Santería in Cuba: contested issues at a time of transition

I'm Yoruba, I weep in YorubaLucumí.Since I'm a Yoruba from Cuba,I want my lament of Yoruba to touch Cubathis joyful weeping in Yorubathat comes out of me.

I'm Yoruba,I keep singingand crying.And when I'm not Yoruba,I am Congo, Mandinga or Carabalí.

—Son' Number 6, Nicolás Guillén (1947)

As i sat listening to my friends banter in a café in Old Havana, someone blurted: "The Revolution should apologize to gay men, prostitutes and religious practitioners!" Then, not to lose the momentum, he continued playfully, "It is not me who is making this statement. It is the ancestors who are speaking through me!" A roar of laughter and spirited interjections followed. This tongue-in-cheek comment revealed a historical reality of the early years of the Cuban Revolution where any manifestation of religiosity was seen as counter-revolutionary. Afro-Cuban practitioners of Santería were particularly affected by this stigmatization. Many found themselves with no prospects. They were not allowed to join the Communist Party; they were denied professional training, college degrees, promotion, travel outside the country and good housing.

The Communist Party lifted its prohibition against religious believers in 1991. The constitution was reformed the following year, declaring Cuba a secular state instead of atheist. Since then, Santería has been experiencing a moment of revitalization. This paper, the result of many visits to Cuba over the years, is a meditation on the religious landscape as shaped by the current economic and political changes in Cuba: the initial collapse of the Soviet bloc, economic crisis, the relentless U.S. trade embargo, and most recently, a changing relationship with the U.S., including the opening of the U.S. embassy, the easing of business and travel restrictions resulting in 90,000 tourists arriving in Cuba between January and May 2016. These changes are producing new racial and gender dynamics that complicate the historical legacy of Santería, and which also contribute to the rise of new religious voices that challenge the commercialization of the religion.

Bashezo, Tending my Garden, 2017. Performance still, soil, broken ceramic plates and cups, dried flowers, glasses, bottle cap fan, fabric, and effun (powered snail shells).

The history of Africana religions in Cuba has been one marked by marginalization, stigmatization and exploitation. During the years of the Republic (1902–1959) Afro-Cuban religious practices were criminalized. The subsequent Socialist state (1959–) discouraged any religious expression until the 1990s. In the same year Cuba was declared secular, a World Congress of Yoruba religion, the first of its kind in Cuba, took place in the presence of the Communist Party and government officials. This was the beginning of public forums on Africana religions in Cuba centered on debates about hierarchy, orthodoxy and autonomy.

The shift to the secular phase allowed Santería practitioners to take their gods out of hiding and the religion began to thrive openly both inside and outside Cuba. These developments have not necessarily benefited Afro-Cuban practitioners. With tourism at the heart of the economic recovery plan, new patterns of social mobility and commerce arose, and some of the structural inequalities of the early years of the revolution were exacerbated. The cost of ceremonies and the price of initiations skyrocketed. Afro-Cubans found themselves at a disadvantage and unable to compete in a tourist economy in which whiteness was privileged, and their religious practices were marketed and engaged as a commodity.

Statistically, it is hard to gauge the pronounced popularity of Santería in Cuba, because while 82% of Cubans are officially documented as Catholics, the initiation into Santería, or Regla de Ocha, requires baptism in the Catholic Church. Interestingly enough, Santería, practiced by most, is what preserves Cubans' link to Catholicism—a historical irony considering that the Catholic Church has historically exercised a policy of calculated tolerance with the expectation that African-derived religions would eventually disappear. This, of course, has not been the case. Africana religions in...