High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
Cuban Santería, Haitian Vodun, Puerto Rican Spiritualism: A MulticulturalistInquiry into Syncretism
Andrés I. Pérez y Mena
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
, Vol. 37, No. 1. (Mar., 1998), pp. 15-27.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8294%28199803%2937%3A1%3C15%3ACSHVPR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
is currently published by Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/sssr.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgFri Feb 22 13:09:53 2008
Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodun, PuertoRican Spiritualism:
A
MulticulturalistInquiry into Syncretism
Research in the area of Afro-Latin religions has traditionally viewed Cuban Santeria, Haitian
Vodun
and Puerto Rican Spiritualism
as
unrelated. Common methodological problems in the consideration of ayn-cretism have contributed to a Eumcentric belief that the sole mediators of the enalaved were the inatitu-tions wielding hegemony. This article includes a review of both hiatorical and contemporary research. hiorresearch on Afro-Latin religions is viewed as Eurocentric and as tending toward deforming the image ofAfricans in the New World. There is also an analysis of Santeria,
as
La
Regla de Ocha
is popularly knownin Cuba; of
La
Religi6n Lucumf,
as Santerfa practitioners prefer being called in the United States and ofHaitian
Vodun.
Puerto Rican
Spiritualism
ia diacuased and comparisona are made with other Afro-Latinreligions. A critique of syncretism as a deterministic tool ia provided from a multicultural-Afrocentricviewpoint. Gender restrictions and the isaues of sexual preferences within the religions are also discussed.A multilingual bibliography is alao included.
Las
religiones afrocubanas no pwden ser valomdas
corn
algo pummente folklorico, eso es un graue em..nosotros
no
ayudomos a
la
gente pam
la
vida en el otro mundo; nuestro mundo es kste,
y
es el de los
orishas.
(Fernandez-Robaim
1994:
87).
The Afro-Cuban religion8 cannot
be
valued as something purely folkloric, that is a grave error
. . .
[W]e donot help people for life in the other world; our world is this one, and it is of the
orishas.
A
multiculturalist is someone who provides a means for a critical examination of historywhich undermines Euro-American self-centered suppositions. The intention
in
this paper isto undermine the ideological basis of Eurocentrism (Perez y Mena 1995b: 415-17) whenaddressing syncretism. To this end, a multiculturalist is burdened with being both a gener-alist and an interdisciplinarian. Some multiculturalists are unwitting Eurocentrics becausethey accept approaches that have, at their core, a predictability to hstory that can be seenthrough stages, rules, and laws. Another Eurocentric presumption is that it is the institu-tions wielding hegemony and oppression that make history. The logical consequence is thatthe colonial period combined with the hegemonic power of the institutions of enslavementare solely responsible for what
Afncans
in the New world are today. This Eurocentric orien-tation fails to take into account the levels of resistance by the enslaved and the differentways they mediated their conditions.Syncretism is a model of analysis that denies the enslaved a consciousness of theirpredicament in the New World. Yet, there is a distinct history to the use of the syncreticmodel for the analysis of African religions in the New World. This religious syncretic for-mula continues
as
we go into the twenty-first century, and it remains the sterile tool usedby Eurocentrics for the
analysis
of Afro-Latin religiosity.
Andds I.
Perez
y
Mem
is
an
associate
professor of
educational
anthropology
at
Long
Island
University,
School
of
Educafion,
University
Plaza,
Brooklyn,
NY
11201.
Emoil:
0
Journal
for
the
Scientifi
Study
of Religion,
1998,37111: 15-27
15
JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC
STUDY
OF RELIGION
The concept of syncretism is neither new nor used exclusively in reference
to
religionin Latin America. The earliest mention of syncretism appeared in Plutarch as "the act orsystem of blending, combining or reconciling inharmonious elements
.
. .
to forgetdissensions and
to
unite in the face of common danger." (Showerman 1910-1911: 292-93)The term was resurrected by the prominent anthropologist Arturo Ramos in the 1930s(1935, 1940, 1943, 19441, and later was used by Herskovits (1937) in the United States inhis defining article "African Gods and Catholic Saints in New World Negro Belief." Thisarticle set the stage for many errors presently found in the literature. The most obviouserror being that the
oriscis,
often described as gods, are in actuality a pantheon of Yorubaancestor deities. In his study
Life in a Haitian Valley
(19371, Herskovits clearlyacknowledged that the classification of gods fluctuated from one informant to another. Thisfinding led him, through implication, to rule syncretism an idiosyncratic process, absent ofconscious thought.Most importantly, because of findings by others that were similar to Herskovits's, syn-cretism lost its original Hellenic meaning as the conscious forging of unity. Its definitionbecame one of a happenstance process that had no coherence in its development. Oncereligious syncretism had been operationalized in the New World, the aftermath is that theold cultural items are now "retentions" or "reinterpretations" that become new syncreticdevelopments in a new geographic area (Herskovits 1958:xv-xviii).Herskovits popularized the use of syncretism in the United States while FernandoOrtiz (1881-1969) simultaneously popularized the term in Latin America. For Herskovitsand Ortiz the focus on the "item" of retention took on a mythical quality while theideological basis for syncretism was deemphasized. Herskovits explained,
It seemed
to
me that the syncretizing process really lay at one pole of the eontinuurn that stretched fromsituations where items from two or more cultures in aontact had been fully merged
to
those where therewas the unchanged retantion of preexisting ones (Herskovite
1958:
di).
Syncretism
is
a process of merging items that combine
to
become one (Theodorson andTheodorson 1969: 431). This definition of merging items is the standard view of what Afro-Latin religiosity means in sociology, anthropology, and history. Consequently, £rom this per-spective people who practice one form or another of an Afro-Latin religion contain many"items" from West Africa that have been fused with Catholic iconography. This traditionaldefinition then would have us believe that these combinations are unconsciously createdbecause they have an origin in another time and place
in
history.Ortiz (1947: 97-103), with his consideration of syncretism, was focused on a differentissue. His concern was the end result of a society in which syncretism was rampantespecially in religion. He identified the end result of syncretism
as
"transculturation" andsaw it as similar to the Anglo-American paradigm of acculturation and assimilation. Ortizstated,
When.
. .
ranseulturation,
wan
submitted
to
the unimpeachable authority of Bronielaw Malinowaki, thegreat
figure
in
contemporary ethnography and
sociology,
it metwithhis inatant appobation. Under hiseminent sponeorship,
I
have no qualms about putting this term
into
circulation
(1947:
1031
The 'unimpeachablen anthropologist Bronislaw Malino~ski,~ho wrote the intro-duction for Ortiz, said that Ortiz introduced a new
technical
term,
'Ltranaculturation,"
into
the social
sciences as a replacement for
Add a Comment