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21 Religious Syncretism and Transculturation The Crossroads toward New Identities The events described by Pané during his missionary work in Hispaniola (see section 19 C) represent two responses to the advent of Catholic religion and, especially , of Christian icons: clearly some natives of the Macorix region were receptive , for whatever reasons, to catechism; but those in the Guarícano settlement in Magua, once cacique Guarionex joined the rebellion, rejected catechism and set out to destroy the icons. Native acceptance versus resistance is thus the key process involved. Resistance and rejection (e.g., at Guarícano) do not require further in-depth analysis, but the processes that are implicated in acceptance, adoption, appropriation , assimilation, and so forth, require further attention, because these are at stake in the genesis of new identities in Cuba as well as the rest of the Caribbean islands. And in these processes, the physicality of iconography and the sculptures of aboriginal cemís, saints, and virgins are as important as the performances— ritual theater—enacted by humans. As Pané (1999) provided no detailed accounts of how such acceptance worked in northeastern Hispaniola, the two examples above from eastern Cuba provide useful insights. The acceptance of the sculptured (by the cacique of Cueybá) or painted (by Comendador) Virgin is a first step toward acceptance. It is clear, at least to me, that both caciques had adopted the Virgin icons and internalized selected elements of the icon’s personhood (who she was) and legend (her powers).The way in which the Virgin was made to confront the traditional Indo-Cuban cemís can best be interpreted as an addition to the ensemble of native cemí icons that both caciques must have had, albeit their novelty and demonstrated powers catapulted the Virgin icons to the forefront. While such adoption and integration seems to be made within the ideological and religious framework of the Cuban natives, it nevertheless still points to the selective incorporation of elements from a different religious tradition. Her face, body, and attire were unlike anything they had seen before. Yet the ease with which the two Virgin icons were adopted by natives in Cuba suggests that there was no stigma attached or barriers to the acceptance of foreign religious elements. There is no sense of pollution or bastardization of their religion. In short, the argument is that just as these caciques accepted, in their own terms, foreign or stranger Virgin Mary (imbued with cemí) icons, so they would also be open to accept other stranger or foreign religious icons from Hispaniola, the Bahamas, and other aboriginal societies of the Caribbean with whom they in- Religious Syncretism and Transculturation 233 teracted. Of course, the opposite is not true: Catholic dogma considers the adoption of foreign religious icons as sinful, a bastardization and pollution of the pure and true faith. The processes implicated in the Indo-Cuban examples recall what Melville Herskovits (1937a, 1937b; Stewart 1999:47) famously subsumed under the concepts of acculturation (the “melting pot” ideal) through syncretism, and what the eminent Cuban scholar Fernando Ortíz (1973, 1995; Stewart 1999:48) redefined as transculturation in the first half of the twentieth century. Although the definition of all three concepts has since evolved (see Brown 2003:44–45), their essence still refers to the question of how and why societies resist or adopt elements or entire complexes of new and foreign ideologies, practices, or material cultures. The dyad of rejection/acceptance ought to be thought of as the endpoints of a continuum of strategies rather than an “either/or” proposition. Through syncretism, societies are continually being transformed into different entities that nevertheless still selectively and contextually display echoes of their diverse, multiple heritages. David H. Brown, quoting Karl Reisman, provides these illuminating thoughts on syncretism : In producing syncretisms, creative agents “remodel” or “reshape” the forms of symbols to resemble as closely as possible both the historical source and the forms current in the environment ([Reisman 1970:]131; emphasis added [by Brown]). Any “form that is retained (new or old) is likely to be one that can be interpreted in several ways, as related to a number of traditions” ([Reisman 1970:]132). In other words, syncretisms may not merely represent old wine in new bottles or new wine in old bottles—that is, masking or transvaluation, respectively.The historically situated performances of agents creatively change the shape of the bottles [e.g., cemís or Virgin idols] themselves into new “creole” forms, which “resemble,” but do not reduce...

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