Afro-Cuban Religious Arts: Popular Expressions of Cultural Inheritance in Espiritismo and Santería by Kristine Juncker (review)

Book Reviews questions; Schneider is right to raise them, but the forcefulness of her conclusions threatens to trivialize her subjects’ involvement in a regime (and friendships with people) engaged in systematic, sometimes murderous repression. Regardless, even these controversial claims are usefully provocative and stimulating—and overall, this book is an excellent synthesis: wellwritten , originally researched, skillfully drawing on exclusive sources, and addressing a neglected but important realm of study. Brazilian Propaganda is essential reading for scholars of Brazil’s military regime and of its counterparts in the region; it will also, surely, prove a useful resource for uninitiated readers, inside and outside the classroom. Benjamin A. Cowan Department of History and Art History George Mason University AFRO-CUBAN RELIGIOUS ARTS: POPULAR EXPRESSIONS OF CULTURAL INHERITANCE IN ESPIRITISMO AND SANTERı́A. ByKristine Juncker. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014, p. 216, $74.95. A collection of old photographs and treasured religious items provided Kristine Juncker with an entryway into a world that is often difficult for outsiders to access—the world of Afro-Cuban religion. Her journey to weave together the lives of the individuals documented in the photographs eventually took her to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and New York City, where she attended more than one hundred spiritual masses and celebrations. During these years of field work, Juncker uncovered the lives and legacies of four generations of spiritual leaders. Though not all blood-related, the four central female subjects of her study shared a common dedication to develop and share their gifts during careers that collectively spanned nearly a century (1899 to 1969). Juncker’s goals with this study were to distinguish between the different Afro-Atlantic belief systems—Espiritismo, La Regla de Ocha, and Palo—while also emphasizing the links between them. She argues that scholars have not yet come to terms with the cultural hybridity and religious plurality at the heart of Afro-Cuban religious practice. Secondly, Juncker examines the larger social and political forces that shaped a modern Afro-Cuban religious-arts movement that now enjoys a global audience . Finally, she explores the critical (albeit relatively understudied) role that women in Afro-Atlantic religion have played in creating a space for the exploration of historical consciousness. This important work was complicated by a number of factors. From contending with the tradition of destroying altars upon the death of the presiding santero/santera to confronting Espiritistas’ desire to safeguard their role as sole mediator between audiences, Juncker navigated 87 The Latin Americanist, December 2014 constantly between the secrecy surrounding her subject and her own intellectual goals. In fact, many of the ceremonies and altars that served as primary sources for her study are not accessible to the general public . This concealment stems not only from a reverence for the sacred, but also from a long history of religious persecution on the island. Juncker cites the existence of religious oppression during the so-called “Little Race War” of 1912, but she holds the Cuban Revolution responsible for the most discriminatory acts. She argues that the revolutionary government’s general suspicion of organized and folk Catholicism prompted a large-scale seizure of objects from church altars and private homes, the destruction of Christian monuments, and shutting down registered Espiritismo centers as part of an effort to thwart the counter-revolutionary potential of the Catholic Church in Cuba. In contrast, the revolutionary government supported religions defined as more purely Afro-Cuban, such as La Regla de Ocha, Palo, and the Abakuá fraternities, and even financed efforts to establish a national folklore that centered on these practices. When she is able to overcome these obstacles, Juncker provides a rigorous—almost curatorial—catalog of specific altars with a special focus on the symbolic meaning of the individual objects contained therein. Images of the altars invite some reader engagement; however, the “popular expression” component of her work can get lost in the detail of her descriptive analysis. Similarly, the author’s focus on the intellectual roots of Afro-Cuban religious practices in the introduction will appeal to specialists in the field, but divorces the subject somewhat from its more popular roots. Including anonymous excerpts from interviews with practitioners would have amplified the human element of...