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UNIFICAR, ENSEÑAR, Y LIMPIAR LA IMAGEN: PUBLIC REPRESENTATION AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY IN SANTERÍA AND THE HISTORY OF LUKUMI V. HIALEAH by BRICE A. BONGIOVANNI (Under the Direction of Reinaldo Román) The 1993 United States Supreme Court case Lukumi v. Hialeah, in which practitioners of the Afro-Cuban religion Santería successfully challenged laws banning religious animal sacrifice, has often been described by observers as an unprecedented and uncharacteristic public reaction by santeros against negative legal treatment and media representation in Miami during the 1980s. In fact, the clash between the negative public image of Santería and the public activities of Santería organizations in Lukumi was derived from historical precedents: The representation of Afro-Cuban religions as witchcraft in Republican Cuba and the counter- representation offered by Afro-Cuban religious organizations, cabildos, of their practices as a legitimate religion. In representing Santería as a legitimate religion in Miami, public Santería organizations sought to recreate the cabildo model of religious community and authority in a transnational context. This led to significant intra-religious conflict in Santería in the United States, which now can begin to be positioned within the larger history of Santería. INDEX WORDS: Santería, African-Derived Religions, Cuba, Afro-Cubans, Cuban Immigrants, Miami, Lukumi v. Hialeah, Cabildos, Witchcraft, Animal Sacrifice, Transnational Religion, Diasporic Religion. UNIFICAR, ENSEÑAR, Y LIMPIAR LA IMAGEN: PUBLIC REPRESENTATION AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY IN SANTERÍA AND THE HISTORY OF LUKUMI V. HIALEAH by BRICE A. BONGIOVANNI A.B., The University of Georgia, 2010 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2013 © 2013 Brice A. Bongiovanni All Rights Reserved UNIFICAR, ENSEÑAR, Y LIMPIAR LA IMAGEN: PUBLIC REPRESENTATION AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY IN SANTERÍA AND THE HISTORY OF LUKUMI V. HIALEAH by BRICE A. BONGIOVANNI Major Professor: Reinaldo Román Committee: Oscar Chamosa Pamela Voekel Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2013 iv DEDICATION For Mom and Dad, who knew exactly what I was getting into, and never let me give up. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Reinaldo Román, for starting my interest in African-derived religions in the Americas while I was an undergraduate, for taking me on as a graduate student, and for guiding me in this project with insight, humor, and impressive patience. I would also like to thank my committee members, Oscar Chamosa and Pamela Voekel, for their input on my work and their advice as teachers and colleagues. Additional thanks go to Ari Levine and Peter Hoffer, for their suggestions on what eventually became my thesis topic. In the course of researching for this project I received invaluable assistance from several individuals. The most important was Willie Ramos, who gave me access to the full print run of Eleda and provided me with his input on the religious scene in Miami during the 1980s. I would also like to thank Thomas Tweed of the University of Texas, for his advice on research; Patricia Putman of the Florida Humanities Council, for unearthing some unique information otherwise out of reach; and Lesbia Varona and María Estorino of the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami and Koichi Tasa, the University of Miami Archivist, for their input. Finally, I would like to thank the people who have supported me in my graduate career: my parents, Fred and Dee, who provided me with the benefit of their experience whenever I asked for it; my sister, Drew, who will go on to great things; and my friends and classmates at the University of Georgia, who kept me sane. I couldn’t have done it without you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION: LUKUMI V. HIALEAH, TWENTY YEARS AFTER .....................................1 CHAPTER 1 REPRESENTATIONS OF WITCHCRAFT IN CUBA AND MIAMI .......................12 Caribbean Moral Panics and the Frame of Suspicion ............................................14 Building an Inventory of Suspicion in Miami .......................................................22 Intersecting Witchcrafts: Santería and the Satanic Panic ......................................31 Conclusion .............................................................................................................38 2 PUBLIC REPRESENTATION AND REMAKING THE CABILDO ........................40 Lucumí Representation and the Cabildo Model ....................................................42 Reconsidering the Cabildo in Diaspora .................................................................50 The Cabildo and Community Mobilization in Miami ...........................................57 Conclusion .............................................................................................................66 3 REPRESENTATION AND RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AFTER LUKUMI V. HIALEAH .....................................................................................................................69 Spokesmanship and Controversy: The Zamora Affair ..........................................71 Representation and Community in the Internet Age..............................................76 Religious Authority and the Bounds of Community .............................................87 Conclusion .............................................................................................................93 vii CONCLUSION: REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNITY IN FLUX ....................................96 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................102 1 INTRODUCTION: LUKUMI V. HIALEAH, TWENTY YEARS AFTER The scene at the June 9, 1987, meeting of the City Council of Hialeah, Florida, was angry and chaotic. Outside the Hialeah City Hall, a crowd of around 100 protestors held signs in English and Spanish reading “no satanic church in my Hialeah” and “Hialeah for Christ”; within the building, Hialeah mayor Raul Martinez and members of the City Council faced some 300 angry residents, members of local animal welfare organizations, and clergy, all with similar condemnations. The target of this outrage was the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Ayé (CLBA), an organization of priests and adherents of the Afro-Cuban religion Santería, which in April 1987 had announced plans to build a dedicated permanent church building in Hialeah, just two blocks from City Hall.1 The CLBA had also stated its intention to perform animal sacrifices at its planned location, inspiring widespread hostility from Hialeah residents. After three hours of angry debate, Mayor Martinez and members of the City Council adopted a resolution condemning the actions of “certain religions [that] may propose to engage in practices which are inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety” and an ordinance enforcing Florida’s state animal cruelty statute as a local law.2 The June 9 meeting began a legal process that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In response to the passage of several other ordinances intended to prevent animal sacrifice in 1. A note on terminology: Santería is also historically known as Lucumí/Lukumi religion [or la religion Lucumí], after the Afro-Cuban ethnic group from which it originated; this is the preferred terminology of a number of contemporary groups, including the CLBA. However, in the interest of clarity, I use “Santería” and “santeros” for the religion and its practitioners in the modern United States, “Lucumí religion/practitioners” for late Colonial/Republican Cuba, and “Lukumi” for the Lukumi v. Hialeah case. 2. Carlos Harrison, “Hialeah Move to Block Santería Sacrifices,” Miami Herald, June 10, 1987; City of Hialeah, Florida, Resolution No. 87-66 and Ordinance No. 87-40, June 9, 1987. 2 September 1987, the CLBA sued Hialeah for unlawful discrimination and the infringement of its constitutional right to Free Exercise of religion. Although the CLBA lost its initial trial in Federal District Court and its first appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed those rulings and found the Hialeah ordinances unconstitutional in 1993’s Lukumi v. Hialeah (508 U.S. 520, 1993). Justice Anthony M. Kennedy specifically noted the animus displayed against Santería in Hialeah, and the fact that the Hialeah ordinances targeted animal sacrifice while exempting other forms of slaughter, in ruling that the ordinances were neither religiously neutral nor generally applicable and thus unlawfully targeted Santería; the ruling protected religious animal sacrifice from being targeted as such by State and Federal government.3 From the perspective of any casual observer in Miami, the Lukumi decision represented a complete reversal of fortune for Santería. The religion, which had arrived in Miami with exiles from Revolutionary Cuba after 1959, was consistently the subject of negative press in Miami during the 1980s: it was linked variously to drug crime, the discovery of animal remains, and, as at the June 9 meeting in Hialeah, “satanic” and “cult” activities. Santeros themselves had almost no public presence, as most practiced discretely and privately. CLBA spokesman Ernesto Pichardo and the CLBA had been an exception