Miguel De La Torre questions the often-cited “syncretic” nature of Afro-Cuban religions as a label couched in Eurocentric classifications of purity/impurity, European/African. He argues that the term should be discarded as Santeria grows into a transcultural phenomenon to be defined on its own terms.
All religions are syncretic, that is, all religions are transformed by the different cultures through which it passes just as those cultures are also transformed by the new religions that traverse its lands. Both the culture and the religion must change so that both can coexist. At times, the changes to the religion and/or the culture are dramatic. At other times, these changes are modest, even unnoticeable. Regardless as to the degree of change that occurs, one thing is certain, both the religion and culture never remain the same, both become new expressions of being.
Take, for example, Christianity. Originally a Jewish sect, it began to differentiate itself from Judaism as it took root among the Greeks. Greek philosophical concepts like the dichotomy of the body and soul became absorbed into Christian thought. The biblical understanding of the afterlife always encompassed the belief of the resurrection of the body, as illustrated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Greek philosophy, on the other hand, believed that upon death, the body decays while the soul is eternal. Today, most Christians believe that our souls enter Heaven, leaving behind this earthly body we inhabit. As Christianity continued to expand into the Roman world, it adopted Roman political structure. The office of the Pope became like the office of the Emperor, Cardinals became like the Senate, Bishops like the Governors, and Priests like the Centurions.
While the core beliefs of Christianity remained the same, it is highly influenced by whatever culture it moves through. Today, it is not hard to see the mega-churches run by well-paid senior pastors governed by a board of deacons or elders resembling capitalist corporations run by well-paid CEOs who are assisted by a board of directors. For religions to survive, they must constantly be changing so as to adjust to new struggles and circumstances faced by believers.
Now, if all religions are in some ways syncretic, then why is Christianity seldom referred to as syncretic religion while that label always seems to classify Santería?
Could it be that the syncretic label implies an impure mixture? To single out Santería as a syncretic religion forces a Eurocentric academic framework upon the reality of a people’s faith in order to categorize them and, in effect, subordinates them to the self-perceived “purity” of the dominant culture’s religion. By masking the syncretism of the dominant religion, while accenting the syncretic nature of the marginalized one, the dominant culture imposes a value system upon these religions in which the former is viewed as truer while the latter is an abomination prone to encourage ungodly, if not satanic, actions. We are left to wonder if syncretism is in reality a Eurocentric intellectual invention – a product of racism.
Statue of Our Lady of the Caridad del Cobre. Note the sunflower at her feet; an offering specific to Oshún. Photo: Gisela Roeder
It is simplistic for Christians to explain Santería as a syncretic phenomenon caused by the merging of Catholic and African belief systems in primitive and confused minds. In reality, the disguising of African gods in the clothes of white saints is a shrewd maneuver on the slaves’ part. When Cuban slaves publically worshiped the orishas, participated in possessions, or conducted consultations, the Cuban Catholic officials moved quickly to prohibit outward expressions, fearing that such demonstrations of fidelity to the African gods frustrated attempts to evangelize and convert the slaves to the Catholic church. The problem was quickly solved as the believers of the orishas adopted a Catholic saint that corresponded, no matter how superficially, with an orisha. All the power, characteristics, fetishes, and due devotion which belonged to a particular orisha were now transferred to the Catholic saint. Outwardly, to the satisfaction of the Cuban Catholic cleric, the slaves were now worshiping Saint Barbara, but in reality, the slaves who bowed their knees to the image of the saint recognized that they were truly worshiping Changó in his European manifestation as St. Barbara. In fact, the devotees of Changó saw the learned Catholic cleric as naive, if not ignorant, about the true essence of St. Barbara; only the orisha devotees had the fuller knowledge of the spiritual world.
When the Pope visited the Cuban shrine of la Caridad de Cobre, many parishioners waved yellow handkerchiefs. For many Catholic clerics, the people were showing their enthusiasm for the Pope by waving their Vatican’s color – yellow. But to the indigenous observer, it was obvious that the people were waving the color of Ochún, the orisha masked by the European image of la Virgen de la Caridad. Or, more than likely, in the minds of the Cuban parishioners, these contradictory images found a harmonies balance.
Woman waiting to greet Pope Francisco in El Cobre (Cuba). (Photo: Cubadebate). Sunflowers are a typical offering to Ochún.
One santero I know had his house full of statues of Catholic saints, making him the envy of many local Catholic churches. The instruments of the Santería faith were kept out of view. His reasoning for de-emphasizing the orishas and emphasizing Catholicism was based on his realization that even through the trapping of statues was unimportant, the people who sought him for a consultation needed a point of reference. They had no concept of what is Santería. Even though the santero believed that his work with these people was meaningful as their problems found resolutions, he recognized that they would never seek help if they could not find a common language. Hence he never referred to the orishas by their African names, but would always use their Catholic equivalents. If not, they might have concluded that this was some sort of Satanic cult and flee, never finding resolution to their problems.
For their sake, this particular santero made his home resemble a Catholic church s
“Resurreccion”/”Resurrection” by Rafael Queneditt. 2013. From the exhibition: Drapetomania: Grupo Antillano and the Art of Afro-Cuba. (Photo: Kris Juncker.) Queneditt’s sculptural installation centers upon a figure of the archangel Raphael. Nails driven into the side of the crucifix reference practices in Regla de Ocha and Palo (where nails may be added to certain objects to appeal to specific divinities).
o that seekers would feel comfortable in what appeared to be a familiar environment. Doctrinal purity became unimportant. What was important was resolving the seeker’s dilemma. With time, as the seeker’s trust was gained, as they saw for themselves the power of the orishas, and as they sought to have a deeper understanding of the faith, they too discovered the unimportance of all the Catholic statues in the house and began to focus their worship and adoration on the orishas. But if researchers or scholars were to interview this person, they might easily and incorrectly conclude that the religion is obviously syncretic; failing to understand the historical trend of masking black orishas with usually white Catholic masks.
Cuban religion scholar Carlos Cardoza-Orlandi relates the story of a Dominican family in New York City who were members of a Protestant church he pastored. When their child was gravely sick, the family asked the Protestant congregation for prayer, but also visited a santero. The child regained health. Cardoza-Orlandi relates that, “In a moment of confusion and surprise, I asked the father, ‘Whose miracle is it? Is it your orisha? Is it Jesus Christ?’ The father, puzzled by the question, looked at me and said, ‘It was God, pastor, it was God. It is your problem to decide whose miracle it is, not my problem.’”
Christians who portray Santería as the dialectical product of the Yoruba’s belief system and Iberian Roman Catholicism, in which a “confused” and idiosyncratic merging of the saints with the orishas has occurred, fail in properly understanding Santería. Santería is neither “confused” in its beliefs, nor the product of confused imagery. Distinctions between the santero/a’s religion and Catholicism have always been recognized. To that end, Santería can best be understood as being a different reality than Christianity and the original Yoruba religion.
In short, my argument here is that Santería should reject any description as syncretic. While such a label may have originally been helpful in elucidating the religion’s genesis, it hinders understanding it as a present-day transcultural phenomenon. As a genuinely Cuban religion, rooted in the violent contact of two separate religious faiths, it contributes to a worldview on its own terms. As its own defined sacred space, the truth-content of Santería cannot be comprehended nor communicated through ideological paradigms, but must be recognized as a unitary phenomenon bound to cultural life through its historical development.
Cover Photo: Muslin doll with hair tied on one leg, left in the Catholic Cemetery of San Juan Bautista, in Jaruco, (Cuba). January 2004). Photo by Kris Juncker.
PDF/PRINT/EMAIL
