Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa

6. Ritual in the Bronx

chapter 6 Ritual in the Bronx You followed me to this cold place; now you’ll have to make do with this. Garifuna shaman in New York, to her spirits I go home the way other people go abroad, for I have become the other for the people I continue to call my own. Fatou Diome, The Belly of the Atlantic With the exception of the dügü, all Garifuna rituals can be, and are, performed in diaspora. The requirement that the dügü take place on homeland soil enhances its prestige in the Bronx. It is distinguished as the return par excellence, a veritable pilgrimage. Yet many Garifuna will never take part in a dügü. For some, their illegal status in the United States would render the voyage a one-way journey; others could never muster the required resources; and others yet are uninterested in such traditional rites because they are skeptics or Protestant converts. Few, however, avoid all the rituals of traditional Garifuna religion. In the Bronx as in homeland villages, less elaborate rituals—the wake immediately following the death of a relative, and the “mass” offered a year or more later—are events as regular as death itself. More elaborate offerings to the gubida, like the chugu, occur several times a year. In New York, the individual consultations that consume the largest portion of the buyei’s time proceed very much as in homeland villages, except that a visit to the buyei, which almost immediately becomes public knowledge in the village, in most cases remains a private affair. This difference 186 RITUAL IN THE BRONX 187 is more consequential than it might appear. In the absence of constant public knowledge of who was or was not present at a ritual, the compulsory , collective quality of ritual is diminished, and its character as personal and elective cultural activity is enhanced. The closest equivalent to the dügü performed in the Bronx is the “return of the ancestors.” The event occurs once a year, on the Saturday night nearest January 15. It commemorates the return of the shamans’ spirit helpers (hiyuruha) following their month-long absence during the Christian holiday season. During that time the ancestors are said to return to Sairi, traditionally located in St. Vincent, but now located by many New York Garifuna leaders as “in Africa.” The interval is an extension of the traditional period of festivities (fedu) between December 24 and January 6 (Epiphany). As the hiyuruha take their ease, so does the buyei, who undertakes no consulting or ritual work.1 The return of the ancestors marks not only the return of the shamans’ tutelary spirits but also the end of the festive season, the return to work, and the rejoining of the everyday struggles that call for the ancestors’ intervention. Despite many similarities, this ritual is not the same as the dügü. Its ritual space and objects are different, and these differences have clear effects on performance. And, whereas the dügü is a crisis-driven intervention performed only sporadically, the return is cyclical, performed annually. What is more, because New York Garifuna cannot presume the ethnic recognition that might guarantee them sites of performance or time dedicated to its observance, the ritual must be carefully orchestrated and planned. Halls must be rented or borrowed and the ritual purpose explained, defended, and rendered explicit. To take the terms of Harvey Whitehouse (2000, 2004), diasporic ritual is pushed toward the “attractor position” of a more doctrinal ritual style and away from the imagistic ritual style more characteristic of the homeland dügü. Example One: The Return of the Ancestors, January 2002 For the return ritual of 2002, all Garifuna of New York were invited, from every family, village background, and linguistic group. Those from Corozal attended alongside those from San Juan, Triunfo de la Cruz, and Aguan; Hondurans came along with Belizeans and Guatemalans. Thus the outer frame of the ritual was the ethnic group of the Garifuna as a whole, rather than specific family lineages from given villages. 188 RITUAL IN THE BRONX The public event was held at the community center Vamos a La Peña (Let’s Go to the Rock) at 1226 East 144th Street, as it had been many times before.2 At the time, La Peña was a nonprofit community center in the Bronx, used for everything from musical events and...