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Afro-Cuban Theology: Religion, Race, Culture, and Identity

2008; Duke University Press; Volume: 88; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2008-339

1527-1900

Luis Martínez‐Fernández,

Cuban History and Society

Michelle A. González’s Afro-Cuban Theology: Religion, Race, Culture, and Identity is not a history book; it is, rather, a work of systematic theology, informed by scholarship related to Latin American Liberation Theology and United States Latino and Afro-American theologies. The author discusses in much detail the limitations of each of these particular theologies as tools to comprehend Cuba’s complex religious systems and rituals, both on the island and in the diaspora. González proposes to integrate black and Latino theologies to better understand a particularly hypersyncretic Cuban religious culture that is strongly African, Catholic, and Latin American.The author provides a basic overview of Cuba’s cultural and religious development, with strong emphasis on the contributions of African slaves and their descendants and a useful introduction to various forms of African-derived religious systems, including Regla de Ocha, las Reglas, Abakuá, and Regla de Ifá. Much attention is devoted to Santería (Regla de Ocha), with descriptions of its beliefs, rituals, and deities.The book’s main discussion is dedicated to la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint. González traces the history of the meanings of the Cuban Virgin and her significance during different historical periods and among different Cuban populations. She begins by retelling the original story of the Virgin’s appearance in the late sixteenth century to three men on a rowboat struggling to remain afloat in the midst of a tempest in Nipe Bay. The three boatmen, a slave named Juan Moreno and two indigenous brothers, Rodrigo and Juan de Hoyos, were saved by the Virgin. Soon thereafter the royal slaves of El Cobre created a statue in the Virgin’s image, began a devotion to her, and built her an impressive sanctuary.The cult of la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre gained national attention during Cuba’s wars of independence of the last third of the nineteenth century. At that juncture the Virgin became a nationalist and quasi-military symbol in opposition to the Spanish troops’ Virgen de Covadonga. Interestingly, the Virgin’s new, revised apparition story reflected the nationalist aspiration of integrating all Cubans, regardless of race, in the struggle against Spain. Appropriately, the rowboat’s crew now included a black, a white, and a mulatto; moreover, they all shared the name Juan. For practitioners of the syncretic religion Santería, la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre was altogether a different deity. She served as the Catholic iconic mask for the Yoruba orisha known as Oshún, a spiritual being fond of song, dance, perfumes, and jewelry and associated with hard work, joyfulness, youth, seduction, and promiscuity.González’s most original contributions stem from her study of Cuban-American religiosity in Miami. Using oral history and analyzing church publications and sermons, she recognizes yet another reincarnation of the Virgin in exile. According to González, Catholic clergy serving the South Florida Cuban and Cuban-American community have systematically attempted to disassociate the Virgin from its slave origins and syncretic trajectory. In fact, physical representations of the “exiled” Virgin give her a much lighter skin tone. The author shares similar findings pertaining to St. Lazarus, an unofficial Catholic saint whose Cuban popular manifestation is that of a ragged, sickly, and impoverished man. In Santería, this saint masks Babalú Ayé, which literally means the “owner of diseases.” Catholic clergy in South Florida, González finds, rejected the unofficial Cuban St. Lazarus in favor of the church-recognized St. Lazarus, the one resurrected by Jesus Christ, who according to the church eventually became the first Bishop of Marseilles.Afro-Cuban Theology builds upon a valuable and innovative theoretical proposal. González boldly states that black theology stemming from the African-American Protestant experience and Mexican and Chicano-dominated Latino theology fail to provide an adequate theoretical and bibliographical apparatus for the study of the Cuban religious experience. Simply put, she calls for an integrative approach to Cuba’s multisyn-cretic religiosity. Almost 60 years ago, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz proposed the same simple principle: that the understanding of Cuba’s complex culture demands a syncretic perspective. He gave it a scholarly name, “transculturation,” and a nickname, “ajiaco” (Cuban stew). González’s proposal can shed light on major questions: Why are there so few points of connection between the fields of Hispanic Caribbean history and the history of the English-speaking Caribbean? And why does the study of the Cuban exile and emigrant experience sit so marginally and uncomfortably within the field of U.S. Latino studies?