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FEATURE
By Frances Kerry
HAVANA, Jan 15
(Reuters) - The spirits of the Virgin of Mercedes and Obbatala and of the Virgin
of Regla and Yemaya live together comfortably in a Havana home, tucked away
under the lids of ornate porcelain soup tureens.
The tureens are part of the bedroom altar of a woman who, like many Cubans,
has parallel religious loyalties to Roman Catholicism and the Afro-Cuban
Santeria religion, which originated with the Yoruba tribe in west Africa and
came to Cuba with the slave trade.
The slaves hid their religion from their Spanish colonialist masters behind
an outward devotion to Catholic saints. Santeria divinities like Obbatala and
Yemeya had parallels among the saints in what is known as syncretism.
Caridad Padron's altar in Havana's Playa district is one illustration of the
religious diversity Pope John Paul will find on his landmark trip to the island
on Jan. 21-25.
Catholicism and Santeria, along with other Afro-Cuban religions, Protestant
Christian churches and tiny Jewish and Muslim communities are enjoying a
renaissance amid a more tolerant attitude toward religion by Cuba's Communist
authorities since the late 1980s and early '90s.
The Roman Catholic Church, with a natural interest in presenting a full
house for the Pope's visit, says some 70 percent of Cuba's 11 million people are
Catholics. Some people, especially followers of Afro-Cuban religions and those
who feel that atheism is more widespread, would dispute this.
Padron, a retired seamstress who now makes a living renting out bridal
costumes, would probably not. She is both a regular churchgoer and a Santeria
devotee who has been a "santera,'' one who is initiated into the religion,
for more than 30 years. She says her first loyalty is to God.
SANTERIA DIVINITY SITS ATOP COMPUTER GAME
Her house is full of family pictures, antique ornaments and religious
artifacts. Alongside the bedroom cupboard with its soup tureens and colorful
dolls representing other divine beings are small statues of Catholic saints. In
the sitting room there are more tureens on display, and in the next room a
grandchild is bewitched by a beeping computer game atop which sits another
Santeria divinity.
Padron, 74, became a santera because in her late 30s she and her husband
were childless and despairing. She was told by a Santeria priest that she would
have a child and should then incorporate herself into the faith. She then
conceived a son and, convinced of divine intervention, duly went through the
weeklong ceremonies to become a santera.
Padron said she had seen many signs of divine providence such as a radio
announcer friend who was dying of cancer who became a santero and lived for
another 17 years.
And she believes Santeria does not prevent her from being a good Catholic.
The first thing a would-be santero (a man) or santera (woman) has to to is get
baptized in the Church and "explain to the Lord what we are going to do,''
she said.
Padron is one of those people Roman Catholic leaders such as Cardinal Jaime
Ortega refer to when they say Catholicism and Santeria are not mutually
exclusive.
"The great majority of them (Santeria believers) feel Catholic, baptize
their children ... we have never considered them as though they belong to a
'separate religion,''' Ortega told a church magazine, "Verdad y
Esperanza.''
SANTERIA A WAY INTO CHRISTIANITY?
"If these beliefs are the way into Christianity, that's fine,'' a
Spanish priest in Santiago de Cuba said.
But not everyone agrees that followers of Santeria and other Afro-Cuban
religions are part of the Catholic flock. Natalia Bolivar, an expert on
Afro-Cuban religions, said Cuba was not and never had been a Catholic country,
even before President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
Some 80 percent of Cubans are believers, even if only sporadically, in
Santeria, Regla de Palo -- another Afro- Cuban religion -- or spiritism, she
said.
Some Santeria priests object to what they say is the church's attempt to
dismiss them as a "folklore'' rather than a religion and to the fact they
will not be included in a meeting the Pope is to have with Protestant and Jewish
leaders.
One priest or babalao, Cesar Bazquez, said he had no such objections but did
not consider himself a Catholic. Bazquez, 47, was brought up a Catholic, became
an atheist along with the rest of his family after the revolution and entered
Santeria five years ago as a defense against witchcraft he believed was being
practiced against him.
This is a fairly common reason for turning to Santeria, the former
television producer said. He said he once cured a Swiss visitor of impotence
caused by having had witchcraft practiced against him during his travels in
places such as Haiti.
Bazquez said the most common problems people brought to him -- they pay a
few pesos for the consultation -- were "economic, wanting to leave the
country and health,'' and family disputes.
Solving such down-to-earth problems gives Santeria a wide appeal in a
country that has been mired in economic crisis since the early 1990s. And
offering practical solutions to suffering made it, for some people, more
attractive than Catholicism, he added.
In recent years, Protestant churches -- there are more than 50 denominations
in Cuba -- have tended to be more closely identified with the government than
the Catholic church has. "They caved in (to authorities) in the late
1970s,'' Bolivar said.
Oden Marichal, head of the Council of Churches that groups many of the
leading Protestant churches, has just been elected a member of parliament,
joining another Protestant pastor, Raul Suarez. REUTERS
12:42 01-17-98 |