Sacred Spaces: Religous Traditions of Oriente Cuba

PREFACE

My exposure to Cuba and Cubans began in 1983 when I was a delegate to a conference sponsored by Casa de las Americas of Havana. The conference gathered racial-ethnic activists and scholars from the United States for a beginning dialogue about racism throughout the Americas. A first impressions was how large the island was and that Cubans were a people of African descent. Immediately, I felt that every African American in the United States could learn much about his or her own heritage from visiting this country and getting to know its people.

This was a personally prophetic thought since I have returned to the island every year since 1983 except for two years when difficulties with U.S. travel regulations prohibited a visit but I still believe U.S. African Americans3 should go to Cuba and engage the people.

In 1984 I was introduced to the Cuban religious sector, one I had presumed did not exist because of the government’s political ideology and, even as I met with Cubans Christians, I was ignorant of the country’s religious diversity and most ignorant of the Africa-based worldview and practices that undergirds Cuban culture. I definitely did not foresee that I would help write a book on sacred spaces of these distinct religious traditions. Despite limitations of beginning, I embarked on a research project based on an assumption that there was comparability between the role of religion in African American struggles for social change in the United States and similar movements for change in Cuba. The assumption proved flawed but the idea led me through several years of solid investigative activities that helped me understand that unlike U.S. African Americans, Cubans of African descent have not had an embedded experience with the North American brand of Protestantism that gave rise to the culturally distinct U.S. African American Christianity. Not with standing an absence of historical contact with Protestantism, the religious influence on Cuba’s struggles for social transformation possesses other important differences.

Generally, Christianity has not been central to social of change in Cuba. Catholicism can even be seen as a hindrance to activities in that direction.4 I learned of these relationships in the first years of field research when I found that to truly understand religion and Cuban social change, I had to focus on belief systems and practices distinct to people of the country.

Practitioners of distinct Cuban religious traditions have consistently been the more numerous in each of the movements for social transformation. As I began to pursue this investigative trail, I was led and instructed by practitioners of the traditions and found myself participating deeper and deeper in Cuban culture.

In 1987 I extended the initial geographic boundaries of contacts with the Havana region to include Oriente. I attended my first gathering of Festival del Caribe in Santiago de Cuba. This established a relationship with the staff of Casa del Caribe that sponsors Festival. International and local participants in this, now more than twenty-five-year-old, annual weeklong series of activities, focus on understanding the significance of popular cultures of the Caribbean. From the initial exposure to Oriente, a long-term professional and familial bond with the region and with Casa ensued. I re-centered my research attention on this eastern region and it was through annual dialogues with staff at Casa del Caribe that I was exposed to religions as practiced in Oriente and introduced to the possibility of this book.

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José Millet Batista
milletjb2007[arroba]gmail.com

Jualynne E. Dodson

Cuba - 2000