Sacred Spaces and Religious Traditions in Oriente Cuba

Front Cover

Download PDF (3.6 MB)
 

Title Page

Download PDF (67.8 KB)
pp. iii-

Copyright

Download PDF (45.2 KB)
pp. iv-

Contents

Download PDF (46.4 KB)
pp. vii-

Illustrations

Download PDF (42.5 KB)
pp. viii-

Editors’ Foreword

Download PDF (49.6 KB)
pp. ix-x

In 1947 Don Fernando Ortiz in his book Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar coined the terms “transcultural” and “transculturation” as expressions of descriptive and methodological orientations to the reality of Cuban culture and religion. The...

Preface

Download PDF (45.3 KB)
pp. xi-xii

The African Atlantic Research Team (AART) is a mentoring collective that attempts to socialize as well as educate graduate and undergraduate students to the rigors and demands of academic production. AART was founded on the principle of collective and integrated engagement and we have worked to refine practical...

Acknowledgments

Download PDF (41.1 KB)
pp. xii-

We give thanks to those who have gone before and made it possible for us to be at Eternal debt to Dr. Ruth Simms Hamilton of Michigan State University, whose intellectual life and groundbreaking conceptual work greatly influenced this book.There are at least two hundred or more persons whose help was indispensable to this volume’s completion. Indeed, there never would have been a book ...

Introduction

Download PDF (1.3 MB)
pp. 1-18

Spaces constructed by religious practitioners of Oriente represent their understanding about the sacredness of their world. They also incorporate ideas about what it means to be human as they express portions of the collective history of a particular religion and its followers. Images in this book...

IMAGE PLATES

Download PDF (19.5 MB)
 

Part I

Download PDF (8.7 KB)
pp. 19-

1: Contours and Concepts

Download PDF (702.2 KB)
pp. 21-38

To begin to comprehend and analyze sacred spaces constructed by religious practitioners in Oriente it is essential to appreciate the geographic as well as the sociohistoric and religious contours that set in motion the ideas and realities from which today’s sacred locations are built. We should be interested...

2: African Cosmic Orientation: Core Commonalties

Download PDF (153.9 KB)
pp. 39-60

This chapter is devoted to examining the shared cosmic orientation that permeates indigenous religions as we investigated them in Oriente and as that sensibility originally arrived with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Africans who landed in Cuba’s eastern region. These individuals brought...

3: What Sacred Spaces Do

Download PDF (851.7 KB)
pp. 61-78

Academic fields of religious studies, anthropology, geography, sociology, and others have persistently investigated religious activities as a product of human group interactions. Sacred spaces that result from religious activities also have received considerable attention as scholars and...

Part II

Download PDF (8.7 KB)
pp. 79-

4: Palo Monte/Palo Mayombe

Download PDF (138.0 KB)
pp. 81-103

More than any other landscape in Cuba, Oriente is known as “land of the dead.” This is largely due to the historical presence of enslaved descendants from Africa’s west central region of Kongo Kingdom ethnic groups. Spiritual life among this group of peoples is personally interconnected...

5: Vod�

Download PDF (129.6 KB)
pp. 104-123

Approximately thirty-five miles of sea separate eastern Cuba from the nation of Haiti. On a clear evening, from shores of the former French colony, one can see the lights of Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in Cuba (see map 5). It is no wonder, therefore, that Haiti, where at least 66 percent...

6: Espiritismo

Download PDF (148.2 KB)
pp. 124-144

Cuban Espiritismo is a varied set of religious practices that are exceptionally popular in Oriente. Although it is not an Africa-based tradition, it does include marker characteristics from the nation’s African heritage. Espiritismo originates from practices in the United States and from...

Part III

Download PDF (8.7 KB)
pp. 145-

7: “Land of the Dead” Beginnings: Muertéra Bembé de Sao

Download PDF (97.6 KB)
pp. 147-159

Thus far we have outlined historical parameters of the African presence in Oriente, discussed some conceptual roles of sacred spaces, clarified important commonalities of an Africa-based cosmic orientation, and examined salient issues related to three of four indigenous religions that...

8: Findings and Conclusions

Download PDF (126.7 KB)
pp. 160-175

Much before the opening of the twenty-first century, the historian of religions, Charles H. Long was writing and speaking about human orientation, knowledge, religion, time, space, and related...

Notes

Download PDF (80.8 KB)
pp. 177-188

Glossary of Select Terms

Download PDF (60.5 KB)
pp. 189-191

Bibliography

Download PDF (118.3 KB)
pp. 192-204

Index

Download PDF (59.2 KB)
pp. 205-210

Back Cover

Download PDF (3.6 MB)