Afro-Cuban Counterpoint: Religious

and Political Encompassments

By
Anastasios Panagiotopoulos
CRIA–Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Diana Espirito Santo

Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

Resumen
En este artı́culo proponemos entender la religiosidad afrocubana de una manera que
no la ve como si fuese un epifenómeno de los regı́menes polı́ticos o como uno de
resistencia en términos de sus dimensiones simbólicas. Argumentamos que la religión
afrocubana produce personas como hiper-individualizadas, a través de cosmologias
que, en gran medida, “abarcan” la vida cotidiana, incluyendo la polı́tica. La Revolución
Socialista, por lo contrario, ha intentado “abarcar” el individuo atribuyendole un
destino universalmente ético e ideológico. Tales direcciones opuestas de “abarcamiento”
no crean un esquema jerárquico rı́gido, sino, en gran medida, dejan las tensiones sin
resolución. Ambos tipos de ideales de personas en última instancia no llegan a realizarse
en su totalidad. Precisamente porque uno florece donde el otro falla, la relación entre
las religiones afrocubanas y la polı́tica socialista obtiene caracterı́sticas de contrapunteo,
un término designado por Fernando Ortiz, lo cual deja un espacio vital para conflicto,
resitencia y ruptura. [adivinación, Afro-latinoamericanos, brujerı́a, Cuba, politica,
religion revolución socialista]

Abstract
This article explores Afro-Cuban religiosity in ways that see it neither as an epiphe-
nomenon of political regimes nor as a dimension of symbolic resistance. We argue
that people are produced in Afro-Cuban religion in hyperindividualized ways through
cosmologies that largely “encompass” everyday life, including politics. In contrast,
the socialist revolution has sought to “encompass” individuals by ascribing to them a
universally ethical and ideological destiny. These antithetical directions of “encompass-
ment” do not create a rigid hierarchical schema but generally leave tensions unresolved:
both ideals are ultimately unrealized. Precisely because one flourishes where the other
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 0, No. 0, pp. 1–19. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN
1935-4940. ⃝
C 2019 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/jlca.12388

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 1
 fails, the relationship between Afro-Cuban religions and socialist politics acquires
characteristics of what Fernando Ortiz terms a counterpoint that leaves vital room
for conflict, resistance, and rupture. [Afro LatinAmericans,Cuba, divination, politics,
religion, socialist revolution, witchcraft]

Ana, an Afro-Cuban woman in her sixties, was born on July 26—the politically
significant date of the Moncada Barracks attack in 1953, the first failed attempt at
revolution—to avidly revolutionary parents. Her father had helped to construct
Soviet bloc-type buildings in Havana, as part of the microbrigades, and her mother
had once sewn the communist insignia onto Fidel Castro’s jacket. As a child and
adolescent, Ana said she was not just atheist but anti-religious: like her father,
she aspired to participate in the construction of a new and promising regime.
The revolution mobilized young people in its political project and Ana was con-
vinced by this, laboring to learn the precepts of the revolution in her countryside
boarding school, becoming motivated by the comradeship among her classmates
and the responsibilities her teachers placed upon them. “We became men and
women, away from our families,” she says. “The poorest kids were interned there,
as well as us from the city. The food was good, we were taken care of.” Among other
things, she played basketball for her country and was part of the Communist Youth
group. “Things worked back then,” she says; “there was discipline, respect, not like
now with this social degradation.” For Ana, the revolution’s errors—principally
from the 1990s—brought about the corrosion of core values and behaviors that
are now evident in today’s young people with their capitalist yearnings. How-
ever, the revolution committed other errors too, she says: When the revolution
triumphed, they effected a kind of divorce from everything that was religious. It
wasn’t like it was banned, more that it was understood that you couldn’t be mate-
rialist and spiritual at the same time. They took it back, but a lot of damage had
been done.
Indeed, this initial active involvement in revolutionary ideals and mobiliza-
tion took a back seat when Ana began to experience her first episodes of spirit
possession while at boarding school. Fearing she was ill, she went to the school
nurse who sent her home. She tried to ignore her symptoms, but they increased.
She began to predict events and to give people messages from the spirits. She
decided to develop her faculties after an event when, at age seventeen, she broke
her foot and attributed it to the witchcraft of an envious member of her basketball
team. She knew this because when she suspected foul play, she had secretly con-
sulted a woman who threw cards in her neighborhood, a commonly found home-
based divinatory practice. With this development underway, Ana retired from the

2 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

basketball team and other Communist Youth commitments at her school: she
could not be sure that she would not pass out, or receive information from the
spirit world, at awkward moments. In this sense, she became de-mobilized because
of her increasing withdrawal from public spaces. Ana still has fond memories of
her childhood—in all its revolutionary rigor—but she deeply regrets the prejudices
of the early decades. For Ana, disengagement with the political process became
inevitable, given the Cuban state’s hostility toward forms of religion in Cuba be-
fore the 1990s. There was no way these two aspects of her life could coexist—until
recently. In the context of the “opening” (apertura) during the post-Soviet era,
however, the revolution shifted its stance with respect to policy and governance
issues, including religiosity (Ayorinde 2004:137–155).
This article examines a subject that is perceived by many scholars to have been
resolved: the relationship between the Cuban socialist state and Afro-Cuban reli-
giosity. We argue, with Ana and others in similar circumstances, that Afro-Cuban
religiosity is not a symbolic dimension of resistance, or not in a straightforward
sense. We propose that Afro-Cuban religious cosmology—articulated through or-
acles and séances—“encompasses” everyday life in its myriad aspects, including
revolutionary ones, with which it often clashes. However, we do not argue that
this relationship is linear or fixed, or that these two fields of experience, which
often form powerful identities (revolucionario and religioso, respectively) are, by
definition, incompatible. We treat seemingly fixed points—however powerful they
may be—as dynamic tendencies. We note historical dimensions in order to show
that the relationship is not (always) direct, necessary, or predetermined. We pro-
vide a flexible analytical framework that is both sensitive to historicity and reflects
relationships between different and sometimes unrelated “entities.” While each
one—the socialist state and Afro-Cuban religiosity—tends to be internally encom-
passing (Dumont 1972), the relationship between the two is better understood in
terms of Fernando Ortiz’s notion of counterpoint (2002 [1940]), which he wrote
about in relation to the impacts of sugar and tobacco on the island’s history. The
cultivation of both led to symbolic and socioeconomic differences: sugar relied on
slave labor and polarized classes, while tobacco fomented the growth of a middle
class through its production by small-scale farmers.
“Counterpoint,” in this case, accounts for a dynamic exchange between two
different, even opposing, sets of relationships; it is a metarelationship of critical
coexistence. Like encompassment, it deals with antithetical relations. However,
it does not create rigid, hierarchical schemas, but contrapuntal, dynamic, and
uneven ones, leaving room for conflict and resistance and also for unresolved
coexistence. It is a kind of dialectics in which a thesis and an antithesis do not
necessarily lead to synthesis: a suspended dialectics. Counterpoint, as an analytical
framework, is comparative in approach and places alterity and identity on an equal

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 3
 footing. Therefore, it is not only apt for diachronic/historical dimensions but for
synchronic/anthropological ones.
With its most intense manifestations in its first three decades (1960s–1980s),
the encompassing tendencies of the revolutionary state were directed toward a
citizen who was “mobilized” in order to “participate in” and “labor for” the “con-
struction” of the revolution. In this process, individual identities were subsumed
under a common cause. Ideally, this was communism; pragmatically, it was social-
ism. In terms of lived experience, this translated into the presence of a state that
now permeated the Cuban citizenry. More than obliterating individuality (an ar-
guably impossible task, unless through an extraordinary and violent effort), it was
encompassed by collectivist ethos and praxis (Kapcia 2000). A hierarchy was con-
structed in which the “individual,” in a secondary position, was contrasted with,
and thus sustained, the “collective.” The individual was not simply a body/mind
unit, but anything that tended to individuate behavior—even a collectivity. Some of
these individuating assemblages became state institutions and, in the process, were
highly deindividuated (Lewis et al. 1977a). Others, such as Afro-Cuban religiosity,
were met with hostility and attempts at institutionalization were not sociologically
(or theologically) significant (Ayorinde 2004). In this article, the terms individual
and collective should be understood with these points in mind. The former is a
set of relations with individuating tendencies that do not obliterate, but encom-
pass, the collective, while the latter has the opposite tendencies, which materialize
through state (or state-sponsored) institutionalization attempts. Both tendencies
have been vibrant in different ways and at different times, officially or not, and
neither has managed to become all encompassing (hence, the counterpoint).
Before proceeding, a comment is required on our use of the term “Afro-Cuban
religiosity,” which commonly refers to a set of distinct religious traditions that
identify with an African origin (and are not free from political agendas; see Palmié
2013). Thus far, the literature has favored in-depth accounts of one tradition, giv-
ing the impression (often unintentionally) of relatively unrelated sets of practices.
Our treatment of Afro-Cuban religiosity as one “thing” does not imply ceremo-
nial or theological indistinction. Cubans do distinguish among different traditions
(such as Ocha/Ifá, Palo Monte, and Espritismo). However, heuristically employing
the umbrella term “Afro-Cuban religiosity” is ethnographically and analytically
legitimate, precisely because it does not fall into the reductionist understanding of
“traditions” as separate entities. One of the binding elements among these different
traditions is a common commitment to a multiplicity of other-than-human factors
and entities (such as spirits of the dead and deities), which interact with each per-
son differently, influence details of everyday lives, and become immanent through
modes of divination. This practical and communicative immanence is what can be
said to make all of these traditions “Afro-Cuban,” which is similar to the ideolog-
ical, discursive, and heuristic sense that Palmié (2013) has described. Thus, using

4 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

Afro-Cuban here, we refer to the discursive and practical turns by which the
construct is identified with Africa, somehow.
Furthermore, all these features are highly individuating and, thus, alternatives
to the “collectivist” tendencies of officialdom. Through a chain of oracular ut-
terances, offerings, and initiations, the person forges a personal “path” (camino),
making the house and the “religious family” (familia religiosa) the cosmopractical
center of guidance and attention. A multiplicity of spiritual centers emits power
and discourse, and often overlaps, but never merge into a solid unit such as the
state.
A historical account of the development of Afro-Cuban religiosity is beyond
our scope,1 but it is important to note that Afro-Cuban religiosity has generally
been explored by scholars in relation to the various political regimes throughout
Cuba’s history. This perspective has been dominated by the history of colonialism,
and specifically, slavery—to the point that it has become an archetype (Espı́rito
Santo and Panagiotopoulos 2015:25). Indeed, a dominant strand of scholarly work
deals with how Afro-Cuban religiosity has historically suffered the social injustices
to which Afro-Cubans themselves have been subjected (Ayorinde 2004; Helg 1995;
Schmidt 2015; Wirtz 2014). Existing beneath a centuries-old paradigm of racial-
ization and stigmatization, it is often argued that these religious practices have
organically incorporated the ambiance of marginalization. This reflects the of-
ficialist stance toward Afro-Cuban religiosity. “Resistance” becomes loose, often
symbolic, implying a failure to resist in “real” material terms (hence its religious
or ritual manifestation). This resistance, if taken to its logical Marxist conclusion,
implies a failure to acquire a certain social consciousness of oppressive conditions.
However, this archetypal paradigm lacks a framework to encompass the myriad
possible aspects of the relationship between Afro-Cuban religion and the socialist
state, such as conflict, domination, resistance, co-option, indifference, and com-
plementarity. Here, we argue that “counterpoint” provides this encompassing but
flexible framework, leaving the relationship between the two entities a creatively
unresolved one, in constant tension.
The contemporary Afro-Cuban religious ecology consists of a series of inter-
connected “traditions” that manifest a mixture of adherence to orthodoxy—bodies
of established myths, ritual precepts, and oracular techniques—and idiosyncrasies.
This is in part due to the largely noninstitutionalized forms in which they have
evolved and are currently practiced (Espı́rito Santo and Panagiotopoulos 2015).
The most public and demographically popular of these in Havana are (1) the
West-African influenced Cuban Santerı́a, also known as Regla de Ocha, which
encompasses the divination cult of Ifá (Brown 2003; Holbraad 2012); (2) the Palo
Monte ritual complex, with roots in the Congo basin in Africa (James Figarola
2006; Kerestetzi 2011); and (3) Cuban-Creole spirit-mediumship traditions re-
ferred to as Espiritismo Cruzado (Espı́rito Santo 2015; Millet 1996), which acts as

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 5
 glue between ritual domains through work with spirits of the dead (Palmié 2002).
The authors worked together in 2013 in Havana to collect ten in-depth life sto-
ries from people chosen because of the imminent transversality of the revolution
in their narratives—thus illuminating its evident impact. The interlocutors were
therefore above fifty years of age. To streamline our argument, we focus exclusively
on Ocha/Ifá in this article.

Framing Religious Processes

Jorge, an only child, was born in a village close to the city of Sagua La Grande in
the early 1940s. Despite the fact that neither of his parents were religious, Jorge
was inclined toward Catholicism from an early age and became an altar boy at
the age of seven. Noticing Jorge’s precociousness and intelligence, as well as his
devotion to the Church, the parish priest spoke to his parents to convince them
to send the boy to a Jesuit boarding school in the city. However, Jorge’s mother,
Rosa, was fearful. She was convinced that if he became a priest, he would be sent
all around the world on missions, and she and her husband would never see him
again. This possibility was so worrisome to her that, at the suggestion of a cousin,
she sought advice from the Afro-Cuban gods. Secretly, she consulted with the only
santero in town—a man reportedly 103 years old. He threw his divination shells
and told her she had nothing to worry about, but Rosa gasped at what else he
said: that her son was not destined for Catholic priesthood, but for Afro-Cuban
religious priesthood.
Santerı́a beckoned Jorge again when he was about eleven, when Rosa suddenly
became ill. Although she received medical care, her illness lingered a long time.
Jorge solicited help through Afro-Cuban religion. Rosa received a minor initiation,
called a kofá, in Ifá, Ocha’s divination cult, but in Rosa’s postinitiation divination
ceremony, Orula, the god of divination, told her through the oracle that while
he would give her another fifty years of life (and indeed, she recovered from
her sickness) her son should be fully initiated. Orula said this was not because
of his health, but because the santo would help him survive the obstacles and
responsibilities that were heading his way.
Jorge was too young to heed the warning, but a few years later, as a teen,
he also “received” Orula and more messages were forthcoming. In his divination
ceremony, Orula told him that the gods would give him proof of their existence.
Mysteriously, Orula told him to never take a bite of an apple. It was the late 1950s
and Havana was broiling with underground supporters of the revolution: schools,
theaters, public buildings of all kinds, could become targets; the mood was tense. At
this time, Jorge was taking night classes, since there was less chance of being caught
in a conflict during the evening. One day, however, Jorge was strolling through

6 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

town at midday. He spotted a stall selling sweet, glazed apples near a shopping
mall. He paid the seller for one and was about to bite into it when a large bang
shook the building and adjacent street. People screamed and ran from the mall
with blood on their faces. A bomb had apparently been placed inside the building
by revolutionary sympathizers and Jorge had narrowly missed it.
He remembered his divination ceremony again a few years later when, in
1961, he attempted to enroll in university and was rejected. This was unexpected
given his high grades. He asked around and discovered that his first cousin on
his mother’s side had encountered something similar. The cousin had been a
second-year student in dentistry and was thrown out. The reason was that they
had family members who had previously been cadets in Batista’s army. The new
socialist order was persecuting and barring the progress of anyone who had ties
to the previous deposed regime, however remote. Jorge’s university dreams were
crushed. Devastated, he decided to heed the Afro-Cuban gods’ advice and be fully
initiated into Santerı́a, becoming a priest in the early 1960s, but his problems were
just beginning. Jorge was betrayed by a close cousin who had become a fervent
anti-religious revolutionary.
One day, Jorge came home to find a large plaque nailed to his door. It said
SANTERO (Santerı́a priest) in bold lettering. Although shocked, he took it down
and thought little of it. A few weeks later, he presented himself for military service
at a local station. The recruitment officer looked at his file and muttered something
sarcastic about where Jorge was heading. He was taken from the recruitment post
to a camp in the countryside where he was detained for three years. He calls it a
“concentration camp” for dissidents: religious folk, homosexual people, hippies,
as well as political opponents. His family did not know his whereabouts for six
months, despite numerous pleas. “Forced labor was what it was, to punish us,” he
says, “If it weren’t for my santo, and my intelligence, I wouldn’t have survived.”
During the late 1960s, until the 1990s, the Cuban state churned out Marxist
propaganda about religious phenomena, and deemed Afro-Cuban religion in-
compatible with scientific and atheist modernity—a discourse with a colonial
and postcolonial history (de la Fuente 2001). It mounted campaigns of intimida-
tion, repression, and violence against its practitioners, racializing “superstition,”
and “atavism” and, more damningly, positing these populations as dangerous
“anti-revolutionaries” (Ayorinde 2004; Guerra 2012), especially among the young.
From early on, the revolution dissolved all religious congregations unless they had
registered within a given time frame in the registro de asociaciones (registry of asso-
ciations). However, those that did were subjected to constant vigilance and threats
of closure by state officials. Furthermore, in the early 1960s the Party circulated
a form of combat manual against all forms of religious worship: Sectas Religiosas
(nd). A section on Santerı́a and other religions of “African” inspiration notes high
percentages of “homosexualism,” “prostitution,” “vagrancy,” and “alcoholism”

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 7
 among its adherents (nd:93). Between 1968 and 1984, the state set up rural labor
camps for political “rehabilitation” (the most famous were the Unidades Militares de
Ayuda a la Producción/Military Units to Aid Production). Religious folk of various
affiliations, homosexual people, and other ideological “subversives” were “reedu-
cated,” sometimes for years, in what some have called “concentration camps” (as
described by Jorge). Minor punishments for religious creed included being barred
from university, workplace opportunities, promotions, travel, and general social
and political exclusion, even within one’s own neighborhood (Wedel 2004:33).
While, in principle, the 1976 Cuban Constitution guaranteed freedom of ex-
pression and religion, the reality was different. This was the case for members of the
Church (Catholic and Protestant) as well as practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions.
The latter not only congregated in higher numbers than allowed by officialdom
for any rite, but they generated a successful underground economy—of money,
materials/goods, and rationed food—largely undetected by the state. In this way,
Afro-Cuban religions were perhaps unique in their partially successful resistance
to the revolution’s strategies of state vigilance and representation. One proactive
means to avoid such strategies was to give up state work and dedicate oneself to
religion—an activity predominantly practiced at home: that is, if the state did not
sack them first.
For instance, Emiliano, a sixty-year-old white espiritista medium from a small
town in the Las Tunas province, said he was forced to choose, in the 1970s,
between his religion and his job as a primary school teacher: “They told me:
teacher or espiritista, not both. I chose espiritista. I told them, I’m not going
to leave my muertos (spirits of the dead). I could seek work elsewhere, but not
in any cultural or educational center. Nobody could work there and be gay or
espiritista.” Government agents sought him out in the early 1980s, after word of
his ability as a medium spread beyond his town. They told him he could only have
access to children if he renounced his religion. Emiliano expressed resentment at
the morally violent choice forced upon him by the revolution. Here, as in Ana’s
narrative above, political and religious destinies were juxtaposed, and resolved only
through the embrace of their incommensurability. Indeed, initially, many Cubans
did not perceive an inherent contradiction in their religious and political identities;
rather, this conflict was superimposed by the early ideological and practical rigidity
of the revolutionary regime.

Encompassment and Alterity

In the relationship between the revolutionary state and Afro-Cuban religiosity,

especially in the first three decades, there is a vision of two antithetical forces com-
peting and clashing. Through the ethnographic accounts above, two incompatible

8 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

identities emerge: the religious and the revolutionary. These two forces can be
analyzed in terms of encompassment—a term elaborated upon in anthropology by
Dumont (1972) in a study of the Indian caste system.
Dumont argued that the caste structure is based on the notions of purity and
impurity, which are essentially Brahmanic religious concepts. What is created,
therefore, is a hierarchy of the purity/impurity pair. The upper castes have the
highest degree of purity and the lower castes of impurity, leading to the casteless
“untouchables.” He writes, “[A] hierarchical relation is a relation between larger
and smaller, or more precisely that which encompasses and that which is encom-
passed” (Dumont 1972:24). He continues, “The whole is founded on the necessary
and hierarchical coexistence of the two opposites” (Dumont 1972:81). This model
of encompassment is a relational schema characterized by difference and oppo-
sition (purity versus impurity). The principle-cum-outcome of this opposition is
hierarchical, where one term encompasses, rather than obliterates, the other. In
this sense, what is encompassed constitutes a necessary ingredient of the whole
structure, which is required to define and sustain the encompassing appetites of
the “purer” entities. In the case of Cuba, it seems, a symmetrical inversion of en-
compassment is at stake. Instead of religion encompassing politics, as in the Indian
case, here, the reverse applies.
Deeming religious identities incompatible with the creation of the New Man
and the society it was trying to construct, the revolutionary state placed these on the
“impure” side of the hierarchy, so to speak. Complete obliteration, such as a legal
ban, was considered impossible or unnecessary. Rather, a hierarchical structure of
stigmatization and marginalization was constructed, which was a necessary part
of the revolution. The fact that some people preferred to side with the impure side,
by becoming full-time religious practitioners, did not shake the foundations of
the encompassment structure. If the revolution needed its counterexamples and
enemies in order to be defined, these persons worked to such ends.
The analytical and comparative merit of Dumont’s encompassment model is
that it deals precisely with relations of alterity; that is, it asks how different entities
are related. Dumont argues that these relations are not just about alterity but
opposition, and not that they are not arbitrary but necessary because they create
the hierarchical caste system. If we focus on the first three decades of the revolution
and its relation to Afro-Cuban religiosity, the encompassment model seems apt,
but is insufficient for these purposes.
The tendency of the revolutionary state to encompass Afro-Cuban religiosity
has not led to a rigid hierarchical system, as in the Dumontian example. This is not
only evident from the increase in religious interest in post-Soviet Cuba, but from
an ingrained tendency of Afro-Cuban religiosity toward individuation. That is, the
overall relationship between the revolutionary state and Afro-Cuban religiosity
is one of alterity (their differences predominate), even opposition, sharing these

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 9
 features with Dumontian encompassment. However, in the present case, this is not
a direct form of encompassment. While the revolutionary state has defined itself
mainly through a collectivist tendency (encompassing individuation), Afro-Cuban
religiosity has an individuating tendency (encompassing broad collectivities, such
as the nation or the state). Ultimately, two different kinds of encompassment are at
stake, but not necessarily in opposition. A dynamic interaction occurs and we need
a framework to account for these dimensions of the relationship. This is offered
by the notion of the counterpoint.
If we seek encompassing revolutionary aspirations in the words of significant
figures, one that comes to mind is from Fidel Castro’s 1961 “Words to the Intellectu-
als” speech: “Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.”
Four years later, Che Guevara would add: “We are looking for something new that
will permit a complete identification between the government and the community
in its entirety” (Guevara and Castro 2012:16). However, both for the revolution’s
vanguard and for scholars of the revolution, in order to take such pronouncements
seriously, it is important not to interpret them as mere ideological constructs, but
practical goals to achieve. Encompassment in Cuban revolutionary politics should
be seen as a project—a process with a direction, rather than a finished product (see
Rosendahl 1997). Participation (participación) has been a vital point of reference
and practice for this project and mobilization (movilización) has enabled it to take
place. These processes have had an encompassing reach meant to transcend race,
gender, age, special skills, and other classifications. There has been professional and
student mobilization and participation, as well as volunteer participation through
membership of mass organizations and activities.
Prominent examples of participation include membership in the Communist
Party (PCC), the Union of Communist Youth (UJC), the Revolutionary Armed
Forces (FAR), the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), the
Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the National Association of Small Farmers
(ANAP), and the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC), among
others. Such activities relate to specific needs and endeavors to help build socialism
in a practical manner, such as occasional work in the sugarcane fields or in the
amateur microbrigades constructing Cuba’s socialist architecture. The idea was
that “Cuba’s main economic resource was its people” (Kapcia 2008:66). Kapcia’s
simple phrase illuminates what has just been outlined here but also indicates that
the phenomenon belongs to the past, at least in its intensity.
Holbraad has suggested that the revolution created a “political universe”
(2014:340) with no exterior, exemplified in the phrase Revolución ó muerte (Revo-
lution or death). This universe was perhaps more encompassing in the first decades
of the revolution, nourished through processes of mass participation and mobi-
lization, although never achieving an all-encompassing state. This is not just an
external perspective. It derives from revolutionary agents themselves who never

10 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

ceased to remind the Cuban citizenry that the revolution was under constant con-
struction, and even a critical reinterpretation of sorts. This was exposed and further
counterposed in the later decades of the revolution, especially after the 1990s, when
previously unobserved cracks in the “exteriors” became visible and presented as
almost inevitable, influencing the revolutionary leaders toward repetitive self-
reflection and reconsiderations (or “rectifications”) of the excesses and mistakes
of the past. The need for political survival, adaptation, and response to growing
feelings of failure in a post-Soviet Cuba led the revolution to a bold reconsideration
of the collectivist ethos, praxis, and economic and political structures, allowing for
more individuating forces to express themselves. While processes of participation
and mobilization receded, countless exterior cracks opened up, revealing a sup-
pressed, seemingly dormant, Cuban individuality and identity (see Bobes 1999). In
other words, and somewhat contrapuntally, the cracks in the exteriors opened up
to show a multiplicity of interiors. Against this general background, Afro-Cuban
religiosity played, and still plays, a central role for many Cuban citizens.
Before we elaborate this point, and as a prelude to the more ingrained indi-
viduating tendencies of Afro-Cuban religiosity, we next offer some nuances and
developments from the later decades of the revolution.

A Brief Digression

There is a long and complex history in the “dance” between the revolutionary state
and Afro-Cuban religiosity, such that it has sometimes seemed that a counterpoint
is less about dissonance than harmony. In Four Men: Living the Revolution—An
Oral History, Lewis et al. 1977a interview a santero and CDR president in Las
Yaguas, Lázaro Benedı́; he is a “very black and very poor” man (1977a:12) who
claims to have both a statue of Lenin, whom he takes to be a “god,” and an altar
to the Afro-Cuban oricha Yemayá. For him, as for Fidel (above), Christ was the
ultimate communist. As one of this article’s reviewers observed, it is significant
that Benedı́ talked to Oscar Lewis in the midst of a revolutionary offensive against
“superstitions” such as those Benedı́ believed in. This supports our general claim
that the relations between religious and political identities are not preordained in
a rigid schema, whatever the tensions—“internal” or “external”—may be. Indeed,
as Benedı́ claims, “my powers as a santero probably helped me in my political
work” (1977a:61).
In another example, in Espirito Santo’s fieldwork in 2005/06, the government
only sanctioned one of the groups of espiritistas cientificos (scientific spiritists):
the Consejo Supremo Nacional de Espiritistas. The Consejo’s long-time leader,
Alfredo Durán, was reputedly one of Fidel Castro’s Sierra Maestra barbu-
dos (bearded ones, alluding to the revolutionaries), who still maintains warm

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 11
 relations with Communist high officials—a fact that may have served the cientifi-
cos well for decades: “There are two evils in the world. The first is capitalism, and
the second is religion—belief, superstition, all that is ignorance” (Espirito Santo’s
interview with Durán, March 2016). According to Durán, the worst of humanity
is that it is creyente (believer, believing). He states, “to make a new world, we need
to make a new man first!” For Durán, as for Communist officials in the 1960s and
1970s, the Guevarist New Man is not a believer, but he is spiritual. The point is that
cohabiting socialist and religious ideals may not just be possible, but achievable,
and not just for Durán, who had the advantage of being both a spiritist (a white
man’s religion in prerevolution Cuba) and white. Even in Ana’s example, discussed
earlier, her particular revolutionary sensibilities are incompatible with her nascent
mediumship, not as a matter of principle but of (historical) contingency.
However, the revolution itself has taken steps in this “dance.” Notwithstanding
the combat manual Sectas Religiosas (mentioned above), and consistent (often vio-
lent) attempts to get rid of superstitions and mysticism, revolutionary officialdom
also promoted the political assimilation of some of the population (Afro-Cubans)
who had been an active component of the pro-revolutionary vanguard. This was
achieved in part by making a case for the “scientific” recording, classification, and
conservation of the aesthetic and material elements of Afro-Cuban religions and
their mythologies—specifically those that were devoid of what were considered
degenerate practices and beliefs. This was a project of museology and musicol-
ogy, which depended on a new generation of ethnologists, some of whom were
Soviet trained. Hernandez-Reguant notes that from the 1960s, the “evaluation
of folklore’s authenticity and revolutionary relevance was a scientific task, and it
fell on the growing body of folklorists and musicologists who, as traditional an-
thropologists elsewhere, became the guardians of the nation’s purity” (2005:293).
Ethnology was to be geared toward incorporating these traits into Cuba’s rev-
olutionary identity. Thus, for example, the creation of the Conjunto Nacional
Folclórico de Cuba, a folkloric Afro-Cuban national dance troupe founded and
presided over by Argeliers León, was perhaps the socialist state’s most formidable
attempt to transform popular religiosity into revolutionary sentiment and “cul-
ture” (Ayorinde 2004:99). It did so by rallying religiosos as informants and dancers,
while stripping all religious significance from its dance spectacles. Indeed, writers
and artists were encouraged to use Afro-Cuban religious elements in their work, al-
beit within a folkloric frame, wherein the alienating aspects of Afro-Cuban culture
were ultimately revealed (Ayorinde 2004:110). Such was the racial encompassment
strategy that Jesus Guanche—a scholar of Cuban ethnology—commented that the
term “Afro-Cubano” was now “inappropriate and anachronic” (1983:462), be-
cause Cuba now recognized itself as “Hispano-Africano.” Furthermore, Kapcia
(2000:160) regards this co-opting of Cuba’s African heritage as the perpetua-
tion of the myth of a color-blind Cuba, although Guanche, like others, thought

12 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

Afro-Cuban religion should be preserved, at least aesthetically, as a legacy against
class oppression.
In the post-Soviet crisis, known as Special Period,2 however, “Any remaining
residues of ‘Che’ Guevara’s utopian vision of the ‘new man,’ who worked for the
good of society, not individual gain, were relegated to the dustbin of history,”
observed Susan Eckstein (2003:235). Again, the revolution had changed its tune
toward religiosos. If, on the one hand, the state released its stronghold on religious
expression, leading to increased interest in it, on the other hand, this explosion of re-
ligious interest—its persistence—required a Marxist explanation, particularly at the
beginning of the crisis in the early 1990s. An academic focus on social function—
reflected in Cuban anthropology of the early 1990s (for instance, in Mederos and
Hodge Limonta 1991)—thus coexisted awkwardly with state-sponsored programs
of religious tourism and the cultivation of “santurismo” (a play of the words
“Santerı́a” and “tourism”) as the country opened to foreigners. However, a tension
remains. While tolerance of Afro-Cuban religions in the public sphere is now obvi-
ous to most, Kristina Wirtz argues that the state’s religious hygiene regulations and
interventions continue to serve as a reminder of “official and elite queasiness” to-
ward things Afro-Cuban, derived from, among other factors, long-standing racist
notions that modernity is incompatible with Afro-Cuban religion (2009:486).
Can we argue that the collectivist tendencies of the socialist state receded as
the individualist appetites of the Cuban population increased? Certainly, the idea
in the late 1960s and 1970s that in Cuba “the pursuit of personal identity at the
expense of collective identity is considered not simply a luxury but a social and
political evil” (Lewis et al. 1977b:xvi–xvii) must be qualified and recontextualized.

Divination and Encompassment

This section highlights the encompassment work of oracular and mediumistic

practices and their “signs.” Under these signs, concepts of camino (a personal
“path”) are conceived and destinies (religious, economic, political) are generated.
Jorge’s story of his early youth highlights the social upheaval of the early years
of the revolution and prerevolutionary era, but also shows how major political
events of recent Cuban history are intrinsic to the unfolding of a particular reli-
gious camino. Here, individuating tendencies encompass state–institutional ones,
and interconnected levels of encompassment occur. Jorge’s biographical narrative
is constructed and linked through different divinatory points—from his affinity
with Catholicism, to his mother’s initiation in Ifá, to his induction into Santerı́a.
From one divination ceremony to the next, Jorge reflects upon a life course or
camino that is explained, understood, and constructed through significant orac-
ular pronouncements and the will of the orichas, seen in relation to the hostile
environment of the early revolution.

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 13
 Starting with the predominance of divinatory practices across Afro-Cuban
religious traditions—through which entities “speak,” be they gods and divinities
or spirits of the dead—Regla de Ocha, for example, comprises several divination
methods practiced by santeros, including the cowry shell oracle (caracol) and the
coconut oracle (obbi). It also encompasses the prestigious divination cult of Ifá,
whose priests (babalawos) are initiated into Orula (the oricha who witnesses the
destiny of all men). Divination is not incidental in Ocha but central to its concep-
tualization of the human being. The oricha gods are consulted for the conferral
of blessings, but also for life guidance. Ifá plays a protagonist role in that oracular
pronouncements betray the clearest and most encompassing “logocosmy”—the
world of reasons for things (see Holbraad 2010)—exemplified in the phrase “En Ifá
está todo” (Everything is in Ifá). Orula, the divination god, is thought to never lie,
although humans may interfere with his message. It is no coincidence that in cases
of divinatory doubt, as well as important ceremonies, the babalawos are sought for
ultimate and final arbitration. Ocha holds that the universe needs to be constantly
worked into balance. Divination signs come with “qualities” that reveal whether
circumstances tend toward blessings (iré) or misfortune (osogbo), after which, if
necessary, these circumstances may be willed toward change with the cooperation
of the orichas. In Ocha myths (patakies), if there is no evil, there can be no good.
Thus, in Jorge’s case, Afro-Cuban religious priesthood is a “destiny” re-
vealed in childhood, and incrementally acknowledged throughout his life through
“proofs”—events, tragedies, national history—parsed through oracular pro-
nouncements. It is, however, a destiny he may mold, change, and even subvert.
While Cuban political history is not subsumed by his oracular pronouncements
(“terrible obstacles,” or the gods proving their existence or saving his life), Jorge’s
story indicates that these events were somehow secondary to a greater cosmologic
that would always encompass them in one form or another: that of Ocha-Ifá.
Encompassment also occurs in the sense that there are no a priori principles that
Jorge has vis-à-vis the sociopolitical background against which his life unfolds. All
oracle references to social and political events neither presuppose nor lead to a
moral judgment, nor to a collective kind of action. In the narration of his story to
us, these are revealed only in light of Jorge’s life-course. Therefore, in this story, we
have primacy of the person, rather than the state or nation.
The main religious traditions in Havana foster an individuating approach, since
their end goal is to allow deities, gods, and spirits to relate to individuals, not groups.
This is evident in a number of key cosmological and ritual precepts. In Ocha-Ifá,
for example, the soul is thought to be located in the head, or better, is one’s head
(orı́) such that full initiation to one’s tutelary oricha—placed literally inside the
head (through cuts on top)—aligns a person to his or her destiny more forcefully.
The orı́ is not shared or transmissible but personal, signaling a predestined affinity
with one or another god, a “path,” and an individual responsibility and agency

14 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

in achieving that path. Indeed, the bases of quotidian Santerı́a are small ritual
manipulations and offerings designed to reestablish lost balance or to compensate
for disobedience or other transgressions. An extreme individuating phenomenon
arises across the various Afro-Cuban religious traditions as the person becomes
the central point of reference.
However, the most important unit in Afro-Cuban religions is undoubtedly
the “family,” which is not simply biological but ritual. People are considered
within this collective, extending back generations, and forming concepts of ethnic
“nations,” which have led to the proliferation of myriad religious lineages. When
we propose that the “individual” generally encompasses the “collective” in Afro-
Cuban religion, we do not mean that this individualism is restricted to the person
or individual. “Hyperindividualism” in the Cuban case is also a family-centered
tendency (although not always), creating multiple centers in which “spiritual”
power may be concentrated and distributed. In that sense, Afro-Cuban spiritual
power is decentralized. Oracular advice tends to be social, although rarely national
or global. In Santerı́a and Ifá, for example, oracular messages can be specific. For
instance, for the divination sign Ojuani, Ifá says, among other things, “You don’t
have sufficient money to have two wives, but you will win the lottery twice; you
should be careful with a woman who is going to try to kill you out of jealously” (Ifá
manual, cited in Argüelles Mederos 1997:23). The point is to show that traditional
Cuban oracular cosmology is concerned mostly with the person and his or her
immediate social surroundings. State and national politics do not figure as a
preoccupation unless explicitly arranged.
Interestingly, none of these individuating forces and tendencies are impervious
to their opposites. An annual divination ceremony called letra del año (literally,
“letter of the year”) forwards oracular prognoses for Cuba and pronounces on
global events for that year. At times, there has been controversy because of what
are said to be “the hidden political meanings” of the oracular pronouncements.
Attempts at religious institutionalization have also taken place, most prominently
with the opening of the state-sponsored Yoruba Association in the 1990s. Most
significant here is that the universal scope of such institutionalization on the
part of the state has not gained much momentum or legitimacy among religious
practitioners. This can be evinced by the proliferation of “letters of the year” (both
within and outside Cuba) and the relative failure of the Yoruba Association to
claim any liturgical or theological monopoly over the island’s religiosos with their
own annual divination ceremony.

Conclusion

This account has shed light on two seemingly opposing encompassment ten-
dencies, each permeating the compared “entities”: the revolutionary regime and

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 15
 Afro-Cuban religiosity. The former subsumes the individual in the collective and is,
almost by (socialist) definition, identified with the (encompassing) role of the state.
This means that collectivities, not just individuals, which have proved difficult to
fully “translate” (or be encompassed) into the revolutionary state’s terms, were
pushed to the suspicious individuating domain. Traditionally (not just under the
revolution), Afro-Cuban religiosity has flourished in this domain. Intense atten-
tion to the self, homebound centrality of the “religious family,” and a multiplicity
of “spiritual” centers—voices, deities, spirits of the dead that interact with one’s
“path,” witchcraft attacks and counterattacks, persistent “spiritual” hauntings, the
oracular immediacy of traditions—amount to the tendency of individuation to
function at the expense of large and solid collectivities.
The fact that two opposing tendencies of encompassment seem to be charac-
terizing each “entity” does not, however, mean that one must strive to encompass
the other through opposition. This is one outcome among many others and it is
a matter of historical contingency, rather than exclusionary definitional fixation.
There is a common understanding that relations of difference or opposition tend
to imply conflict and, in the case of the “individual” and the “collective,” this may
transform from a tendency into an axiom. Dumont suggests, however, drawing
on structuralist theory, that difference and opposition may be the very glue of
relationships. What we propose here is that relationships of difference do not nec-
essarily lead to an encompassing hierarchical structure—as suggested by Fernando
Ortiz.
Writing in the first half of the twentieth century, Ortiz worked mainly on issues
of criminality, law, race, Afro-Cuban religiosity and, generally, Cuban economics
and society. These last themes were explored in Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco
and Sugar (1940). Here, Ortiz provides a stark contrapuntal comparison between
the two national products: tobacco and sugar. Although Cuba’s soil and climate
are uniquely apt for the cultivation of both, there are intense physical, symbolic,
and socioeconomic differences between them. For instance, sugar is processed
to become white, while tobacco remains naturally brown. One seeks shadow or
darkness to grow, while the other seeks light. One comes out in liquid form, the
other as smoke. One awakens and activates, the other provokes lethargy and re-
flection. One is “feminine,” “divine,” felt by one sense only, and gives pleasure to
the flesh; the other is “masculine,” “demoniacal,” felt by many senses, and gives
pleasure to the spirit. Of more socioeconomic significance, sugar requires vast
plots of land, economic centralization and monopolization, use of slaves and/or
machines, organized mass production, and results in an emphasis on quantity,
anonymity, investment, and the polarization of classes (a few rich and many poor).
On the other hand, tobacco favors small plots of lands, economic decentraliza-
tion and diversity, workers as artisans, a spontaneous, idiosyncratic and relatively

16 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

small-scale production, and leads to an emphasis on quality, personalization, and
the creation of a middle class.
Counterpoint, then, has value not in a literal sense but as an inspiration and
a framework of relations, where there is a great deal to be gained analytically.
Unlike the caste society of India, counterpoint leaves room for conflict and re-
sistance and also for unresolved coexistence. Thus, there is a relative but crucial
degree of autonomy. Antonio Benı́tez-Rojo observes that counterpoint involves
“voices that come from different centers of emission, from differing moments and
discourses, which coexist beside each other in a complex and critical relationship
. . . that is impossible to clarify entirely” (1996:174). This impossibility of clarifi-
cation does not mean that we are faced with a situation of absolute indistinction
because this would amount to the annihilation of discrete identities. Rather, we
propose the counterpoint as a dynamic in which identities are relatively discrete—
which is why they are able to enter into multiple dialogues and exchanges with
each other. However, these dialogues are not preordained and one-directional.
Counterpoint can accommodate different dynamics, from complete indifference
to outright conflict.
If this proposed framework is valid, we are led to a broader conclusion. Counter-
point “encompasses” encompassment because it can account for all the instances
and spaces in which the latter proves to be weak or absent. This derives from
the broader theoretical dimension of the proposed framework. Two antithetical
directions of encompassment do not always have to be related by way of encom-
passment. An important and often neglected reason for this is that the relationship
between the individual and the collective is not, by definition, one of necessary
encompassment. Their encompassment is a matter of historical and sociopolitical
contingencies. One could say that capitalism has favored the individual and com-
munism (or socialism) the collective, and that both tend to move about in terms of
encompassment. However, counterpoint openly questions such “dogma,” and the
cultivation of the individual may be regarded as necessarily occurring in detriment
to the collective and vice versa. Rather than arguing in a typically anthropological
(and Dumontian) fashion that the individual is also a collective construct, and that
there are societies that do not make such constructions, the present “Afro-Cuban
counterpoint” offers a novel context—or, rather, derives from a novel context. The
context presented here articulates a unique flexibility when it comes to accommo-
dating distinct, even antithetical, forces and tendencies. Differences and tensions
are not resolved into rigid hierarchical structures, where one entity is sacrificed for
the sake of the other. Differences are preserved so that relations can be forged and
perspectives exchanged, wherein a state of unresolved and suspended dialectics is
entertained: contrapuntally.

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 17
 Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia

for funding our respective postdoctoral work in Cuba (for Diana, through the
project PTDC/CS-ANT/114825/2009 and for Anastasios, through the postdoctoral
fellowship grant SFRH/BPD/76656/2011) on which this article is based. Thanks
also to the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) for hosting us. For helpful
suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this article we are grateful to David
Picard, Valerio Simoni and Patricia Alves de Matos in Portugal, and to Martin
Holbraad and others who provided us with ideas and insights at the UCL social
anthropology seminar. Finally, our deepest gratitude goes to our interlocutors and
friends in the field, some of which are referred to with pseudonyms in this article
in the interest of privacy.

Notes

1 SeeBrandon (1993) for further elucidation here.

2 The “Special Period in Times of Peace” (starting from 1989) was a period during the 1990s
of severe economic crisis, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, on which Cuba was almost
entirely dependent. Extreme food and fuel shortages, the breakdown of industry and agriculture, and
the opening up of the country to tourism, were some of its consequences.

References Cited

Argüelles Mederos, Anı́bal. 1997. Los Sistemas Adivinatorios de la Regla de Ocha. La Habana: Editorial Academia.
Ayorinde, Christine. 2004. Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Identity. Gainesville, FL: University Press
of Florida.
Benı́tez-Rojo, Antonio. 1996. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Bobes, Velia Cecı́lia. 1999. “Participación vs. Identidad: Mujeres en el Espacio Público Cubano.” Perfiles Latinoamer-
icanos 15(8): 9–18.
Brandon, George. 1993. Santeria From Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories. Bloomington and Indianapolis,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Brown, David H. 2003. Santeria Enthroned: art, ritual, and innovation in an Afro-Cuban religion. Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press.
de la Fuente, Alejandro. 2001. A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba. Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Dumont, Louis. 1972 [1966]. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. London: Paladin.
Eckstein, Susan. 2003 (1994). Back From the Future: Cuba Under Castro. London: Routledge.
Espı́rito Santo, Diana. 2015. Developing the Dead: Mediumship and Selfhood in Cuban Espiritismo. Gainesville, FL:
University Press of Florida.
Espı́rito Santo, Diana, and Anastasios Panagiotopoulos, eds. 2015. Beyond Tradition, Beyond Invention: Cosmic
Technologies and Creativity in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Religions. Herefordshire: Sean Kingston Publishing.
Guanche, Jesús. 1983. Procesos Etnoculturales de Cuba. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas.
Guerra, Lillian. 2012. Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption and Resistance, 1959–1971. Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press.
Guevara, Che, and Fidel Castro. 2012 [1968]. Socialism and Man in Cuba. New York: Pathfinder.

18 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

Helg, Aline. 1995. Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886–1912. Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press.
Hernandez-Reguant, Ariana. 2005. “Cuba’s Alternative Geographies.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 10(2):
275–313.
Holbraad, Martin. 2010.“The Whole Beyond Holism: Gambing, Divination, and Ethnography in Cuba.” In Experi-
ments in Holism, edited by Ton Otto and Nils Bubandt, 67–85. London: Blackwell.
———. 2012. Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
———. 2014. “Revolución o Muerte: Self-Sacrifice and the Ontology of Cuban Revolution.” Ethnos 79(3): 365–87.
James Figarola, Joel. 2006. La Brujerı́a Cubana: El Palo Monte. Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente.
Kapcia, Antoni. 2000. Cuba: Island of Dreams. Oxford: Berg.
———. 2008. Cuba in Revolution: A History Since the Fifties. London: Reaktion Books.
Kerestetzi, Katerina. 2011. “Fabriquer une Nganga, Engendrer un Dieu (Cuba).” Images Re-vues 8. Accessed September
30, 2016. https://imagesrevues.revues.org/478Reas.
Lewis, Oscar, Ruth Lewis, and Susan M. Rigdon. 1977a. Four Men, Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contem-
porary Cuba. Champaign-Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
———. 1977b. Four Women, Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba. Champaign-Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press.
Mederos, Anı́bal Arguelles, and Illeana Hodge Limonta. 1991. Los Llamados Cultos Sincrtéticos y el Espiritismo. Havana:
Editorial Academia.
Millet, José. 1996. El Espiritismo: Variantes Cubanas. Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente.
Ortiz, Fernando. 2002 [1940]. Contrapunteo Cubano del Tabaco y el Azúcar. Madrid: Cátedra.
Palmié, Stephan. 2002. Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
———. 2013. The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Partido Comunista. nd. Sectas Religiosas, 110.
Rosendahl, Mona. 1997. Inside the Revolution: Everyday Life in Socialist Cuba. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Schmidt, Jalane. 2015. Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Wedel, Johan. 2004. Santerı́a Healing: A Journey Into the Afro-Cuban World of Divinities, Spirits, and Sorcery. Gainesville,
FL: University Press of Florida.
Wirtz, Kristina. 2009. “Hazardous Waste: The Semiotics of Ritual Hygiene in Cuban Popular Religion.”Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute 15(4): 476–501
———. 2014. Performing Afro-Cuba. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Afro-Cuban Counterpoint 19