Afro-Cuban Religions

by Miguel Barnet

African-derived religions enrich all aspects of Cuba’s social, cultural, and everyday life, and encompass all ethnic and social groups. Politics, art, and civil events such as weddings, funerals, festivals, and carnivals all possess distinctly Afro-Cuban characteristics. In this book, Miguel Barnet provides a concise guide to the various traditions and branches of Afro-Cuban religions, particularly the Regla de Ocha (Santeria) and the Regla de Palo Monte. Africans who were brought to Cuba as slaves had to recreate their old traditions in their new Caribbean context. As their African heritage collided with Catholicism and with Native American and European traditions, certain African gods and traditions became more prominent while others lost their significance in the new Cuban culture. The author also discusses the roles of music and dance as forms of Cuban religious expression and describes the specific instru ments and symbols they employ. The book ends with an enthusiastic de piction of Barnet’s recent research journey to West Africa, the Land of the Orishas.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion

170 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Miguel Barnet, is one of Cuba's most distinguished writers and poets as well as a member of the island's National Assembly. He is also the president of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), an organization with more than 8,000 members. He is an outspoken intellectual, having studied first in the United States and later at the University of Havana. He is best known for his testimonial novel Biography of a Runaway Slave, Biografía de un Cimarrón in Spanish, but he has written dozens of other novels, poems and articles, including a number of stories for Cigar Aficionado. He's been called the Truman Capote of Cuba.

Barnet first came to national attention as the poet of La piedra fina y el pavorreal (1963) and the much-praised La sagrada familia (1967), a lyrical autopsy of petit bourgeois domestic life. Publication of Biografía de un cimarrón (1966; The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, 1968), the first in an ethnic tetralogy of documentary narratives, brought almost immediate international acclaim and established him as an innovating pioneer of the testimonial genre in contemporary Latin America. La canción de Rachel (1969; Rachel's Song, 1991), Gallego (1981), and La vida real (1986) confirmed his reputation as Cuba's premier exponent of the documentary novel.

Reviews

[Jake]

I picked this up because it was within my page range for non-fiction that looks interesting, but is not about one of my main subjects of interest. (The upper limit of that range is 200 pages, generally speaking). I was hoping for a more thorough and methodical explanation of Afro-Cuban religions. The book jumps right in, and I think, assumes some prior familiarity with Santeria and other Cuban religions and demographics. It was still an interesting read, nevertheless, but I feel like I needed a primer to this primer. Furthermore, the majority of the book is a semi-academic examination of Afro-Cuban religions, while the last chapter is more of a travel journal of the author's trip to Africa. These two styles didn't fit well, and the author would have done well to keep this book academic and saved the travel writing for another book.