Black Puerto Rican Identity and Religious Experience (review)

Through Dr. Hernández Hiraldo's investigation we are able to enter a world that is known mainly for its religious African folklore. A serious anthropological research on the multidimensional religious experience of the Loízans has never been accomplished until this field study was made. What we find here is kind of top secret and very revealing of this community's ups and downs. Through almost an entire year of field word, the author not only shows us that Loizans are spiritists (or witches) and Catholics, but also she takes us into a Protestant world we usually are not conscious of. And I think this is her main contribution. But my main concern is the position in which she places the Catholic Church. As a historian I think the way she handles the Catholic history of the region and of Puerto Rico as a whole is very weak. Even the sources she uses for her historical data on Catholism in the Island are not the best ones. Also I wonder why she gives more pre-eminence to the Protestant material and analysis when she herself acknowledges that the Loizans' mainstream religious inclination is toward Catholism, regardless of whether they are regular practitioners or Catholics by name (católicos de nombre).

She places a heavy emphasis on describing the different Protestant churches rituals and pastoral care, putting aside a religious dimension of the Loizans which is still important in their lives even though the author is not willing to admit it: the African religious heritage and its actual mingling with Spiritism and the newcomer Santería. I don't want to think that because of the author's own Protestant background she is unconsciously inclined toward favoring the subject of the different Protestant churches in Loíza which she shows that she understands better than when she is dealing with the Catholic subject. As an example at hand, she leaves the reader with the impression that what has saved the Catholic Church in Loiza and in the whole Island is the Charismatic movement. She does not mention other facts maybe unknown to her since she writes from her Protestant background. Also I think that another reason for presenting such an approach is that she departs from her experience with the Trinitarian fathers, who were very pastoral and up-to-date in their parish administration. But they constituted a fractional presence in the Puerto Rican Catholic Church, related only to the San Juan Metropolitan area, and not to the five dioceses in Puerto Rico. Taking them as a paradigm for Catholics' pastoral progress in the whole Island is not the best example since most of the Church in Puerto Rico is conservative. Besides, one cannot ignore the fact that in Loiza there survive in some people traits of the African religious heritage which is something some of the people from that region try to hide. It would have been interesting if Dr. Hernández Hiraldo had included more research on this subject. In the Catholic pastoral world of this region, which I personally happen to know, this is a very serious concern that we can't ignore. Even more now that it is been reinforced by the appearance of Santería, a Yoruba religion, and many Loízans are descendants of the Yorubans. The problem is twofold: it affects more the Catholic religion and people don't like to talk about their double life as churchgoers and as practitioners of Santería or of Spiritism. I hope the author will have these concerns in mind for a future revision of her very important work.