Black Puerto Rican Identity and Religious Experience (review)

Black Puerto Rican Identity and Religious Experience is the most recent publication in the series "New Directions in Puerto Rican Studies" by the University Press of Florida. It is the first one that focuses on blackness and religion in the island. The book's central contribution to Afro-Puerto Rican and religious studies is to provide a detailed ethnographical description of the management of identity and its relation to religion in a town called Loíza. It includes a historical account of Loizan identity, an examination of competing religious discourses and institutions, a critical analysis of race and gender relations, and a comparative exploration of Christian religiosity in Loíza and the diaspora in the United States, among other related topics.

Loíza is a small town in the northern part of Puerto Rico, not too far away from the capital San Juan. It is known to many Puerto Ricans for the strong presence of black people, poverty, and Afro-Puerto Rican traditions. The town is the home of the very famous festival of Santiago Apóstol, which is heavily infused with Afro-Caribbean themes. Witchcraft and superstition are also frequently associated with the region. Loízan identity is often disavowed, but it is also the object of much exoticism. To overcome the limits of these approaches, often reproduced by scholars themselves, the author uses a "multidimensional" perspective to religion and Loizan identity. By a "multidimensional" perspective, she means "that which integrates the following layers of human experience: the cognitive. . .; the physical-emotive; the verbal and nonverbal ritualistic elements. . .; the body practices. . .; the transcendent; and the social context, particularly religious pluralism and a marginal socioeconomic status" (6). Although reference to these different "layers" of human experience appears throughout the text and clearly serves to articulate the author's narrative, the reader should not expect a systematic account of how these elements relate to each other or a definition of all of them. The notion of the "transcendent," for example, is used at different times, but neither its meaning nor its function is entirely clear. Yet the reader will find an informative and eclectic narrative that provides valuable ethnographic data that shed light on the richness and complexity of religion in Loíza.

The point of entry to Loíza, its people, and its religion is through the author's own personal reflections. She becomes her own "native informant," as it were, but a non-Loizan native informant from Puerto Rico who seeks to give a sense to others of how Loizans are perceived in the Puerto Rican imaginary. The first chapter covers her "encounter with Loíza" as a child living in a Baptist racially mixed family and as a socially committed Christian and university student. The chapter briefly addresses perceptions of blackness as they appeared in the author's family and as they continued to come forth in Puerto Rican public discourses and representations. The picture that begins to emerge is not rosy, and the author is led to confess that perhaps one motivation for her study of Loíza resides in that she wants "to compensate for thinking negatively of the world that my mother's family represented [mixed and black] and which I had begun to associate with Loíza. I wanted to compensate for the fact that the critique against the marginal position of the African theme was less significant than the critique against North American imperialism in the university's circles" (25). Likewise, one can speculate that she pursues the theme of religion because it is also a central component of her personal life and her interaction with her family and because it is often ignored or perceived as less relevant than themes such as politics, society, and culture at the university. Indeed, religion and ethnicity, and more particularly blackness, are often marginalized themes in the secular university and the academic left in Puerto Rico and the United States. This marks the space of Hernández Hiraldo's double...