Crossing the Water: A Photographic Path to the Afro-Cuban Spirit World (review)

This book is one that speaks to the true believers in its readership as well as to academically based students interested in Afro-Cuban religion. Note that it does not attempt to analyze or interpret in the fashion of Mercedes Cros Sandoval’s World-view, the Orishas and Santería (2006), or historicize Afro-Cuban religious thought in the manner of Stephan Palmié’s Wizards and Scientists (2002). Nor does it attempt to connect the practice with political and ideological developments, as does Christine Ayorinde’s Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Identity (2004).

But Garoutte and Wambaugh’s photojournalistic breakthrough brings us, the viewing readers, up close and personal to the rituals performed by the padrino (“godfather”) Santiago as a leader of a family of practitioners in Santiago de Cuba. A great part of the book’s contribution lies in its revelation of the workings of the Congo-Bantú-based Palo Monte religion, with its practice of capturing and handling the spirits of the dead. Equally interesting are the references to Santiago’s practices of Allan Kardec-inspired espiritismo, with its emphasis on the spiritual masses and communications with the dead. It also offers a fresh new look at the dance-and-music-filled worship of the orishas that is the syncretic religion of Regla de Ocha, commonly known as Santería.

What this book does deliver is a colorfully intimate portraiture of religious practice on the part of its authors, both of them acting as participant-observers, who, having visited the house of their teacher and guide on multiple occasions during five visits to Cuba, provide detailed descriptions of altar settings, sacrificial ceremonies, possessions, and the spirit-holding cauldrons called ngangas or prendas. Over 150 illustrations in this “photographic path of the Afro-Cuban spirit world” make a visually engrossing experience for the reader and a source of data for the researcher. And above all, it provides, from its emic perspective, a close look at the quotidian practice of Santiago, a true priest of these “crossed” religions and guide through their liturgies, rites, and arcane practices.

Yet for some readers for whom seeing is not necessarily believing, the texts and photos of Garoutte and Wambaugh’s book may recall a passage in Manuel Cofiño’s Afro-Cuban novel, Cuando la sangre se parece al fuego (When Blood Looks like Fire [1977]), which refers to its protagonist as a former true believer who realizes, after his conversion to the official ideology, that once “He lived in a world of gods. Surrounded by misery, blood and dreams. . . . In the change of one time for another. He lived in the world of saints, kings and warriors, gluttons and dancers, lechers and virgins, good and bad” (p. 21).