Transformation: Transcendence Or Transculturation? the Many Faces of Cuban Santeria

TRANSFORMATION: TRANSCENDENCE OR TRANSCULTURATION? THE MANY FACES OF CUBAN SANTERIA

ADRIAN H. HEARN

NTRODUCTION dealt frequently with foreigners, from I percussion students and anthropologists, In May 2002, as I was nearing the end of to filmmakers and tour operators an eighteen-month stay in Cuba, I was impressed with his lively explanations of invited to attend an artistic performance Santería folklore. of popular traditions in Santiago de Cuba. But Miguel also had a substantial local As with folkloric recitals in hundreds of religious following. He owned a set of hotels, cabarets, cultural centres and sacred batá drums, consecrated by the nightclubs throughout the island, the renowned Pancho Quinto, and his house spotlight focused on the most exotic, operated as a centre of religious activity visually stimulating aspects of the Afro- in Old Havana, drawing a wide range of Cuban religion Santería. It was a night of relatives and friends into a network of drumming, dancing, spirit possessions community support. The ceremonial and, to the fascinated shock of many gatherings that took place at his house spectators, an animal sacrifice. The maintained the spiritual and material program for the performance, printed in well-being of participants: the pork, English and Spanish, noted the central chicken, and goat meat used in ceremonial importance of these ritual activities to the offerings was divided and shared among practice of Santería in Cuba. participants, and ‘derechos’ (fees) were The following week I returned to the paid to those who helped facilitate these house of Miguel, a priest of Santería and occasions. my principal percussion teacher, with This kind of attention to social welfare whom I had lived for 12 months in has been central to the practice of Afro- Havana. When Miguel saw the program Cuban religions since the establishment of from the performance, he commented that mutual aid societies called cabildos in the the facts it presented about the deities of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1 Santería were inconsistent with the Through the economic crisis of the 1990s, religion’s spiritual teachings. But, to my grassroots social support has remained an surprise, he also laughed and said that to important focus of Santería communities get away with this, the performance and networks, in some instances drawing directors must be adept salespeople and them into collaboration with state urban true cabrones (literally ‘bastards’, though development institutions.2 But some used in Cuba to signify cunning). Miguel commentators argue that this historic

56 ADRIAN H. HEARN Transformation: Transcendence or Transculturation? capacity for collective action, which debate: is an expanding entertainment depends on strong and loyal networks of industry fundamentally damaging community support, is eroding with the Santería’s role in community welfare, or religion’s recent commercial renaissance. is resistance to commodification Rogelio Martínez Furé, Miguel Barnet, effectively maintaining the religion’s Carlos Moore, and others note that the spiritual efficacy and capacity for social appearance of sacred ceremonial actions support among its followers? I wish to in folklore cabarets and hotel nightclubs explore the middle ground between these is trivialising and diluting the religion’s antitheses through a series of short social and spiritual cohesion.3 narrative anecdotes. Drawing from Foreign interest in Afro-Cuban Fernando Ortiz I will suggest that a less religious exotica has swelled and subsided essentialised reading of the situation may over the centuries, peaking prominently be possible when theorised in terms of between 1920 and 1940,4 but the transculturation. expansion of tourism in Cuba since the Ortiz developed the concept of early 1990s has generated unprecedented transculturation in 1940 to account for the commercial appeal around Santería and interpenetration of Spanish and African other historic Cuban traditions. According cultural influences in Cuban national to Eusebio Leal, Old Havana’s equivalent identity. The dominant model of cross- of Mayor and the director of the Office of cultural contact at the time was the Historian of the City: acculturation, which predicted the inevita- ble assimilation of non-industrial societies Tourism is here to stay, and it will into the currents of an expanding increase a hundredfold when the European political economy. Ortiz’s blockade is abolished. North Americans transculturation, on the other hand, want to come here because we have acknowledged the ongoing influence of something they do not: art, architecture, the customs, traditions, and cultures of all and historic traditions all within Old participants in scenarios of cross-cultural Havana. That said, we reject the idea of contact and exchange. turning our historic centre into a theme By examining the issue of religious park and novelty show.5 commercialisation through the analytic lens of transculturation I hope to show that Santería stands out prominently as Santeríaís predicament is conditioned not one of these historic traditions, but not all by tourism or tradition alone but by a its practitioners approve of its new, convergence of distinct cultural and marketable face. Some have joined economic values in collaborative together to rediscover a more traditional, activities. In the negotiated episodes of African form of the religion by researching daily life, the effects of film contracts and its historical foundations and refusing cabaret performances on religious outright to perform its sacred arts on the communities are only one half of the story; folklore stage. Through this commitment, the other half is about the attempts of they aim to ‘rescue’ their tradition by religious practitioners to assert their own closely defining its spiritual and social influences and values in the collaborative teachings, while staying loyal to projects that result. The activities of community interests and solidarities. Miguel in Old Havana are a good exam- It is tempting to take sides in the ple of this. His skilful orchestration of

57 Humanities Research Vol. 10 No. 3, 2003 presentations and meetings to The show is over and the audience is on its accommodate the diverse needs of feet applauding. The lights come up and the foreign film makers, percussion students, air gradually fills with the sound of European aspiring initiates, and his local religious conversations: ‘Where can I get a recording following show an interpenetration of of this music?’ ‘Grabaste esa última parte con commercial, community, and personal la cámera?’ ‘A quelle heur vient l’autobus de objectives. The convergence of these l’hôtel?’ Slowly the crowd disperses, most of objectives in common activities shows it getting onto the tour bus. ‘The energy was transculturation in motion. incredible! What beautiful costumes … ‘

SACRED THEATRE: THE Personal Diary, Santiago de Cuba 2002 TRANSFORMATION OF TRADITION Theatrical renderings of sacred ritual are commonplace wherever there are hotels Although I’m seated in the sixth row of the and cabarets in Cuba, and many foreigners open-air amphitheatre, I can see the stage (myself included) invest energy, money clearly. The batá drummers are at the back of and time in learning this kind of religious the stage, the singer (akpón) to their left, and music and dance. But according to the the dancers, all women, in front. Dressed from artistic director of the Cuban National head to toe in the white robes of recent Santería Folklore Ensemble, Rogelio Martínez initiates (iyawó), the eight dancers move in a Furé, the material performed and the slow, graceful circle to the rhythm of the knowledge taught are often something goddess Yemayá, ‘… asesu Yemayá, Yemayá other than they appear: olodo, olodo Yemayá …’ The akpón’s phrase is repeated in soothing tones by the dancers. There are people who hardly know how to sing or play, yet they give music and The rhythms gradually build tension and the dance classes to foreigners. And what phrases of the call and response songs become they transmit is a popularised pseudo- shorter and more energetic: ‘ … tsikini … a la tradition that is deformed and deforms modanse …’ The dancers have broken from the … The temptation to earn easy money has circle and are stepping quickly now, the largest captured many opportunistic hearts … batá drum (iyá) filling the electrified evening since the good grain is mixed in with the air with torrid, thunderous improvisations. dirt, they take advantage of the historical One of the dancers near the front of the stage moment to prey on traditional culture for starts to convulse, eyes rolled back, taken by personal gain.6 the goddess Yemayá. The other dancers catch her before she falls; she regains balance and Martínez Furé’s point is not that the starts to spin faster and faster: ‘… yaale yaalu folkloric representation of sacred practices ma o …’ The three batá drums are locked into does them harm, but rather that the a controlled, very rapid polyrhythm, misrepresentation of religious traditions punctuated by the calls of the iyá and by untrained performers for unknowing responses of the second drum, itótele. The audiences and students ultimately spinning dancer collapses and hits the floor. deforms their integrity:

58 ADRIAN H. HEARN Transformation: Transcendence or Transculturation?

Unfortunately, most of these young needed six drummers and could pay each of performers know very little about these them fifteen US dollars. [About four times traditions because they’re more focused on what a drummer typically earns in a religious earning money. I call this ‘the jineterismo ceremony.] Since only four of five drummers [hustling/ pimping] of pseudo-culture.’ We are needed to alternate on the three batá have a serious problem here with the drums, I expected that Lázaro would take at commercialisation of music and religion. least six of the eighteen drummers with him. Foreigners come to buy religious knowledge But only one went. I asked some of the others and experience, and many babalawos [priests why they didn’t take the opportunity. One of of Ifá, a divination tradition associated with them replied: ‘We need money to survive, but Santería] will do anything for dollars.7 we need el santo [‘the saint’, used here to mean ‘religion’] even more’. For Martínez Furé, the integrity of Afro-Cuban religions has been eroded Personal Diary, Havana 2001 with commodification. It is an opinion shared by Miguel Barnet, who notes that The decisions of religious drummers the traditional practice of handing down to accept or reject these kinds of sacred knowledge within religious commercial opportunities usually involve families has been undermined by a new more than a utilitarian calculation of tendency to reveal secret information to profits. Such decisions are also based on paying customers. He calls this the community loyalties, fear of rebuke from ‘horizontalisation’ of what was previously religious elders, and a sense that the a more structured, linear process of public performance of religious music is religious education.8 The changing simply disrespectful to Santería’s material conditions brought by an opening spiritual foundations. These concerns can economic climate, it seems, are causing and do lead some musicians and dancers cultural transformations. to restrict their performances to sacred contexts. GRASSROOTS RESISTANCE: THE This is particularly true for members TRANSCENDENCE OF TRADITION of two Havana grassroots Santería organisations called Ifá Iranlowo and Ilé It has been a busy weekend in the temple- Tún Tún. Both groups were founded in the house. There were over thirty people involved early 1990s and share the goal of in the ceremonies last night, and many of the rediscovering and maintaining a more guests were still here this morning. After orthodox, less commercial Santería. They lunch seven batá drummers came to the are leading an emerging ‘Africanisation’ temple-house and we prepared the drums for movement within the religion, which tonight’s ceremony. More drummers Víctor Betancourt — the president of Ifá gradually arrived, and by 4pm there were Iranlowo — describes as ‘the restructuring eighteen omo aña [initiated drummers] of the Afro-Cuban belief system, the chatting in the street outside the temple- rescue of ancient traditions and cultural house. That’s when Lázaro showed up. He roots deformed by syncretism’.9 said his group was hired for the night to play The two organisations demonstrated in the rooftop bar of the Hotel Inglaterra. He the depth of their public support during

59 Humanities Research Vol. 10 No. 3, 2003 the Pope’s visit to Cuba in 1998, when dancing of rumba and batá, religion always they convened over 450 high-ranking figures in prominently. Today, the English practitioners of Santería to lay the film crew made Miguel the feature of their preliminary foundations of a unified documentary. He did an interview in full Church of Santería.10 According to Anet ceremonial regalia plus a mock consultation del Rey Roa of Havana’s Centre for with Orula [the Santería deity of divination]. Psychological and Social Research (CIPS), After his performance I asked Miguel what the two organisations’ popular backing other babalawos might say if they saw the results primarily from their thorough film, which involved killing a pigeon for research of Santería orthodoxy (largely Orula. through review of ethnographic data and interviews with religious elders), and their ‘Don’t worry, it’s all an act!’ he said. ‘I mean, reserved stance toward folkloric look: this is what I used for Changó [the deity performance of religious traditions.11 of thunder and drumming].’ He was pointing Together with the drummers in the diary to a conga drum, over which he’d draped a excerpt, Ifá Iranlowo and Ilé Tún Tún red cloth, to make it appear as though the demonstrate that some practitioners of container of Changó would appear in a real Santería recognise conflicts between the ceremony. ‘And look,’ he went on, ‘is that expanding entertainment industry and the Orula?’ He was talking about the collection interests of their communities. These of small seashells held in his palm. Although conflicts lead many people to subordinate there were sixteen of them, these were not the commercial opportunities to religious cowry shells of Orula. ‘Also, I didn’t say the loyalties. real words. Look ‘Omi ani wana … Carlos Maunuel y su Clan … afri añeñe … Los Van HIDDEN EXCHANGES: THE Van, Isaac Delgado’ [names of Cuban pop TRANSCULTURATION OF TRADITION music groups]. Any babalawo who sees this on TV will laugh and say, ‘Oh, that Miguel The above scenarios represent diverging is a cabrón!’And besides, anyone would do responses to an expanding tourist market, the same for $200 US.’ which Cuban scholars and religious practitioners have described as cultural I’ve never heard Miguel justify his actions transformation on the one hand and in such depth, particularly to me, so I was cultural resilience on the other. But there surprised he went into so much detail. And exists a wide margin of possibility then I realised that there were others in the between the extremes of religious survival room, including another babalawo and two versus religious breakdown, and it is in elderly priests of Santería. I think the this margin that the mutual influences of energetic explanation was more for them. tourism and Santería — their transculturations — are most visible. As my Personal Diary, Havana 2001 teacher Miguel shows in the following narratives, these spaces of interactive In this episode Miguel made much of mutation are often elusive and hidden his skilful construction of an apparently from the eyes of actors: authentic experience out of invented words, objects, and actions, and he When a film crew arrives from England, Italy, identified this accomplishment as the Spain, the US etc, to film the music and cunning behaviour of a cabrón. But

60 ADRIAN H. HEARN Transformation: Transcendence or Transculturation? babalawos have been strategically guard- important lesson: that experience is the ing sacred information since long before best teacher. the recent wave of international attention According to Martínez Furé, the on Cuba. A lack of appreciation for this pedagogic technique of withholding and tradition of selective restraint, disguising sacred knowledge is particularly if one is attempting to learn characteristic of African-based religion in information deemed sacred, can be Cuba.12 Meaningful lessons are revealed dangerous. The story of Otura Niko, one little by little and sometimes not at all, of the many deified characters who requiring new initiates to learn actively comprises the parables of Ifá divination, and patiently over a period of time. Time, expresses this lesson well. The day I was though, is one of the few things that most sworn to the batá drums, the story was foreigners do not have in Cuba, and even narrated to me by a babalawo in the city the month-long tourist visa has recently of Santiago de Cuba as follows: become more difficult for North Americans and others to acquire. As a Otura Niko was learning to play the batá result, foreign students of Santería music drums. He was improving well; so well that and dance, even those who become his teacher knew that Otura Niko would soon initiated in the religion, study their be more proficient than him. One day Otura material hard but often have no Niko asked his teacher to give him the final opportunity to test the worth of their secret rhythm, but his teacher refused. Otura knowledge. While Martínez Furé points Niko asked again and again until his teacher out the dangers of learning ‘deformed’ finally relented, saying, ‘Come to my house knowledge from unqualified, for dinner tonight and Iíll teach you the final inexperienced teachers, this second kind lesson’. That night the two sat down to dinner; of misinformation — the intentional kind but only the teacher got back up. He had — can result from studying with highly poisoned and killed his student Otura Niko experienced teachers. for trying so hard to take knowledge that can only be given. CONCLUSION

As my own proficiency on the batá With copies of their lessons recorded on drums improved, my various mentors and minidisks and videocassettes, most their colleagues made sure I knew this foreigners return home from Cuba — like story well. On one occasion, while the British film crew — satisfied that they attending a batá ceremony with a Cuban got what they came for. In this way, fellow student, we noticed a number of babalawos like Miguel serve the interests differences between the way Miguel was of foreign tourists while staying within the playing and the way he had taught us. boundaries of their religious tradition, and When we asked him about this he successfully make a living in the process. admitted what we had suspected: not This synthesis of diverse objectives in only had he taught us an altered version ritual performance is an example of of the rhythm in our drum class, but he transculturation in practice. Seen in this had no intention of teaching us the correct light, Miguel’s folkloric performances, version. Then, to our surprise, he and those of thousands of others congratulated us for learning an throughout the island, cannot be

61 Humanities Research Vol. 10 No. 3, 2003 explained simply in terms of religious Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, Armando breakdown or religious continuity. Fernández Soriano and Margarita Castro Flores, ‘Movimientos Comunitarios en Instead, they reveal cultural mutations of Cuba: Un Análisis Comparativo’, Cuban a new kind that play out according to Studies 28: 100–124, 1999. overlapping local and global scripts. As Sahlins has argued, even the most 3 Rogelio Martínez Furé, ‘Cubanía’, in extreme social adaptations can appear Bohemia (La Habana: 2001, no. 10), pp. seamless when they make good cultural 10–12; Miguel Barnet, interviewed 13 March, 2002; Carlos Moore, Castro, the sense. And as Ortiz argued over 40 Blacks and Africa, (Los Angeles: years ago, the maintenance of good University of California Press, 1989). cultural sense for all concerned is what characterises even the most extreme 4 Robin Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: transculturations.14 Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in This article has attempted to answer Havana, 1920–1940, (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997). an increasingly pertinent question: does the contemporary predicament of Cuban 5 Leal, interviewed April 2002. Santería indicate the transformation of religious culture under the influence of an 6 Martínez Furé, ‘Cubanía’, pp. 11–12. expanding global entertainment industry, or the transcendence of religious culture 7 Martínez Furé, interviewed May 2001. as it resists commodification? The answer 8 Miguel Barnet, interviewed March 2002. must surely lie between these two extremes, with self-proclaimed ëcabronesí 9 Víctor Betancourt, El Babalawo: Médico like Miguel and thousands like him, who Tradicional, (La Habana: Página Regional, manage to balance and integrate business 1995), p. 4. with religion. These are the new agents of transculturation: they serve two masters, 10 Miguel Ramos, Ashé in Flux: the Transformation of Lukumí Religion in and in so doing are themselves served by the United States. Paper presented to the both. 47th Annual Conference of the Centre for Latin American Studies, University of ENDNOTES Florida, 1998.

1 Philip A. Howard, Changing History: 11 Anet del Rey Roa, interviewed May, Afro-Cuban Cabildos and Societies of Color 2002. in the Nineteenth Century, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1998); 12 Martínez Furé, interviewed May, 2001. Fannie Theresa Rushing, Cabildos de Nación y Sociedades de la Raza de 13 Marshall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors Color: Afro-Cuban Participation in Slave and Mythic Realities, (Ann Arbor: Emancipation and Cuban Independence, University of Michigan, 1981), p. 50. 1865–1895, Doctoral Thesis, University of Chicago History Department, 1992. 14 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, (Durham and London. 2 Adrian H. Hearn, ‘Afro-Cuban Religions Duke University Press, 1940/1995). and Social Welfare: Consequences of Commercial Development in Havana. Human Organization’, Human Organization 63 (1): in press, 2004;