 1977a). Others, such as Afro-Cuban religiosity,
were met with hostility and attempts at institutionalization were not sociologically
(or theologically) significant (Ayorinde 2004). In this article, the terms individual
and collective should be understood with these points in mind. The former is a
set of relations with individuating tendencies that do not obliterate, but encom-
pass, the collective, while the latter has the opposite tendencies, which materialize
through state (or state-sponsored) institutionalization attempts. Both tendencies
have been vibrant in different ways and at different times, officially or not, and
neither has managed to become all encompassing (hence, the counterpoint).
Before proceeding, a comment is required on our use of the term “Afro-Cuban
religiosity,” which commonly refers to a set of distinct religious traditions that
identify with an African origin (and are not free from political agendas; see Palmié
2013). Thus far, the literature has favored in-depth accounts of one tradition, giv-
ing the impression (often unintentionally) of relatively unrelated sets of practices.
Our treatment of Afro-Cuban religiosity as one “thing” does not imply ceremo-
nial or theological indistinction. Cubans do distinguish among different traditions
(such as Ocha/Ifá, Palo Monte, and Espritismo). However, heuristically employing
the umbrella term “Afro-Cuban religiosity” is ethnographically and analytically
legitimate, precisely because it does not fall into the reductionist understanding of
“traditions” as separate entities. One of the binding elements among these different
traditions is a common commitment to a multiplicity of other-than-human factors
and entities (such as spirits of the dead and deities), which interact with each per-
son differently, influence details of everyday lives, and become immanent through
modes of divination. This practical and communicative immanence is what can be
said to make all of these traditions “Afro-Cuban,” which is similar to the ideolog-
ical, discursive, and heuristic sense that Palmié (2013) has described. Thus, using
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 5
glue between ritual domains through work with spirits of the dead (Palmié 2002).
The authors worked together in 2013 in Havana to collect ten in-depth life sto-
ries from people chosen because of the imminent transversality of the revolution
in their narratives—thus illuminating its evident impact. The interlocutors were
therefore above fifty years of age. To streamline our argument, we focus exclusively
on Ocha/Ifá in this article.
Jorge, an only child, was born in a village close to the city of Sagua La Grande in
the early 1940s. Despite the fact that neither of his parents were religious, Jorge
was inclined toward Catholicism from an early age and became an altar boy at
the age of seven. Noticing Jorge’s precociousness and intelligence, as well as his
devotion to the Church, the parish priest spoke to his parents to convince them
to send the boy to a Jesuit boarding school in the city. However, Jorge’s mother,
Rosa, was fearful. She was convinced that if he became a priest, he would be sent
all around the world on missions, and she and her husband would never see him
again. This possibility was so worrisome to her that, at the suggestion of a cousin,
she sought advice from the Afro-Cuban gods. Secretly, she consulted with the only
santero in town—a man reportedly 103 years old. He threw his divination shells
and told her she had nothing to worry about, but Rosa gasped at what else he
said: that her son was not destined for Catholic priesthood, but for Afro-Cuban
religious priesthood.
Santerı́a beckoned Jorge again when he was about eleven, when Rosa suddenly
became ill. Although she received medical care, her illness lingered a long time.
Jorge solicited help through Afro-Cuban religion. Rosa received a minor initiation,
called a kofá, in Ifá, Ocha’s divination cult, but in Rosa’s postinitiation divination
ceremony, Orula, the god of divination, told her through the oracle that while
he would give her another fifty years of life (and indeed, she recovered from
her sickness) her son should be fully initiated. Orula said this was not because
of his health, but because the santo would help him survive the obstacles and
responsibilities that were heading his way.
Jorge was too young to heed the warning, but a few years later, as a teen,
he also “received” Orula and more messages were forthcoming. In his divination
ceremony, Orula told him that the gods would give him proof of their existence.
Mysteriously, Orula told him to never take a bite of an apple. It was the late 1950s
and Havana was broiling with underground supporters of the revolution: schools,
theaters, public buildings of all kinds, could become targets; the mood was tense. At
this time, Jorge was taking night classes, since there was less chance of being caught
in a conflict during the evening. One day, however, Jorge was strolling through
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 7
among its adherents (nd:93). Between 1968 and 1984, the state set up rural labor
camps for political “rehabilitation” (the most famous were the Unidades Militares de
Ayuda a la Producción/Military Units to Aid Production). Religious folk of various
affiliations, homosexual people, and other ideological “subversives” were “reedu-
cated,” sometimes for years, in what some have called “concentration camps” (as
described by Jorge). Minor punishments for religious creed included being barred
from university, workplace opportunities, promotions, travel, and general social
and political exclusion, even within one’s own neighborhood (Wedel 2004:33).
While, in principle, the 1976 Cuban Constitution guaranteed freedom of ex-
pression and religion, the reality was different. This was the case for members of the
Church (Catholic and Protestant) as well as practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions.
The latter not only congregated in higher numbers than allowed by officialdom
for any rite, but they generated a successful underground economy—of money,
materials/goods, and rationed food—largely undetected by the state. In this way,
Afro-Cuban religions were perhaps unique in their partially successful resistance
to the revolution’s strategies of state vigilance and representation. One proactive
means to avoid such strategies was to give up state work and dedicate oneself to
religion—an activity predominantly practiced at home: that is, if the state did not
sack them first.
For instance, Emiliano, a sixty-year-old white espiritista medium from a small
town in the Las Tunas province, said he was forced to choose, in the 1970s,
between his religion and his job as a primary school teacher: “They told me:
teacher or espiritista, not both. I chose espiritista. I told them, I’m not going
to leave my muertos (spirits of the dead). I could seek work elsewhere, but not
in any cultural or educational center. Nobody could work there and be gay or
espiritista.” Government agents sought him out in the early 1980s, after word of
his ability as a medium spread beyond his town. They told him he could only have
access to children if he renounced his religion. Emiliano expressed resentment at
the morally violent choice forced upon him by the revolution. Here, as in Ana’s
narrative above, political and religious destinies were juxtaposed, and resolved only
through the embrace of their incommensurability. Indeed, initially, many Cubans
did not perceive an inherent contradiction in their religious and political identities;
rather, this conflict was superimposed by the early ideological and practical rigidity
of the revolutionary regime.
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 9
features with Dumontian encompassment. However, in the present case, this is not
a direct form of encompassment. While the revolutionary state has defined itself
mainly through a collectivist tendency (encompassing individuation), Afro-Cuban
religiosity has an individuating tendency (encompassing broad collectivities, such
as the nation or the state). Ultimately, two different kinds of encompassment are at
stake, but not necessarily in opposition. A dynamic interaction occurs and we need
a framework to account for these dimensions of the relationship. This is offered
by the notion of the counterpoint.
If we seek encompassing revolutionary aspirations in the words of significant
figures, one that comes to mind is from Fidel Castro’s 1961 “Words to the Intellectu-
als” speech: “Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.”
Four years later, Che Guevara would add: “We are looking for something new that
will permit a complete identification between the government and the community
in its entirety” (Guevara and Castro 2012:16). However, both for the revolution’s
vanguard and for scholars of the revolution, in order to take such pronouncements
seriously, it is important not to interpret them as mere ideological constructs, but
practical goals to achieve. Encompassment in Cuban revolutionary politics should
be seen as a project—a process with a direction, rather than a finished product (see
Rosendahl 1997). Participation (participación) has been a vital point of reference
and practice for this project and mobilization (movilización) has enabled it to take
place. These processes have had an encompassing reach meant to transcend race,
gender, age, special skills, and other classifications. There has been professional and
student mobilization and participation, as well as volunteer participation through
membership of mass organizations and activities.
Prominent examples of participation include membership in the Communist
Party (PCC), the Union of Communist Youth (UJC), the Revolutionary Armed
Forces (FAR), the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), the
Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the National Association of Small Farmers
(ANAP), and the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC), among
others. Such activities relate to specific needs and endeavors to help build socialism
in a practical manner, such as occasional work in the sugarcane fields or in the
amateur microbrigades constructing Cuba’s socialist architecture. The idea was
that “Cuba’s main economic resource was its people” (Kapcia 2008:66). Kapcia’s
simple phrase illuminates what has just been outlined here but also indicates that
the phenomenon belongs to the past, at least in its intensity.
Holbraad has suggested that the revolution created a “political universe”
(2014:340) with no exterior, exemplified in the phrase Revolución ó muerte (Revo-
lution or death). This universe was perhaps more encompassing in the first decades
of the revolution, nourished through processes of mass participation and mobi-
lization, although never achieving an all-encompassing state. This is not just an
external perspective. It derives from revolutionary agents themselves who never
A Brief Digression
There is a long and complex history in the “dance” between the revolutionary state
and Afro-Cuban religiosity, such that it has sometimes seemed that a counterpoint
is less about dissonance than harmony. In Four Men: Living the Revolution—An
Oral History, Lewis et al. 1977a interview a santero and CDR president in Las
Yaguas, Lázaro Benedı́; he is a “very black and very poor” man (1977a:12) who
claims to have both a statue of Lenin, whom he takes to be a “god,” and an altar
to the Afro-Cuban oricha Yemayá. For him, as for Fidel (above), Christ was the
ultimate communist. As one of this article’s reviewers observed, it is significant
that Benedı́ talked to Oscar Lewis in the midst of a revolutionary offensive against
“superstitions” such as those Benedı́ believed in. This supports our general claim
that the relations between religious and political identities are not preordained in
a rigid schema, whatever the tensions—“internal” or “external”—may be. Indeed,
as Benedı́ claims, “my powers as a santero probably helped me in my political
work” (1977a:61).
In another example, in Espirito Santo’s fieldwork in 2005/06, the government
only sanctioned one of the groups of espiritistas cientificos (scientific spiritists):
the Consejo Supremo Nacional de Espiritistas. The Consejo’s long-time leader,
Alfredo Durán, was reputedly one of Fidel Castro’s Sierra Maestra barbu-
dos (bearded ones, alluding to the revolutionaries), who still maintains warm
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 11
relations with Communist high officials—a fact that may have served the cientifi-
cos well for decades: “There are two evils in the world. The first is capitalism, and
the second is religion—belief, superstition, all that is ignorance” (Espirito Santo’s
interview with Durán, March 2016). According to Durán, the worst of humanity
is that it is creyente (believer, believing). He states, “to make a new world, we need
to make a new man first!” For Durán, as for Communist officials in the 1960s and
1970s, the Guevarist New Man is not a believer, but he is spiritual. The point is that
cohabiting socialist and religious ideals may not just be possible, but achievable,
and not just for Durán, who had the advantage of being both a spiritist (a white
man’s religion in prerevolution Cuba) and white. Even in Ana’s example, discussed
earlier, her particular revolutionary sensibilities are incompatible with her nascent
mediumship, not as a matter of principle but of (historical) contingency.
However, the revolution itself has taken steps in this “dance.” Notwithstanding
the combat manual Sectas Religiosas (mentioned above), and consistent (often vio-
lent) attempts to get rid of superstitions and mysticism, revolutionary officialdom
also promoted the political assimilation of some of the population (Afro-Cubans)
who had been an active component of the pro-revolutionary vanguard. This was
achieved in part by making a case for the “scientific” recording, classification, and
conservation of the aesthetic and material elements of Afro-Cuban religions and
their mythologies—specifically those that were devoid of what were considered
degenerate practices and beliefs. This was a project of museology and musicol-
ogy, which depended on a new generation of ethnologists, some of whom were
Soviet trained. Hernandez-Reguant notes that from the 1960s, the “evaluation
of folklore’s authenticity and revolutionary relevance was a scientific task, and it
fell on the growing body of folklorists and musicologists who, as traditional an-
thropologists elsewhere, became the guardians of the nation’s purity” (2005:293).
Ethnology was to be geared toward incorporating these traits into Cuba’s rev-
olutionary identity. Thus, for example, the creation of the Conjunto Nacional
Folclórico de Cuba, a folkloric Afro-Cuban national dance troupe founded and
presided over by Argeliers León, was perhaps the socialist state’s most formidable
attempt to transform popular religiosity into revolutionary sentiment and “cul-
ture” (Ayorinde 2004:99). It did so by rallying religiosos as informants and dancers,
while stripping all religious significance from its dance spectacles. Indeed, writers
and artists were encouraged to use Afro-Cuban religious elements in their work, al-
beit within a folkloric frame, wherein the alienating aspects of Afro-Cuban culture
were ultimately revealed (Ayorinde 2004:110). Such was the racial encompassment
strategy that Jesus Guanche—a scholar of Cuban ethnology—commented that the
term “Afro-Cubano” was now “inappropriate and anachronic” (1983:462), be-
cause Cuba now recognized itself as “Hispano-Africano.” Furthermore, Kapcia
(2000:160) regards this co-opting of Cuba’s African heritage as the perpetua-
tion of the myth of a color-blind Cuba, although Guanche, like others, thought
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 13
Starting with the predominance of divinatory practices across Afro-Cuban
religious traditions—through which entities “speak,” be they gods and divinities
or spirits of the dead—Regla de Ocha, for example, comprises several divination
methods practiced by santeros, including the cowry shell oracle (caracol) and the
coconut oracle (obbi). It also encompasses the prestigious divination cult of Ifá,
whose priests (babalawos) are initiated into Orula (the oricha who witnesses the
destiny of all men). Divination is not incidental in Ocha but central to its concep-
tualization of the human being. The oricha gods are consulted for the conferral
of blessings, but also for life guidance. Ifá plays a protagonist role in that oracular
pronouncements betray the clearest and most encompassing “logocosmy”—the
world of reasons for things (see Holbraad 2010)—exemplified in the phrase “En Ifá
está todo” (Everything is in Ifá). Orula, the divination god, is thought to never lie,
although humans may interfere with his message. It is no coincidence that in cases
of divinatory doubt, as well as important ceremonies, the babalawos are sought for
ultimate and final arbitration. Ocha holds that the universe needs to be constantly
worked into balance. Divination signs come with “qualities” that reveal whether
circumstances tend toward blessings (iré) or misfortune (osogbo), after which, if
necessary, these circumstances may be willed toward change with the cooperation
of the orichas. In Ocha myths (patakies), if there is no evil, there can be no good.
Thus, in Jorge’s case, Afro-Cuban religious priesthood is a “destiny” re-
vealed in childhood, and incrementally acknowledged throughout his life through
“proofs”—events, tragedies, national history—parsed through oracular pro-
nouncements. It is, however, a destiny he may mold, change, and even subvert.
While Cuban political history is not subsumed by his oracular pronouncements
(“terrible obstacles,” or the gods proving their existence or saving his life), Jorge’s
story indicates that these events were somehow secondary to a greater cosmologic
that would always encompass them in one form or another: that of Ocha-Ifá.
Encompassment also occurs in the sense that there are no a priori principles that
Jorge has vis-à-vis the sociopolitical background against which his life unfolds. All
oracle references to social and political events neither presuppose nor lead to a
moral judgment, nor to a collective kind of action. In the narration of his story to
us, these are revealed only in light of Jorge’s life-course. Therefore, in this story, we
have primacy of the person, rather than the state or nation.
The main religious traditions in Havana foster an individuating approach, since
their end goal is to allow deities, gods, and spirits to relate to individuals, not groups.
This is evident in a number of key cosmological and ritual precepts. In Ocha-Ifá,
for example, the soul is thought to be located in the head, or better, is one’s head
(orı́) such that full initiation to one’s tutelary oricha—placed literally inside the
head (through cuts on top)—aligns a person to his or her destiny more forcefully.
The orı́ is not shared or transmissible but personal, signaling a predestined affinity
with one or another god, a “path,” and an individual responsibility and agency
Conclusion
This account has shed light on two seemingly opposing encompassment ten-
dencies, each permeating the compared “entities”: the revolutionary regime and
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 15
Afro-Cuban religiosity. The former subsumes the individual in the collective and is,
almost by (socialist) definition, identified with the (encompassing) role of the state.
This means that collectivities, not just individuals, which have proved difficult to
fully “translate” (or be encompassed) into the revolutionary state’s terms, were
pushed to the suspicious individuating domain. Traditionally (not just under the
revolution), Afro-Cuban religiosity has flourished in this domain. Intense atten-
tion to the self, homebound centrality of the “religious family,” and a multiplicity
of “spiritual” centers—voices, deities, spirits of the dead that interact with one’s
“path,” witchcraft attacks and counterattacks, persistent “spiritual” hauntings, the
oracular immediacy of traditions—amount to the tendency of individuation to
function at the expense of large and solid collectivities.
The fact that two opposing tendencies of encompassment seem to be charac-
terizing each “entity” does not, however, mean that one must strive to encompass
the other through opposition. This is one outcome among many others and it is
a matter of historical contingency, rather than exclusionary definitional fixation.
There is a common understanding that relations of difference or opposition tend
to imply conflict and, in the case of the “individual” and the “collective,” this may
transform from a tendency into an axiom. Dumont suggests, however, drawing
on structuralist theory, that difference and opposition may be the very glue of
relationships. What we propose here is that relationships of difference do not nec-
essarily lead to an encompassing hierarchical structure—as suggested by Fernando
Ortiz.
Writing in the first half of the twentieth century, Ortiz worked mainly on issues
of criminality, law, race, Afro-Cuban religiosity and, generally, Cuban economics
and society. These last themes were explored in Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco
and Sugar (1940). Here, Ortiz provides a stark contrapuntal comparison between
the two national products: tobacco and sugar. Although Cuba’s soil and climate
are uniquely apt for the cultivation of both, there are intense physical, symbolic,
and socioeconomic differences between them. For instance, sugar is processed
to become white, while tobacco remains naturally brown. One seeks shadow or
darkness to grow, while the other seeks light. One comes out in liquid form, the
other as smoke. One awakens and activates, the other provokes lethargy and re-
flection. One is “feminine,” “divine,” felt by one sense only, and gives pleasure to
the flesh; the other is “masculine,” “demoniacal,” felt by many senses, and gives
pleasure to the spirit. Of more socioeconomic significance, sugar requires vast
plots of land, economic centralization and monopolization, use of slaves and/or
machines, organized mass production, and results in an emphasis on quantity,
anonymity, investment, and the polarization of classes (a few rich and many poor).
On the other hand, tobacco favors small plots of lands, economic decentraliza-
tion and diversity, workers as artisans, a spontaneous, idiosyncratic and relatively
Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 17
Acknowledgements
Notes
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