OGGUN: AN ETERNAL PRESENCE (1991, Cuba, 55 min.

), directed by Gloria
Rolando; cinematography by Ral Rodriguez and Jos M. Fiera; edited by Melvin
Diaz; songs by Pablo Milanes; singers Lazaro Ross and Felipe Alfonso; Afrocuban
songs interpreted by the "Olorun" Group, under the direction of Lazaro Ross; with the
special performance of Conjuncto Folclrico Nacional de Cuba; with Jos Kindeln
(Oggun), Teresa Alfonso (Oshn), Alicia San (Oya), Jorge Dixson (Shango), Regla
Diago (Otelia), Yosvani Cabrera (Boy). In Spanish and Yoruba with English subtitles.
"When the Yoruba poured into Havana in the early nineteenth century, they found
harshness and bitter injustice, but they also found each other. Slowly, they replanted
the ways of ash in a new world, meeting to honor the orishas and finding order and
hope in the breath of Olodumare."
--Joseph M. Murphy, Santera: African Spirits in America
When examining the horrendous devastation that was the African slave trade, it would
be a mistake to focus exclusively upon the way the slave trade destroyed traditional
culture and religion. In fact, a strong thrust in recent Diasporic studies (i.e., the study
of the dispersal of Africans worldwide) has been to discover, analyze, and celebrate
the continuities and the survival strategies that allowed those continuities to occur.
Oggun: An Eternal Presence is just such a celebration, focusing on the syncretic (or
"creolized") religion of santera in Cuba, a dynamic Catholic/Yoruba mixture.
In the complex traditional spiritualism of the Yoruba (inhabitants of what is now
Nigeria west of the Niger delta), Olodumare is the Almighty God, "Owner of all
destinies." His breath, the essence of being, is incarnated in this world as ash, the
force of spirit. "Ash is the blood of cosmic life, the power of Olodumare toward life,
strength, and righteousness" (Murphy). The endless stream of ash is passed on from
generation to generation, and allows the ancestors, ara orun ("people of heaven") to
remain alive within us. The ancestors maintain the moral compass that allows us to
find our bearings.
Central to Yoruba religion is the pantheon of spiritual entities known as orishas, the
embodiments of different aspects of ash. Actually, each orisha embodies a complex
of attributes. Oggun is the blacksmith whose ash can be used to create implements of
agriculture or of war; he embodies the hot, creative, transformative power of fire
acting upon iron. His opposite is Oshun. Patron of the cooling river, she brings the
nurturing and life-giving power of water; as the goddess of love, she can also cause
one to drown in her power. Traditional Yoruba religion recognizes as many as 1,700
orishas, though only a handful have attracted devotees in substantial numbers.
Included among them would be Shango (thunder, force), Orula/Ife (wisdom, destiny,

divination), Oya (the wind, death), Obatala (purity, serenity, and clarity), Osanyin (the
healer), and Ellegua (the messenger/trickster).
Through devotion to individual orishas, humans can fill themselves with the healing,
enlightening, ordering principles of the orisha. Devotees (omo-orisha, "child of the
orisha) become initiated into the ways of their patron orisha, and through music and
dance can be inhabited by the ash of their orisha. The orisha are not exactly
immortal; they cannot live without us. Their existence depends upon the ongoing gifts
and nourishment that they receive from their human devotees (each has his/her
preferred gifts). Offerings will always include blood, derived from the swift, ritual
sacrifice of an animal (most often a chicken), which is then cooked and eaten as part
of the celebratory feast. The blood is symbolically "fed" to a symbol of the orisha.
This way, the ache of the animal is allowed to live on, both in the orisha and in the
devotees.
In the early 19th Century, Yorubaland was devastated both by internal strife and by the
slave trade. The slave trade sent hundreds of thousands of them to Cuba (estimates of
the total number of Africans sent to Cuba range between 500,000 and 700,000, more
than were sent to all of the American colonies). They were used mainly to work the
huge sugar plantations there. For a number of reasons, conditions existed that allowed
them to maintain their traditional religion to a far greater degree than was true in the
U.S.: (a) the huge sugar plantations allowed for a greater concentration of people from
the same linguistic and ethnic background, including a number of babalawo (high
priests); (b) it was also easier for the Yoruba, or "Lucumi" as they were called in
Cuba, to maintain their traditions because they came relatively late to the New World
and lived there just a generation or two before emancipation; (c) the Catholic Church
and the Spanish administration were more tolerant of the ethnic diversity of the
slaves; and (d) it was much easier for Cuban slaves to purchase their freedom--by the
middle of the century, a third of the former Africans on the island were free and able
to control their own religious destinies.
The religion itself was changing, however. All the incoming slaves were automatically
baptised as Catholics and were encouraged (forcibly, or through more indirect
pressure) to practice the new religion. The result was a complex process of disguise,
accommodation, and incorporation. Joseph Murphy says it well: "In the New World,
the Yoruba were forced into a new religious system of pervasive power. This new
tradition shaped their lives, and their native vision of the world was gradually adapted
to complement and reflect the Catholic worldview. A new bilingual tradition emerged,
at once a resistance to Catholic oppression and an accommodation to Catholic values.
It came to be called santera, the way of the saints, because the devotions to the
orishas were carried out beneath the images of the Catholic saints. What may have
once begun as a subterfuge, an attempt to fool Catholic observers while preserving the

ways of the orishas, became a genuine universal religious vision in which a Catholic
saint and a Lucumi [Yoruba] orisha were seen as different manifestations of the same
spiritual entity" (31-32).
Thus, in Santera, Oggun is St. Peter, or St. Santiago; Oshun is La Caridad del Cobre,
Cuba's Black Virgin and Patron Saint; Shango becomes Saint Barbara (he disguised
himself as a woman); Oya is St. Candelaria; Osanyin is Joseph; Obatala is either Jesus
or Mecedes; Ellegua is St. Anthony of Padua, and Orula/Ife is St. Francis.
Although considered a "low" religion by the ruling elite in Cuba, Santera did attract a
number of non-African devotees during the years before Castro, though most santeras
(devotees) and babalawo (high priests) have been of African descent. Santera has
generally been tolerated, and even encouraged, in Castro's Cuba, in part because the
traditionally disenfranchised Afro-Cuban population has been one of Castro's
strongest support bases. When we hear about the persistence of Catholicism in Cuba,
it is frequently Santera that is really being practiced. Thus, many of the Catholics
who swarmed around the Pope during his recent visit were wearing the ornaments of
their patron orisha along with their crucifixes.
With the departure of Cubans from the island beginning in 1959, santera has made its
way to the U.S., with large numbers of devotees living in Miami and the New York
area, but it has gradually been spreading among the African American population.
Increasingly, devotees in this country are dispensing with the Catholic elements of the
religion and emphasizing the direct Yoruba roots.
Oggun: An Eternal Presence is both an overture to santera and an homage to its
devotees, particularly the wonderful akpwon (master singer), Lazaro Ros. Here is
some information on Lazaro from the AfroCuba Website: "This master of the ancient
folk culture was born in Havana in 1925. Even as a child, his beautiful voice made
him stand out. Raised in the rich milieu of Afro-Latin culture which pervades his
native region, Ros was initiated in the Regla de Osha in 1950. He learned the old
songs from the master singer, Eugenio de la Rosa. Born poor, young Lazaro supported
his studies by working as a cook or a shopkeeper. He was discovered and came to
prominence in the early 60's and co-founded the world renowned National Folkloric
Ensemble of Cuba [Conjunto Foklorico Nacional]. Lazaro became one of Cuba's bestloved artists. He has performed all over the world and released several recordings. He
has received numerous international awards. His life and person are presented in the
film Oggun directed by Gloria Rolando. He has collaborated with the National Ballet
of Cuba and its famous representative, Alicia Alonzo.
"Lazaro is the author of several musical and theatrical works, including music from
the award-winning film, Maria Antonia. He has given the old musical tradition of

Cuba a new immediacy in his collaboration with contemporary Cuban musicians such
as saxophonist/composer Lucia Hergo and the Cuban-pop band Mezcla. He even
performed with Carlos Santana in a San Francisco joint appearance in 1963."
The film opens with Lazaro Ros recounting a patakin (an orisha story) about Oggun-the blacksmith god (spirit of the transformative, creative power of technology) who
has banished himself as a result of desiring his mother--and his seduction by Oshun,
the river goddess of love. The documentary present of the teller dissolves into the
lovely, flowing, timeless present of myth. This will occur throughout the film, with
strange, mysterious close-ups of sacred objects linked to Oggun and the other orisha.
The film also gives us the privilege of entry into a toque, a Santera devotion
ceremony, in Havana. We see the devotees prostrating themselves before images of
the orisha, and we see Lazaro and another akpwon, Felipe Alfonso, leading the
santeras in song and dance. The dances clearly reveal their African roots, and the
songs are in Yoruba. By the end of the film, we will see a young man dance to the
point of possession. With encouragement from Lazaro, the man becomes possessed by
Oggun (for the Yoruba/Santera, the act of possession is called "mounting," for the
spirit is seen as mounting and riding the human as if a horse), and the filmmaker seals
the new-found identity between them by bringing us back and forth from the reality of
myth and spirit to the reality of the dance, and back again to the life of the spirit. It's
this interpenetration (present and past, myth and reality, dream and waking) that
seems to be at the heart of the Santera/Yoruba religious experience. An eternal
present.

Notes by Michael Dembrow

For more information on santera, I would suggest Joseph Murphy, Santera: African
Spirits in America, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, 1993). Also, the excellent website,
AfrocubaWeb (http://www.afrocubaweb.com) has links to a number of santera and
other Yoruba religion sites.