Crystal Kurzen
Ohio State University
Email: ckurzen@hotmail.com

Performing Santería From Autoethnography to Ethnographic Tourism

"Someone who's been uprooted, exiled, has no country. Our country exists only in our memory, but we need something beyond memory if we're to achieve happiness. We have no homeland, so we have to invent it over and over again"
-Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban writer

What happens to a culture when two or three generations of its population become displaced and dispersed to various places like Miami, New York, New Jersey, or Los Angeles? What happens to this culture when it is forced to change its language in the process? The politics of migration and identity find their origins in questions like these. Why is it important to have an identity and to connect oneself with a culture? Why is it important to establish an identity based on one's heritage and cultural background? Identity can rather simply be defined as "the quality or condition of being the same in substance, composition, nature, properties, or in particular qualities under consideration; absolute or essential sameness; oneness" (www.oed.com 06/13/03). How can this seemingly elementary concept become such an important issue that people explore for years, at times, without ever coming to a conclusion? Following from this then, it is important for this project to seek answers to questions like: how does one characterize the Cuban identity? What does it mean to be Cuban while living outside of Cuba? How is Cuban identity defined or even commodified throughout the United States? How do certain religious rituals like Santería get marketed as Cuban identity?
This paper will explore Santería as a performance of Cuban identity for those outside of Cuba, focused on three different sites in what José Muñoz has called "Greater Cuba": the contemporary Cuban tourist industry, where "Ochaturs" and "Santurismo"-tourist packages that allow tourists to participate in Santeria for a substantial fee-are gaining increasing importance in a post-Soviet Cuban economy; contemporary Cuban American literature, with a focus on Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban; and in contemporary Latino/a performance, focused on the work of Coco Fusco. In different ways, these three contexts engage Santería as a means to perform-to practice, illustrate, or embody-notions of "Cubanness." Through an analysis of these sites, this paper will explore how migration and exile have affected the "national" value assigned to Santería; how Santería is differently evoked as a practice that can connect Cuban Americans or tourists to "authentic" Cubanness; and how each site differently constructs Santería as usable folklore, ethnographic exhibit, or a repository for exilic memory.
How does José Muñoz's definition of "Greater Cuba" aid in the understanding of how Santería can be seen as a performance of Cuban identity? Muñoz writes about the concept of understanding what it means to be "Cuban in the extended and somewhat pretended geography" that he calls "Greater Cuba." He asserts, "This map [of Greater Cuba] would include the island and South Florida but also highlight other hubs of Cuban production in New York and New Jersey, as well as spots in California and elsewhere in the Americas" (Muñoz 253). In his article entitled, "Performing Greater Cuba: Tania Bruguera and the Burden of Guilt," Muñoz also refers to the emotional conflict between Cubans living on and off the island. He posits, "…my right-wing relatives feel a sort survivors' guilt in relation to those Cubans on the island, who they perceive as living in the shadow of a tyrant in a communist inferno" (Muñoz 252). Cuba, because of the kind of Revolution it experienced and because of the type of relationship it has with the United States, can be viewed, then, as a larger physical space than just the island. Similarly, Pamela Maria Smorkaloff writes in her book Cuban Writers On and Off the Island, "Although it is true that their children and grandchildren [of Cuban parents] cannot assume the identity of exiles from a country they have never seen, that does not mean they can sever, or have severed, all ties-collective, cultural, historical-with the island. They will be the ones to forge new links with the island…" (Smorkaloff X). Cuban Americans, living in spaces within Greater Cuba, seem to have an innate sense of what the history of their culture holds, thus, giving them a sense of who they are. Many reside in areas of Greater Cuba and are working through their relationships with the island as their cultural home in various ways. Some of these Cuban Americans visit present-day Cuba, a place they may have never seen before. Others produce artwork or participate in the religious rituals of Santería, seeking to represent Cuba to the rest of the world while also desiring to symbolize their own Cuban American identity. Greater Cubans embody a group of people continually seeking out a lifestyle linked to their historical past, hoping to discover a sense of cultural and national identity.
What is Santería? In order to fully explore all of the questions raised thus far, Santería must be explained further. Santería can be defined as the popular name for the Afro-Cuban polytheistic religious tradition gradually developed by the end of the nineteenth century into a series of religious practices derived of mostly West African and some Spanish Catholic roots. Migene González Wippler in her book, Santería, states, "Santería is a typical case of syncretism, that is, the spontaneous popular combination or reconciliation of different religious beliefs. This syncretism can be appreciated in the fact that most of the Yoruba gods have been identified with the images of Catholic saints" (González Wippler 3). The origins of Santería are found within the traditional religion of the Yoruba people of West Africa. The spiritual entities of this African religion that have been syncretized with the Catholic saints are called Orishas or Santos. Orishas are deities of diverse nature, disparate origins, and distinct personality traits; these personality traits and attributes are numerous, complex, and sometimes contradictory. González Wippler also asserts, "For, in spite of the influence of the Catholic church, Santería is mostly primitive magic, and its roots are deeply buried in the heart of Africa, the ancestral home of the Yoruba people" (González Wippler 4). To be initiated, an aspirant santero goes through a series of rituals that culminate in a seven-day ceremony called asiento. What do those who practice Santería hope to gain through Orisha worship? Santeros believe that every aspect of human life is controlled by an Orisha. González Wippler says that "…through the worship of the various saints the santeros believe they can control and rearrange all the natural phenomena around them. They believe that they can affect changes in any facet of human experience just by invoking the proper god" (González Wippler 60). Practitioners of Santería were traditionally persecuted for most of the history of pre-Revolutionary Cuba. An article called "Santería: The Afro-Antillian Religion of the Lucumis" states, "Santería today is not only a religion; it's a brotherhood with a rich legacy of myths and legends as the teaching media for its adepts. A legacy left from the slaves of yesterday to the free men of their tomorrow…" (www.waningmoon.com 06/13/03). Those who practice Santería have overcome substantial odds and their ritual behavior has, in some ways, been forcibly inscribed through their constant suffering.
Following from this, how does Santería as a performance of Cuban identity play a role in the contemporary Cuban tourist industry, where "Ochaturs" and "Santurismo" are gaining increasing importance in a post-Soviet Cuban economy? Due to the fall of the Soviet Union and their cutting off of all foreign aid, a new industry had to be created to bring money into the flailing, Cuban economy. For a period of approximately three years in the early 1990s, known as the Special Period, the Cuban economy broke down (and still hasn't recovered fully). As a result of this extremely difficult time, Cuba was forced to court large, wealthy countries, trying to convince them to spend their vacation time, not to mention their money, in Cuba. Fidel Castro is rumored to have said that he only encouraged tourism during this time period "in response to the 'economic need of the revolution'" (Goldstone 99). During this desperate time, Castro ordered that major resources be employed to aid the development of the tourism industry. Not only did the Special Period give rise to tourism; it gave rise to a type of cultural exploitation. Art forms such as Santería now compose a large portion of the tourist industry. This is demonstrated by the rise in popularity of Ochaturs or Santurismo, which refers to the specific tourist industry that brings foreigners, who want to become initiated into the practices of Santería, to Cuba. Within this new type of tourism, Santería becomes more of a folkloric exhibition than any type of actual religious ritual. Although some groups protest saying that this sense of tourism trivializes the importance of the Afro-Cuban contribution to Cuba's national heritage, most of society has realized that Santería has already become a commodity. Currently, a variety of websites sell Orisha and Santería supplies such as ritual candles, necklaces, herb baths, and even spells. Travel agencies also promote packages through which anyone can be initiated into the Santería religion. An initiation may cost between $2000 and $3000 in Cuba for a foreigner. Through these travel agencies though, initiation packages could cost as much as $7000 which includes airfare, food, lodging before and after the ceremony, and a cut for one of the several tourist offices. Does this commodification of Santería allow Cuban Americans or tourists to discover an essential notion of Cubanness? What happens then to those who seriously practice Santería? Do they feel like their religion (which is part of their identity) is being packaged and marketed to other cultures in the name of authenticity?
Another site used to illustrate Santería as a performance of Cuban identity can be found in contemporary Cuban American literature, specifically Cristina Garcia's book Dreaming in Cuban. Since the Revolution in 1959, more than 700,000 Cubans have settled in the United States. For this reason alone, issues of migration and identity can play a big part in Cuban art in any form today. One's identity, then, becomes a construct based on the idea of a lost past and a displaced present. In his book Narratives for a New Belonging, Roger Bromley asserts, "It is crucial that the migrant should be able to find space to construct an identity that can accommodate what he or she once was and is now supposed to be: an identity that is somewhere in-between" (Bromley 66). Shifting back and forth between Havana, Santa Teresa del Mar, and Brooklyn, New York, Garcia centers her novel on three generations of a Cuban family torn apart by Fidel Castro's revolution. Celia del Pino is the matriarch living in Cuba whose passions alternate between a long-lost Spanish lover and devout service to Castro. Her daughter Felicia, who is mad and possibly murderous, remains in Cuba and eventually finds an outlet in the Afro-Cuban religion of Santería after becoming estranged from most of her family members. In Brooklyn, Celia's other daughter Lourdes runs the Yankee Doodle Bakery exorcising her demons through a sense of Capitalistic Counterrevolution. Haunted by the memory of being raped by a revolutionary soldier back home, she is obsessed with her hatred for Castro and Communism and repulsed by her mother's devotion to both. Lourdes's daughter, Pilar, is an artistic punk who scoffs at her mother's belief that she can fight Communism from behind her bakery counter and plots a return to the island, the land of her heritage.
In this particular book though, Santería is assigned a certain value associated with authentic Cubanness for one character in each of the three generations. In Garcia's account, there are basically three levels of Cuban identity being discussed. One is the story of the Cubans who remained in Cuba after the Revolution (exemplified in Celia). The second is that of the exiles who came to America in the 1960s or those who remained in Cuba with little hope (illustrated by Lourdes and Felicia). The third is the story of the children of the exiles, which is told from Pilar's perspective. These three groups are given different modes of expression throughout the text. This agency is important when looking at identity and voice. The first group represented by Celia is only given a narrative voice through the letters she composes to her Spanish lover, with whom she has a passionate relationship in the early 1930s. These letters though are never sent and therefore, to a degree, her voice is silenced until she gives the letters to the omniscient narrator, her granddaughter Pilar. Celia though she does not believe fully in its powers, experiments with Santería. Garcia writes, "Celia is uneasy about all these potions and spells. Herminia [Felicia's friend] is the daughter of a santería priest, and Celia fears that both good and evil may be borne in the same seed. Although Celia dabbles in santería's harmless superstitions, she cannot bring herself to trust the clandestine rites of the African magic" (Garcia 90-91). Later, when Celia is worried about her son, Javier, she also seeks the advice of a Santera she had trusted once before. It seems as if during the moments when she cannot find help anywhere else, she turns to Santería. In the second generation, the reader finds Felicia and understands her deep connection to Santería. Toward the beginning of the novel, Felicia's father, Jorge del Pino, dies. Felicia relates her uneasiness to Herminia, and she suggests a ritual with La Madrina. She says, "You must cleanse your soul of this or it will trail you all your days. It may even harm your children. Just a small offering to Santa Bárbara…Be there at ten and I'll take care of the rest" (Garcia 12). Garcia continues to describe the ritual and its power over Felicia. At the end of it after a goat sacrifice, Felicia reels from the scent of the blood and the candles bowing to the power of the ritual. She also later visits a Santero in the hopes of learning if she will find another husband. He tosses and retosses the cowrie shells but they only predict misfortune. He gives her instructions as to how to cleanse herself further but on her way home to perform this ritual, she meets her second husband. After he, too, dies, Felicia goes through moments where she cannot remember where she is. She is missing for awhile but finally returns and throws herself into Santería through her friend Herminia's father. In Herminia's voice the reader learns, "For her, they [Santería ceremonies] were a kind of poetry that connected her to larger worlds, worlds alive and infinite. Our rituals healed her, made her believe again" (Garcia 186). Finally Felicia is initiated into the religion during an asiento and becomes a priestess. This ultimately provides her the peace she needs to die, giving up her spirit to the Orishas.
The third generation represented by Pilar also exhibits interest in Santería although it is rather removed from Felicia's experience. Pilar Puente is the narrator and record keeper of the Del Pino family. She tells the story, in some ways, of Garcia herself. Like Pilar, Garcia was born in Havana in 1958, and came to the U.S. when she was two years old. She grew up in New York City and could easily have faced the same struggles that plague Pilar in the book. At the beginning of the book Pilar says, "Even though I've been living in Brooklyn all my life, it doesn't feel like home to me. I'm not sure Cuba is, but I want to find out. If I could only see my Abuela Celia again, I'd know where I belonged" (Garcia 58). For Pilar, life is a mixture of the way she sees her parents struggle to blend into society in America and her desire to reconstruct the puzzle of her Cuban heritage. The stories that Pilar compiles recount a tale of the harshness of Cuba that splits a family like the Del Pino's. Pilar has really already lost the language of her heritage. She has grown up speaking English (she knows Spanish but does not use it) while at the same time trying to recapture what it essentially means to be Cuban. Her narrative engages with a reality of marginality through migration or exile and identity in the context of pre- and post-revolutionary Cuba. Pilar says in the narrative, "Cuba is a peculiar exile, I think, an island-colony. We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet may never reach it at all" (Garcia 219). She wrestles with the nostalgic notion that Cuba could indeed represent an idealized reality that does not exist in the truth of today's world. One way she hopes to reconnect with some sense of Cubanness is through Santería. She talks of her experience going into a botánica on the Upper East Side in New York City. Encountering there many soaps, herbs, and statues used in Santería rituals, she realizes that this is a way to reconnect to her Cuban heritage. She accepts a beaded necklace and instructions for a spell from the santero there and cannot wait to return to her apartment to perform the ritual. Pilar says, "I am not religious but I get the feeling that it's the simplest rituals, the ones that are integrated with the earth and its seasons, that are the most profound" (Garcia 199). She does not have the same experience as her Aunt Felicia, yet she associates these instructions from the santero as a way of connecting with something she cannot find the words to describe. It speaks to the American constructions of Cuba while trying to understand what a religion like Santería might mean to a Cuban. Pilar has a vague sense of Santería and can only connect to it in a sterile botánica miles away from her ancestral home.
Another aspect of this novel that proves interesting involves its author. Cristina Garcia represents the third generation of Cuban migrants. She, like Pilar, grew up primarily in New York City and seemed to be working out her own Cuban identity through the telling of this story. In her own words, Cristina Garcia has described herself like this, "In terms of the Cuban experience, the Revolution is 34 years old-as old as I am. We're in a unique position to tell the story of exile in a way our parents couldn't because they were too scarred and busy remaking their lives" (Alvarez Borland 136). Garcia's position is that of the generation of the exiled parents who are discovering their link to the island nation of Cuba through migrant and identity discourses. Does performing Santería in places like New York offer a more authentic link to Cuban identity than, say, a visit to the island? According to Borland, Garcia's "unique position…points to the complex dynamics of the extraterritorial Cuban narrative because it exposes all that is common in the age-old story of exile and all that is unique to the literary production of Cubans in America" (Alvarez Borland 137). This novel then seems to resonate with many as an ethnographic piece of literature. The credibility of the story in part comes from the fact that the author is a Cuban American writing about the lives of other Cubans and Cuban Americans. Identity in part then can be based on a common experience. But do people who have no real context for how Santería has been passed down through the culture have a sense of what's at stake by becoming initiates in an ancient religion? Bromley defines migrant identity as "a fluid becoming in which there is the possibility of developing citizens of a borderless world in which national boundaries are anomalous" (Bromley 66). Is this kind of identity Garcia struggles to describe and in the end, is this what she allows Pilar to discover? Can migrants really fluidly become citizens of a new society without losing their heritage in the process? Do rituals like Santería provide an authentic link to what has been lost? It seems that the kind of society Bromley describes would be a difficult one to realize, as a borderless world is rather idealistic. So many people migrate to the United States, and they must all decide how much of their "native" lifestyles they will give up. Sometimes it is very important to look at the reasons why people migrate. Many times these reasons play a large role in how identities will be played out in the new society.
When talking about migration and identity, many times words like "in-between spaces" and "borderline narratives" are used to describe how someone has adapted to life in a new place (Bromley 67). How does Garcia's characterization of the Del Pino women play into these categories? Lourdes is a first generation migrant. She hates all that Cuba stands for and finds her identity in New York in a bakery becoming a Capitalist Counterrevolutionary. She speaks English and in almost every way, she has forgotten about her Cuban heritage. Lourdes does not accept Pilar's interest in visiting Cuba or her intrigue with Santería rituals. Lourdes sees things in "black or white, America or Cuba, fat or thin, …over-sexed or celibate" (Bromley 69). She hates ambiguity and for her, "in-between spaces" and "borderline narratives" don't exist. For Pilar, life is very different. She's so interested in her Cuban heritage but can't seem to discover much about it. She has a dream communication with her grandmother disregarding boundaries but can't quite capture what life in Cuba must be like. Discovering a vague connection in a botánica, she hopes that will lead her in some way or another to discover a true sense of being Cuban. She doesn't feel at home in the U.S. until she goes to Cuba and realizes she must return to New York, her real home. After Pilar has been in Cuba for a little while she says, "I'm afraid to lose all this, to lose Abuela Celia again. But sooner or later I'd have to return to New York. I know now it's where I belong-not instead of here, but more than here. How can I tell my grandmother this?" (Garcia 236). It seems like Pilar is finally recognizing her borderline existence and biculturalism. Does Pilar in the end of the book come up with an identity for herself? Does she ever find resolution to her feelings concerning the lack of belonging in Brooklyn or the uncertainty of her place in Cuba? In the end, it seems that she does. At the close of the novel, the reader realizes that Pilar has been both the protagonist and the narrator of the entire story. She has realized what it means to be a Cuban living her life in New York. She has the letters from her grandmother and knows the stories of her Aunt Felicia, the initiated priestess of Santería. She knows her mother and accepts how she has dealt with Castro and his Revolution. Through all of their stories, she finally comes to know herself and understands that New York isn't instead of Cuba, it's just more.
The third site where construction of identity can be seen to represent a true sense of Cubanness, is through contemporary Latino/a performance art, specifically focusing on the work of Coco Fusco. Coco Fusco is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist. She has performed, lectured, exhibited and curated throughout North and South America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, and Japan. Some of her books include English Is Broken Here, The Bodies That Were Not Ours and Other Writings, and Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas (editor). Her writings have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The Nation, Ms., Frieze, Third Text, The Thing.net and Nka: Journal of African Art, as well as a number of anthologies. She is an associate professor at the School of the Arts of Columbia University. Writing about herself on the New York Foundation for the Arts website she states, "I have been writing about Latino art and cultural politics for the past decade. Most recently I have been concentrating on such issues as the relationship between ethnic marginalization and artistic interventions in public space, and the influence of Catholicism on specific uses of the body in Latino performance" (www.nyfa.org 06/13/03). Performance for Fusco can be used to describe art that is "ephemeral, time-based and process oriented, that incorporates the body as an object and as a subject of inquiry, and explores extreme forms of behavior, cultural taboos, and social issues" (Fusco "Performance" 160). Fusco approaches performance art as a means to rework cultural stereotypes creating new paradigms that ultimately seek to change representation. In her performance entitled Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992-1994), Fusco and fellow artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña exhibited themselves as inhabitants of an island in the Gulf of Mexico and were often mistaken for "real savages." Fusco asserts, "…we sought to make a satirical commentary on the ethnographic display of non-westerns for white audiences, and the commodification of ethnicity as consumable exotica for contemporary cultural institutions" (Fusco "Performance" 174). As a similar kind of identity commentary, could the performance of Santería by North American tourists be seen as a form of "consumable exotica"? In her essay, "Hustling for Dollars: Jineteras in Cuba," Fusco writes about her investigation of Cuba's burgeoning exploitative tourist industry and its position within the island's larger culture. She states, "Tourism in its varied manifestations in Latin America is a theater for the playing out of colonialism's unfinished business" (Fusco "Hustling" 137). Not only does Cuba now have to depend on outside income but in order to attract tourists, it must sacrifice sacred religious rituals like Santería to do it. The Castro regime has chosen to selectively support some of Cuba's African-based religions and their induction into the tourist trade through Ochaturs or Santurismo.
This investigation has posed many questions concerning the politics of Cuban migration and identity through the performance of Santería. In thinking about the way Santería has been coomodified, this project has focused on three different sites in what José Muñoz has called "Greater Cuba." Those include the contemporary Cuban tourist industry, where "Ochaturs" and "Santurismo" have gained increasing importance in a post-Soviet Cuban economy, contemporary Cuban-American literature, with a focus on Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban, and in contemporary Latino/a performance, focused on the work of Coco Fusco. In different ways, these three contexts engage Santería as a means to perform-to practice, illustrate, or embody-notions of authentic "Cubanness." Ultimately, it seems like Santería is being marketed by the Cuban government to construct "Cubanness," thus, allowing both Cuban Americans and North American tourists to perform an identity they construe as true engagement with ancestral heritage or an Other culture.

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