New Religions in Cuba

Cuba's Religious Traditions

There are five to seven religious practices with origins in the history of the island but that are currently experiencing a new openness toward their sacred customs. The traditions are Palo Monte/Mayombe, Regla de Ocha/Lukumí, Arrara, Vodou, Abakuá, Espiritismo, and maybe Muertéra Bembé de Sao. Muertéra is questionable because it has yet to be confirmed as a religious practice that has history and ritual practices embedded in Cuba and separate from the others. Similarly, Abakuá should not be considered a religion because it is a secret and exclusively male fraternal organization, although it possesses rituals that come from one or more of the other practices and is particular to Cuba. For more than four centuries, all of these [Page 900]distinct practices were subjected to police harassment of ritual activities, persecution of their priest leaders, denial of public expression of sacred symbols, members’ denial of their practice, and communities holding clandestine meetings. The intensity of official ridicule and persecution varied with sociopolitical events and with the historical time period. However, at times, practitioners could be incarcerated for their religious activities.

During Cuba's long colonial period (1500s to 1898), the Catholic clergy disdained and forbade practice of the island's unique religions. The Church's four-century opposition was mostly because nearly all of the religions were either Africa based in ethos and cosmic orientation or distinguished by their close relationship to these two aspects. Both the Catholic Church and Cuban official authorities saw no value in the unique religions but deemed them idolatrous, fetishist, or even demonic. No small part of the antagonism was based on the fact that rather than convert to Catholicism, the vast number of enslaved Africans and their descendants continued to adhere to their adapted customs. Even as Catholicism became firmly entrenched in Cuba's sociopolitical reality, the African descendant population, as well as some Black and White Cuban-born criollos, continued to revere the Africa-related traditions. When these practices began to reflect incorporations from Catholicism, clergy officials still saw no legitimacy in the distinct Cuban creations and continued to support social controls that greatly discriminated against practitioners and their sacred ways of life.

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