The hospital is the last place one wants to debate religion, or be questioned about religious affiliation. Yet for many practitioners of Afro-Cuban religion, filling out a hospital form can give them pause. The hospital is a place of authority, where we need to identify ourselves and share personal information so that if we are unable to communicate it later, the professionals know what to do. Should a practitioner of Afro-Cuban religion let their physician know they are a Santero/a? Will this have a negative effect on the care they receive? It is a small yet significant decision, since negative stereotypes surround practitioners of La Regla de Ochá.
Recently, while filling out an emergency room form for my daughter, I began to think about how the hospital and other such medical facilities play into the worldview and practices of people, like me, who follow La Regla de Ochá. How do the spaces and faces of authority challenge and change the ways we identify with our religions?
La Regla de Ochá is a holistic system and a great deal of healing relates to balance, spiritual and physical. Consequently, the path to healing will begin with divination, which often results in a spiritual cleansing. In some cases this may be all that is needed, in others a sacrifice may be called for. If the sign tells the client to go see a doctor, then the client will follow up with a medical visit. Some practitioners will not go to a doctor unless called to by the orisha in divination.
By divination, I am referring to the dilogún system of cowry shell divination that initiated Santeros use. The shells are thrown and counted; the numbers correlate to signs and stories that guide the consultant on whatever question is at hand. That question can relate to anything, from purchasing a house, sending a child to school, managing a marriage, pursuing a job, or how to handle a health situation. Some people go to a diviner out of simple curiosity, with no real questions. Others go with lots of questions, but one doesn’t ask questions until the end—and by the end, often the questions you walked in with evaporate with the diviner’s commentary. A good diviner has long-term clients. That is a testament to their ability and gives them authority within the community.
Space is a significant factor in Afro-Cuban religion: specific places in nature are praised, ritual space is always demarcated, and the entire cosmos has a place and a purpose. The hospital is not outside the realm of the religious cosmos; on the contrary, it is very much a part of it. The Onishegun is traditionally someone who works with herbs to heal, hospitals are known as ile Onishegun (house of healers). The orisha Erinle, the divine doctor and his partner Abatan, the divine nurse, may well be called upon in the process of healing. Herbs, central to the practice of La Regla de Ochá, belong to Osain who is the key to natural medicine, which many divinations will recommend. All of these are a part of the religious cosmos that La Regla de Ochá seeks to keep in balance. The hands of medical doctors are guided by the orisha, and the right doctor is sent to a practitioner in his or her time of need.
As an anthropologist, one of my theoretical interests is place–making—how values such as authority get encoded on physical space. One of the reasons I am interested in space is that we so often react to it instinctively. In biomedical hospitals, the space is often encoded with authority. Michel Foucault and many academics since have argued that the hospital, in its positionality within the realm of life and death, has largely eclipsed the church in the eyes of the public.
In an effort to explore these questions during my fieldwork in Miami this summer, I asked Nancy, one of my informants, to take me on a tour of the hospital where she had received treatment. Years before, in the throes of a life-threatening health crisis, her orisha instructed her not to go through with the surgery her doctors recommended. The fact that she is alive today still baffles them.
In my hospital visit with Nancy, the overwhelming size of the hospital exuded authority architecturally in much the way the church in an old world city was intended to exude authority: just think of St Louis Cathedral in the center of Jackson Square in New Orleans—the state building, the Cabildo, takes a minor position on the side of the church. This massive hospital building was set back from the street for a grand picturesque view; one drove past lagoons, a rolling lawn, and pathways shaded by palm trees to get to a massive pastel stucco structure full of archways with a roof of Spanish tile. I had asked her to take me on a tour to help me better understand her relationship with the space of the hospital, but looking at the building, I wasn’t sure where we could possibly begin.
During our visit, I asked Nancy about the question often asked when you go into the hospital: “What’s your religious affiliation?” Some devotees of La Regla de Ochá would quickly respond “Catholic,” as they consider La Regla de Ochá an extension of Catholicism. Claiming Christian ties can be a way to smooth things over, but it is a posture that is problematic for others who reject the Catholic Church and consider their religion purely African in essence, or, practitioners like myself, who consider it to be altogether separate. Nancy had abandoned the Protestant church, but she was not especially concerned with the question of what religious authority attended her in the hospital. Anyone was fine, so long as their intentions were good.
I had struggled with the question a year earlier when my daughter had a systemic staph infection and I found myself talking to a nurse in a New Orleans emergency room. “Religion?” she asked. I told her to leave it blank. When she noticed my irritation at the question, she kindly tried to defuse the situation, explaining to me the reason for it: “So that if anything happens to her, they don’t call in the wrong person to…you know…?” Her words trailed off. I told her they could do nothing for me. I was anxious about my daughter’s condition. I did not want to have what I considered a personal conversation with the nurse; all I wanted was for my daughter to walk out of the hospital healthy and well.
As much as I hate the question, I cannot deny its importance, especially in times of crisis. For a great many people like myself, religion is central to life, most especially when they are potentially facing death and the question of what happens next becomes paramount. After touring the hospital with my interviewee, I spoke with Ernesto Pichardo, an obá oriate who has been very active in educating hospital staff and de-stigmatizing the religion and its practices. He has addressed this question on medical intake forms with the medical establishment, explaining to them the appropriate religious authority to call when a Santero/a is in need in the hospital. In places like south Florida, New York, or L.A. it is possible to find the appropriate religious authority; in many other parts of the country it is not. Despite Pichardo’s efforts, hospitals and patients still struggle with the issue. When I asked Nancy the question during our hospital tour, she seemed unaware of Pichardo’s initiative.
I am still trying to make sense of Nancy’s relationship to the built structure of the hospital, and the divergences in our responses to the question of what religious authority figure should attend us if we find ourselves in need. A hospital is considered to be a secular space, but as Foucault has pointed out, its effect on the public is not. Hospitals, with their attendance to issues of life and death, can function like churches for the public.
The nurse I spoke to in the New Orleans E.R. didn’t have La Regla de Ochá on her form and it would take a great deal of explaining for me to add it. Would I have gotten blowback from her? Maybe yes, maybe no. Our reactions are based on our expectations, and the expectation of a negative reaction is a very real one. I hear derogatory comments about my religion all the time, from people on the street, to politicians, to advertisers. It is heartening to know that some in the religious community have addressed this issue with the medical establishment, but we still have a long way to go before I can fill out a hospital form without bristling.
Featured Image by Eugenia Rainey.