The Rare Case of Cuban Hoodoo

More than religion, Hoodoo is a culture of the American black, with a broad religious expression; ranging from the conventional Christianity of Baptists and Methodists to magical practices of African origin. Although as a culture it is syncretic —like all others— it is original in this fusion, providing its own identity; which in many cases organizes itself in that original Christianity of his, and in others it refuses to do so with restraint.

This is the result of the relationship of these African cultures with the specific Christianity of Protestantism, which in its Baptist aspect —rather than the Methodist— enhances individual over collective responsibility; with great resonance in all African magical practices[1], especially those of Congo (Bantu) origin. In Cuba the relationship is reversed, given the peculiarity of Catholicism, susceptible in its imagery to this sensibility; to which the magical sense of its liturgy —no matter how much it is rationalized— and hierarchy also contributes.

This difference would cause Catholicism in Cuba to result in an inverse Hoodoo, as a popular expression of culture; which, contrary to its North American counterpart, is exhibited in all its syncretism, given the magical scope of its liturgy and devotional practices. This ambiguity, which permeates all religions in Cuba, reaches its maturity in the Kimbisa or Rule of the Christ for the Good Journey; an original religion, which effectively merges the three aspects that prevail in Cuba, Catholicism and the Lucumí and Conga rules. Such an artifice is due to a peculiar character—ñáñigo and tertiary Franciscan—, Andrés Facundo Petit; who not only created the Kimbisa Rule, as a result of his own syncretism, but also opened the Abakuá cult to the whites.

This is very important, as seen in the opposite sense of the North American Hoodoo, appropriating Christianity; which in fact is replicated in a certain way in Cuba with the Rule of Osha, before the Africanist purism that permeates the cult of Ifa[2]; but not to the point of an appropriation of blackness by whites, as in this case of Cuban syncretism. In fact, this syncretism permeates the entire cultural structure, from the promiscuity of the slums; that whites and blacks shared in the same humanity[3], without the economic differentiators of the American working class.

This is what is expressed in this religious appropriation by the whites, who thus integrate it as a political value; as blacks could not do so because of their political precariousness, added to the economic ones they shared with poor whites. That's important, because Christianity —as a Western cosmology—integrates this American cultural structure; It requires adjustments to restore its first function, as existential rather than political, but does not admit its negation.

This is what Cuban syncretism resolves, making possible the subreptitious movements of North American Hoodoo; And it does so because of this social projection of theirs, which compensates for the original individualism intrinsic to Protestantism; but without the political excesses that perverted it as Christianity, given the influence of traditional African practices. This functionality of a Cuban Hoodoo is not mysterious but pragmatic, given by practical —and not political— needs; and it would not have begun with Petit and the Kimbisa Rule or the entry of the whites into the Abakuá, but with Omí Ifá and the organization of the cult of Orula in Cuba; when —long before Petit— he consecrated whites in the orisha cult, to prevent their persecution by the African ogbonis.

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[1] tags. Lidia Cabrera highlights the individualistic nature of African religious practices, including the cellular character of the family as the ultimate community expression. Cf: Lidia Cabrera, La sociedad secreta Abakuá, Ed. CR (Havana)/ 1958, Liminares.

[2] . It refers to a tendency, which arose with the relative officialization of the cult, to seek legitimacy in African origin; but more as part of the contradictions generated by this process of officialization, reverted as a snobbish and intellectualist attitude. In any case, given the conditions in which it is formed in Cuba, this cult is an original and autochthonous religion in itself; that although it recognizes its African origin, it has a peculiar, sufficient and proper development, alien to that of religion in Africa.

[3] tags. Manuel Granados describes the way in which whites incorporate the social behavior of blacks as vernacular, based on this promiscuity aroused by poverty. // Cf: Manuel Granados, Apuntes para una historia del negro en Cuba, Afro Hispanic Review, Vol. 24, N0. 1.