In celebration of Black History Month, Dr. Martha Moreno Vega gave a lecture last Thursday on Cuban religion and screened her documentary, “Cuando los Espíritus Bailan Mambo,” or, “When the Spirits Dance Mambo.”
Vega recently completed her second book of the same name.
“The film brought up an element of the Latino past that’s often overlooked and neglected. The significance fails to be recognized,” said Arturo Rivera ’07.
Her film traced the origins of the Yoruba religion in Africa, and showed how the Africans brought to the Caribbean, as slaves, managed to hold to their religious beliefs.
Vega said that while slaves were forced to adopt Catholicism, they hid their Yoruba beliefs by assigning each of their divinities, or Orishas, the name of a Catholic saint, who they would pretend to worship.
“You see the Catholic shrine in the living room, and hidden behind the shrine to the Orishas,” one of the women interviewed in the film explained.
The film was in Spanish, told through the voices of the Cuban community, and depicted culture and life within small rural villages and large cities such as Havanna.
Although the Yoruba religion was suppressed for a long time, today Cuba embraces the religion and culture, according to Vega.
“In my experience, Spiritism [the Yoruba religion] is still very hush hushed,” said Raquel Maldonado ’05, who studied abroad in Puerto Rico last semester and saw the film. “The subject has some personal meaning for me, because whenever you deal with Spiritism you’re touching the lives of people from the Carribean.”
The film explained that according to the Yoruba’s worldview, initiates have both a biological family and a religious family, who are one’s godparents and godchildren.
“I love my religious family more than my birth family,” one woman said in the film.
The film showed the importance of drumming and dancing to the Yoruba religion as sacred forms of communication. It showed how the fusion of African drum beats with Spanish culture led to such popular music and dances as rumba, salsa and mambo.
The film also followed the emigration of Cuban drummers to New York, who influenced the jazz scene in the twentieth century, and played with such jazz idols as Dizzy Gillespie.
Today the Yoruba religion is embraced not only in Cuba, but across the world, and many foreigners make pilgrimages to Cuba in order to be initiated into the religion. The film raised both the positive and negative sides to this recent growing popularity.
“It’s interesting to see how the religion is promoted and marketed, because you increase awareness but at the same time are at risk of diminishing the significance,” said GLSP student Renee Johnson-Thornton, the coordinator of the screening and lecture.
The film showed trinkets related to the Yoruba religion being sold at tourist markets, and discussed how the influx of foreigners to the religion has affected the local economy, and the economy of the religion. Many of the Cubans interviewed in the film agreed that although they appreciate the fact that so many people are interested in their culture, and that their religion is no longer looked down upon, they do not want Yoruba to become popularized.
“It is also interesting to see how the religion is no longer race based, but is embraced nationally in a welcoming environment,” Johnson-Thornton said.
Vega said that although the religion itself is now accepted throughout Latin America, racism is still highly prevalent, and there is no public recognition of the influence and presence of African countries in Latin America.
She said that although the film looked at Cuba in particular, the same story could be told of any Latin American country to which African slaves were brought.
Vega currently teaches Afro-Caribbean Relations and Afro-Latinos at SUNY Hunter College and is the founder and president of the Caribbean Cultural Center, and is a founder of the Roundtable of Institutions of Color and the Touring Network of Institutions of Color.
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