247 p., Discusses the diasporic origins of Palo Mayombe, a Kongo-Cuban religious tradition, while seeking to analyze how it fulfills, in a new transplanted setting, the spiritual needs of a given segment of the Cuban immigrant population in the United States—designated here as the “strangers in a new land”—“serving not only as a healing mechanism but also a vehicle towards the preservation of ethnic and cultural identity.”
Discusses the ways in which Santeria gatherings produce an alternative use of otherwise stigmatized language for 'gay' practitioners. Through the use of distinctive language to reference all of these populations, we may rethink the relationship between identities and practices, and within that, gender presentations vis a vis identities.
Lachatañeré,Rómulo (Author) and Ayorinde,Christine (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2005
Published:
Princeton, NJ: M. Wiener Publishers
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
156 p, Distinguishes between the two most important religious forms - the Regla de Ocha (Santeria), which promotes worship of the Oshira (gods), and the traditional oracles that originated in the old Yoruba city of lle-lfe', which promote a more animistic worldview. Africans who were brought to Cuba as slaves had to recreate their old traditions in their new Caribbean context. As their African heritage collided with Catholicism and with Native American and European traditions, certain African gods and traditions became more prominent while others lost their significance in the new Afro-Cuban culture. This book, the first systematic overview of the syncretization of the gods of African origin with Catholic saints, introduces the reader to a little-known side of Cuban culture.
