When night arrives, the sound of drums fills the neighborhoods of Havana. In each community, a house becomes a place to meet others, where singing and dancing mix with religious liturgies and wisdom from faith. The presence of African religions on the island is constant. Cultural and religious manifestations are shown through traditions, rituals, clothing, music and the resilience of its people.
It is impossible to understand Cuba without considering the presence of these ancient cultures. Perpetuated from generation to generation, religions of African origin were maintained and defended as an open secret that needed to escape persecution and prohibition by colonialists to later resist the condemnations and prejudices of white society after independence.
"Without Africa, without its sons and daughters, without its culture and habits, without its languages and gods, Cuba would not be what it is today. Therefore, the Cuban people owe a debt to Africa," said Fidel Castro in 1988 when receiving the Order of Good Hope from South Africa due to Cuba's collaboration in the fight against apartheid, the country's racist regime.
The Caribbean was one of the areas where European powers trafficked most of the enslaved Black people from the African continent. According to one of the first censuses carried out on the island, in 1867, almost half of the population was of African origin or African descent.
"Today, Cuba is one of the countries that better managed to preserve the religious manifestations of African origin," Nelson Aboy Domingo, professor of anthropology of Afro-Cuban religions, told Brasil de Fato.
“Unlike other transculturation processes, in Cuba, they managed to build houses or ‘cabildos’ from different nations from distinct parts of Africa. Thus, each cabildo managed to keep a certain orthodoxy and preserve its identity. It means that religiosity was largely preserved, and they lost less compared to many places in Africa, where successive colonial aggressions meant that much of what makes up our religions was lost,” he said.
Nelson Aboy Domingo dedicated his entire academic and spiritual life to studying the Afro-Cuban religions. He was only 13 when he first came into contact with religions of African origin. Like thousands of other young people on the island, in 1961, he joined the literacy campaign as a volunteer brigade member. One of the first goals the revolution established was to end illiteracy, which affected almost half of the rural population.
At that time, Aboy Domingo traveled to the countryside to teach the local peasants how to read and write. They taught him about their religion and faith. Today, in addition to his academic studies, Aboy Domingo is an Ifá priest (Babalawo, in the Yoruba language). His book “Origins of Santeria in Cuba” became one of the best-selling books in the country in 2017.
Aboy Domingo's story describes the different ways in which the religion spread across the island. With the revolution and the massive arrival of the Black population at universities, these religions became more widespread in different social sectors of Cuba.
"Currently, Cuba is one of the countries that has better managed to preserve religions of African origin far from a certain commodification of these traditions that has been occurring in recent years,” he stated.
International Meeting of African Religions
In front of an auditorium flooded with applause, Jose Andres Knight speaks with an emotional voice and tears in his eyes. He is the vice-president of the religious institution Bankú de Cuba. Knight made a speech at the closing ceremony of the International Meeting of Afro-Cuban Religions (EIRA) in Havana, on November 12.
With an important delegation of religious leaders from different parts of Brazil, who traveled to Cuba to learn about the island's social and religious experiences, the event aimed to be a space for the two countries to exchange and strengthen ties related to religions of African origin.
"Despite the enormous difficulties we are experiencing due to the blockade that affects the economy, we were not only able to carry out the meeting, but we are also convinced that it is the first step to continue multiplying these exchanges", said José Andres Knight, one of the organizers of the event, to Brasil de Fato.
The meeting was born from the exchange of different congregations between the two countries and the militant efforts of social and religious organizations.
"Religions of African origin have a lot to contribute to the fight for the eradication of all the phenomena that today harm and cost a large number of human lives, such as racism, discrimination and hunger,” Knight said, and added “and all these things that, in one way or another, threaten the lives of our people, even more so for the Black people, which have been diminished, discriminated against and oppressed.”
The International Event of Afro-Cuban Religions (EIRA) was not only conceived as a liturgical meeting, but also as a platform to strengthen bonds between peoples.
In recent decades, despite the enormous achievements that the fight against racism has achieved, religions of African origin – such as Ifá-Orisha, Candomblé, Umbanda, and Palo, among others – are still often seen as pagan and "backward" religious manifestations. There are even prejudices that associate these forms of spirituality with "devilish things". These prejudices carry the same kind of thoughts that the colonizers had when they banned African religions.
However, despite prejudices and social condemnations, religions of African origin have expanded enormously throughout the world, and that the migratory flows of Cubans themselves have played a preponderant role. Currently, Cuba and Brazil are two of the countries with the largest presence of these religious, cultural and resistance manifestations.
"The African diaspora, the Black diaspora… They are dispersed around the world. We need to strengthen our bonds, not only to reconnect, find ourselves again, but also to strengthen our communication to achieve a unity of strength in the struggle", says Father Ricardo de Moura, from the Afro-Brazilian Cultural Resistance Association Casa de Caridade Pai Jacob do Oriente, to Brasil de Fato.
“It will never be just one fight. But unity is something we need in whatever fight. This kind of meeting helps us to unity for struggles, for achievements, to combat racism, to combat discrimination, in a stronger, more strategic way, in all sectors and, above all, in all parts of the world” he adds.
"We have in Cuba a reference to resistance”
“For us, being in Cuba means the possibility of getting to know and also reaffirming our ancestral ties,” says Makota Célia Gonçalves Souza, national coordinator of the Centro Nacional de Africanidad y Resistencia Afrobrasileña, for Brasil de Fato.
Just like in Cuba, African populations enslaved and trafficked to Brazil were forced to be baptized and adopt Catholicism. In Cuba, many of these conversions were a survival mechanism, while Black populations secretly maintained their cultural and religious practices.
Makota Célia Gonçalves Souza, one of the EIRA coordinators, is true to her irreverent and rebellious style. She smiles and never gets tired of repeating that they brought together "a bunch of macumbeiros [a term some use to refer to followers of religions of African origin]," to talk and share.
She states that Lula's comeback to the presidency meant the return of "a secular State, which does not mean an atheist State, but one that has no creed, where people are allowed to pray." But even so, "the Brazilian State is a structurally racist State. A State that discriminates, if not through legislation, then through omission."
To Makota, it is an opportunity to learn how Cuba, being a secular state, "allows people to pray because all faith is sacred" because, without religious respect, there is no possibility of ending racism.
“I know the cost of being a Black woman from a poor neighborhood in my country. By every means possible, racism tries to impose itself on us. And we, contrary to what racists expect, swim against the tide and are happy. In our practices, we are proud of who we are. No matter how perverse racist practices are, they do not take away our subjectivity, which is a happy one. I pray while singing, dancing, eating and celebrating. My religion is not a religion of sin, of pain, which involves sadness. No, on the contrary, my religion has joy in itself and racism couldn’t take that away from us.”
In addition to the strictly religious motivation in choosing Havana as the venue for the event, EIRA adopted a resolution explicitly condemning the blockade the US has been imposing on Cuba for more than 60 years.
"What fuels Cuba for me is exactly this sense of resistance that we, Black people, have. We have in Cuba a reference to resistance. Yesterday I was talking about that the biggest problem in the United States is that Cuba does not surrender to their arrogance. So, they hate Cuba and the Black people. Because they cannot destroy us. Arrogance does not kill us. It feeds us to the extent that it makes us resistant. And Cuba has this symbolism for me," concluded Makota.
Edited by: Rodrigo Durão Coelho
