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FROM “DIALOGOS IMAGINARIOS” c. 1979 by Rog

lio Martinez Fur

Notes on Those Called Arar

and Mina in Cuba

When in an ox is sacrificed to the souls of the royalancestors in Dahomey, a goat is also offered for those soldas slaves. The priests sing:

"Oh, ancestors, do all that is in your power/ so that the princes and nobles who rule today/ are never sent far from here as slaves./ Punish the people who bought our relatives/ who we shall never see again. Send your ships/ to the port of Whydah... (ahogad a sus tripulaciones)/ and make it so that all the riches of their boats return toDahomey."

The Ewe-Fon Presence in CubaOne of the great lacuna of Cuban ethnography is the lack ofstudies on the Ewe-Fon in our country. Revisiting ourclassic works in this discipline (Ortiz, Cabrera,Lachata

), we only find information on the influences ofthese peoples on the colonial life and their modernsurvivals. Lost among all the studies where the presence ofthe Yoruba, Bant

and Carabal

fills page after page, wefind the name of one of their gods (vod

n) or of some oftheir musical instruments; at times, with more luck, wediscover a summary description of a dance or a ceremony ofold Dahomey origin. Here, the reference to a ritual; there,a bit of their language; but no article, and much less a book, dedicated to the Arar

and Mina in Cuba.The publication of

Les Am

riques Noires

(Paris, Payot,1967), by the master Roger Bastide, confirms for us the lackof investigation regarding this aspect of our culture. Thiswork is a magnificent study of synthesis and interpretationof history and the contemporary problem of cultures brought

Chapter from a book in preparation on the Dahomeyan influences inCuban culture.

Mellville J. Herskovits. Dahomey an Ancient West African Kingdom. New York, J.J. Augustin Publisher, 1938, t. 2, pp. 64-45.(sic)

FROM “DIALOGOS IMAGINARIOS” c. 1979 by Rog

lio Martinez Fur

by the African captives, much of the elements of which, nownationalized, have been preserved and developed by us, their American heirs.In the chapters dedicated to the study of the influences ofthe Dahomey on our continent, we follow, with anextraordinary richness of information, their fertile presence from the southern US, to our Antilles (Haiti, Martinique) and on to South America (Brazil and theGuyanas). Undoubtedly, Cuba is a blank slate in this searchfor the traces of the vod

n.The scarce bibliography of the topic could lead one to theerroneous conclusion of considering an Ewe-Fon

subculture

nonexistent. With the intention of filling, in some way,this gap, I have dedicated the last ten years to collectingthe most information possible on the topic, despite thetraditional reserve which characterizes the sectors of oursociety who preserve this national patrimony. The collected material is due to the confidence given by some priests-informants of the cults called

Regla Arar

after theyunderstood the necessity of overcoming their reticence forthe benefit of developing Afro-American studies. I hope thatthese notes place the topic on the agendas of other scholarsand will also stimulate them to undertake deeper studies.The Ewe-Fon came to Cuba under various names: Arar

Abop

, Arar

Agic

n, Arar

Cuatro Ojos (four eyes), Arar

vano, Arar

Magino, Arar

Nezeve, Arar

Sabal

or Sabaluno,Dahomey, and Mina.

While common nomenclature in slavetexts, this has caused much confusion and headaches for modern africanists, when they have tried to identify thesegroups with their modern African counterparts. Many of these

I use the term subculture as defined by Edison Carneiro: "these cults,however (sea cual fuere el modo) they present themselves, are a world,a whole manner of behavior, a subculture..." (Cnadombl

s da Bahia. Riode Janeiro, Ed. de Ouro, 1969, p. 36)

Fernando Ortiz. Los Negros esclavos. La Habana, Revista BimestreCubana, 1916, pp. 26-28; Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux. "Cabildos s

lo paraesclavos". Cuba (La Habana), no. 7, January, 1968, p. 51.

FROM “DIALOGOS IMAGINARIOS” c. 1979 by Rog

lio Martinez Fur

names, particular to the slave trade, fell into disuse uponits suppression; others were applied erroneously to variousgroups, or were given to captives according to the African port of departure and without taking into account theiractual ethnicity. The slave came in with many differentdesignations: sometimes as "general of the tribe", othertimes as "from the small nation from which they originated"and others as "with the name of the trading post where theywere obtained"

. We will try to identify the Ewe-Fon (more properly called Adj

) groups who entered Cuba, find the region of theirorigin in Africa and summarize the existing informationabout them, as a preliminary step to a more detailed studyof their influences on our culture.The establishment of diplomatic relations between ourRevolutionary Government and the republic of Dahomey (nowThe Republic of Benin) is a stimulus for continuing thisinvestigation, which I hope will contribute to strengtheningour fraternal ties and to deepen the studies of historicaland ethnic heritage common to our countries, each strugglingtoday for a more just world which will definitivelyeradicate the exploitation of man by man.

On the name Arar

The first topic we should address relates to the Arar

name,applied in Cuba, Santo Domingo, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico to certain people arrived from Dahomey.

Gonzalo Aguirre Beltr

n. La poblaci

n negra de M

xico, 1519-1810.Estudio etnohist

rico. M

xico, D.F., Eds. Fuente Cultural, 1946, p.125.

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Imaginary Dialogs pt I Arará and Mina

Translation of Furé's "Dialogos Imaginarios"

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