Day 11: Palmira. Where Orishas live

Day 11: Palmira. Where Orishas Live.

The car stops in front of the museum, a beautiful 19^th Century building with a cozy and verdant central courtyard. The director comes out through one of the doors, big smile on her tall dark frame.  After the perfunctory peck on the cheek, she gives me a tour, explaining the exhibits, while an assistant hovers nearby in case she needed support. 

The museum contains exhibit of the cruel hardware that deformed the bodies and identity of the slaves during the 19^th Century.  Manacles, cruel collars with spikes, unforgiving shackles for the ankles.  These are the torture tools which awaited Esteban after his apprehension the first time he escaped. 

A document dating from 19^th Century lists the cimarrones who had escaped from the regional sugar mills laid encased in glass. It manifests the engineering-like efficiency of those in charge of keeping track of the human property which made the mills work.  Neat rows and columns listed the name, the owner and the ethnicity of the runaway slave.  Some were identified as Lukumis, others as Congo, others just as Negros.  Two chinos made the list, which was interesting since Chinese workers, legally, were not slaves. They were contract workers tied to the land for specific time.  The bulk of the Chinese laborers came to Cuba as indentured servants after 1857 to work the sugar mills.  By escaping, they earned the badge of “Cimarron;” a badge worn so proudly by Esteban. 

“Now we’ll take you to see the cabildos in Palmira,” she says at the doorway of the museum. “We are known for our preservation of the African traditions in our religious practices. We have four important cabildos: Sociedad de Cristo Babalú Aye, Sociedad Santa Barbara, Sociedad San Roque, and Sociedad San Antonio, the Cabildo Congo of town.”  She spoke from memory a information offered to many visitors.

Palmira is well known for its Afro-Cuban religious traditions. I have met many practitioners who trace their initiation roots to one of the cabildos in Palmira. That is, they were “baptized” into the Religion, receive their Santo,  by the heads of the holy houses I would visit. Afro Cuban religions have many Romes and Meccas. Palmira is one of them. 

 

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Esteban respected all religions, but he had firm opinions about the Spanish god; the god of the oppressors. The Spaniards all believed in their one Christian god and they thought him god superior, continuously trying to convert as many Africans as possible. But deep down, it all proved to be a scam, a ruse meant to facilitate the control of the Africans, said Esteban to Miguel. The workers—slaves or free men-- did not benefit from the dogma of the oppressors except on the holy days, when they all got a day off. That was a time to rejoice in the name of the white lord! In the days of Santiago and Santa Ana, El Purio went quiet. Everything stopped; the caldrons, the cutting. Everything. In holy days, the sugar mill was as silent as a sanctuary. The priests prayed all day to their god. Still, that was not enough to increase their worth in Esteban’s eyes. He saw many of them as criminals. They would have children with the pretty white girls of the Criollos and would lie about it, call their off springs nephews or godsons. Esteban could not stomach the Christian god or its followers. Furthermore, he never saw a black priest. It was a white man’s task; a Spaniard’s job to pray to the Christian god. The religion was a white religion; the religion of the cross and the whip.

Esteban lived in an enchanted world, full of güijes, headless horsemen, and dead bodies that sprang to life. This was a world where witches and noisy spirits appeared like ephemeral light in the forests. A world of hexes and spells that “killed people, derailed trains, [and] burned houses down.” (101) A world where the devil appeared dressed like regular folks. “He never shows up as the devil. It doesn’t suit him to scare you” he explained. (101) A world where magic was stronger on Tuesday than on Monday, when charms protected whoever wore them and enslaved Congos could fly back to Africa to replenish their souls. Many did fly back, particularly at night, he said. This, he insisted, is part of the reason why slavers stopped bringing Congos to Cuba. They, the Congos, would waste the slavers money. The slavers could not get the Congos to stay. Esteban did not make much of his own beliefs, but it is clear that he respected the power of the Religion. He used some of that power himself and learned how to make little devils from a stick. Stick magic, he called it. But making magic charms was not for everyone, he warned Miguel. You have to have a heart that is as “cold as a fish.” Once you had that, the process became straightforward and frightfully accessible to all.

I learned to make a little devil. To raise him and all…You take a chicken egg with a spot. It has to have a spot in it because without it, it wouldn’t work. Put it in the sun for two or three days. After it’s hot, you put it in your armpit three Fridays in a row, and on the third Friday a little devil is hatched instead of a little chick. A little devil the color of a chameleon. Now, that little devil is put into a tiny, clear vial so you can see inside, and you sprinkle in some dried wine. Next, you keep it in your pants pocket, good and secure so it won’t escape because those little devils tend to be scrappy. They move around a lot by wiggling their tail.” (100)

 

But this kind of enchanted world ceased to exist by the time he talked to Miguel. It existed only when the world, his Cuban world, had been populated and dominated by Africans. It could not survive a world run by sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of Africans where none of these “gives a hoot” about religion, he told Miguel. “They think of nothing but eating, sleeping, lots of dough.” (105) Back then, all Santeros were Africans. Today “you see some white Babalawo with red cheeks,” but back then the African gods only existed for the Africans. Some of the old spiritualism is alive and well nowadays in the Catholic church, he says. That is the legacy of the black gods. All religions are mixed. That is why all must be respected.

Today the cultural power of the Religion persists. The believers that keep the African gods alive continue the ancient traditions. More than a marginal ideology, the Religion maintains a strong presence in Cuban culture. Do I believe in enchanted messagess I am a devout non-believer, but, like Esteban, I recognize the equality of all religions. All religions are equally true, and believers keep alive the gods that they deserve. But of the culture that nurtures the believers--when it comes to that enchanted force, I am a zealot.