The Public Lives of Santería

Abstract

On December 17, every year since the Revolution, tens of thousands of Cubans from across the island make the journey to worship at the Santuario de San Lázaro, an imposing white church situated next to the site of a former lepers’ hospital in El Rincón, a little town about 35 kilometers from Havana. In tribute to the biblical leper raised from the dead by Jesus Christ, some pilgrims drag themselves along the ground toward the holy shrine, while others shuffle along—kneecaps scraping the asphalt—in mimicry of the abject humility and woundedness personified by the iconic figure. Images of San Lázaro, whose counterpart in Cuba’s African religions is Babalú-Ayé, depict an old man scantily dressed in rags, and on crutches, with legs covered in sores, and often surrounded by still another symbol of misery and wretchedness—a pack of perros callejeros (stray dogs). So perfectly have the African and Christian faiths bled into each other that it is often impossible to distinguish between those devotees who come to attend the Yoruba deity and those who come to honor the Roman Catholic saint, and this lack of distinction may oftentimes also be applied at the level of the individual. Consequently, Lázaro / Babalú-Ayé is regarded as a saint for all Cubans irrespective of race or cultural background, and the exuberant outpouring of religious faith exhibited each year on the day of his festival reasserts the primacy of syncretic religiosity as an active participant in forming the complex and fluid imagined community of cubanidad.³

“even talking about negroes in public was a dangerous thing.”¹

“The most powerful gods are those from Africa.”²