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

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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
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